Volunteer Site Visit

We are visiting 2 volunteers right now and their site is fabulous! It is nestled in the mountains right next to a river and everything is so green and gorgeous. We got to go with them to the local school where they worked with the kids on hand washing and brushing their teeth, it was fun to watch kindergartners brushing their teeth in the school yard. They also have a garden at the school and they teach the kids about eating healthy. We also attended their story hour which 18 kids attended. They read a story in Spanish and then did a little craft activity. The youth development volunteer also teaches 3 teachers English and that was really interesting to watch. I never realized how complicated English is until I saw people trying to learn it. It made me glad that I learned it when I was young. We also got to make fresh squeezed orange juice which was fun...the oranges taste much different here and are usually picked when they are still green so you have to add sugar to the juice. All of the juice here has sugar added, it is very sweet. We are now on our way to a waterfall to hang out for the day. Honduras is so beautiful and there are so many awesome places to see. Now we just need to master Spanish!

Week 2 down

So I just typed a post but of course it got erased since the internet is not very good here. Things are going well. We are learning Spanish poco a poco. We leave tomorrow for our volunteer visit. We are going to visit a married couple who are doing the same projects as us so that will be exciting. This week was busy...Kevin visited a farm and learned how to make soy foods and got to pick his own mango! Shannon visited a school and was able to watch a competition between four schools consisting of math, poetry, singing, dancing, writing, etc. It was very interesting. She also visited a school and watched a group of Peace Corps Health Volunteers give a presentation geared towards 10-14 year old girls on sexual education...also very interesting. The teachers are striking right now (which happens quite often for public schools, it is a huge problem) so there were not very many children there. The weather is interesting, it changes at least five times a day. It rains a lot and there is a lot of mud but we like it overall. We have been able to meet some of the current volunteers who are serving in Honduras and it is really nice to hear their stories and advice. For Elizabeth's family members, she is doing fabulously and has managed to avoid the hospital this week! Week two down!

Life in Honduras

We finally had time to go somewhere to use the internet after our Saturday Cultural lesson. i typed up a couple entrys to copy and paste but these computers are really slow so i am wasting time to see if it reads the thumb drive. apparently it does not work. We have a fabulous host family, with a really nice house. No hot water, but I have gotten used to taking bucket baths and kev takes cold showers. Our host mom is a spanish teacher so she is really great at teaching us. We have classes everyday from 7:30 to 4:30 and half days on Saturdays. Today we learned about the indigineous cultures in Honduras which was really interesting. Spanish learning is going well...it´s really exhausting speaking another language all day long and we usually go to bed around 9:30 at the latest. We did laundry by hand for the first time and it was quite an experience...very time consuming. We both got cell phones...ask our family members for the numbers as we do not want to post them on the internet. It is free for us to receive calls and texts so call us lots! You can also send us free texts on this website www.tigo.com.hn but it´s probably in Spanish. Anyway, we are short on time so this will be short too. Hopefully we will get access to the internet soon....being here has already shown me how many things we take for granted at home that many places in the world do not have access too. This is going to be a great learning experience!

Almost Gone

Well, we are done with staging. Quite a lot of fun, actually is was not bad. We found out we wont have internet access at our training site so the best we will be able to do is travel to a nearby town to use on a weekend or something. So don't count on hearing from us anytime soon. Still leave comments so we have plenty to read when we do check it.

D.C.

So we made it to D.C. in one piece. We had a whirlwind last week at home spending lots of time with our friends and families, and a fabulous going away party (thanks Lisa)! Now we have a few days to hang out with Mikael and Irini, watch some fireworks (yay), and eat lots of greasy food before we have to live in a hut with no electricity. I still don't think it has fully sunk in yet, after a nearly two year process it just did not seem like we were ever going and I don't think it will until we arrive in Honduras . It was sad saying our goodbyes, especially to our nephew and our kitty (Laurie better take good care of her or ELSE). We're looking forward to a fun weekend and finally arriving in Honduras after such a long wait!