We are FINALLY volunteers!

So we had our swearing in ceremony Friday and are oficially volunteers! We had the ceremony at the U.S. Embassy and then went to the Ambassador´s house where we were able to use the pool and play volleyball/basketball, and just hang out. It was a great day and it felt good to finally be volunteers and to be done with training. It felt a little like graduating from high school and going off to college (I will try to post pictures soon). We are now in Catacamas and it is miserably hot and humid...much like Austin in the summer only without air conditioning and our fan broke. Hopefully we will get used to this weather soon. We met the other two volunteers in our site yesterday and they seem really nice. It was good to hear about Catacamas from their points of view. They also told us about a nice house where other volunteers have lived that the landlady wants to rent to us. Hopefully we can go check it out soon. We have not done much in the way of work yet but we are going with one of the other volunteers tomorrow to help teach English since Shannon will be taking over that class soon. Right now we are just enjoying our new found freedom and learning about Catacamas and everything in the city. It was sad saying goodbye to everyone and knowing that we will not be able to see them for at least three months as we are not allowed to travel until then. I´m sure that three months will fly by as these past two and a half have! Kevin bought an Abercrombie polo shirt yesterday at the market for 25 lempiras which is about 1.30 USD. That is pretty awesome. They do not have shoes his size here though so that is not good.

Site Visit

So we are visiting our site in Catacamas right now and it is fabulous! It is rather hot and humid (kind of like Texas) but otherwise perfect. The city is pretty big, depending on who you talk to, the population varies from 35,000 to 70,000. The city is extremely well laid out and the roads are paved and big by Honduran standards. So far, it is by far the nicest city I have seen. The roads are clean and actually have street signs and stop lights. There is pretty much everything we need here but it is more expensive than in smaller cities. Kevin is working with an agricultural university and one of his counterparts is from the US abd speaks English. So far he really likes it especially since the university is air conditioned and has wireless internet! I have five counterparts and it seems like I am going to be super busy. They told me that they have enough work for 100 volunteers! I am working with a substance abuse program, the administration office for all of the schools, a high school, a health center, and an agency that seems very similar to CPS. It is a bit overwhelming but I think I will really like it. Our host family is very nice and we actually have hot water and a washing machine! The family consists of a mother, her daughter and son who are in their 20s, and her three grandchildren, two twin girls who are 11 months and a 10 year old girl. We like it a lot and the food is really good too. Queso Olanchano is much better than the rest of the cheese out there and luckily we live in the cheese and dairy region. Olancho, our department, is called the ¨wild East¨and is supposed to be similar to Texas. Supposedly there are lots of guns and it is an unlawful land where people take the law into their own hands and have family feuds. I think that is more in the country because Catacamas seems very civilized. There are lots of cows and everyone eats red meat. There have been a lot of storms with crazy lightening and thunder but our mom says that is rare. The department of Olancho is the biggest department in Honduras and is bigger than El Salvador, but a lot of it is farm land and forrest. It´s very pretty, we are surrounded by lush mountains and love it!

Tarantulas and despedidas

Happy Wedding Jon and Sarah! We are so sad that we are not there to celebrate with you guys! On a horrible note, there was a giant tarantula in my room this morning. I nearly died of fright but somehow I managed to compose myself and squish it. Now I am afraid of my room and really glad that I have a mosquito net so at least nothing can touch me while I sleep. Thankfully we´re going back to Zarabanda in 3 days where I do not think that they have tarantulas. Tomorrow is our despedida for our families (in Kev´s town too). I am helping to make a ton of brownies (from scratch since I´m a super chef) and fruit salad. It should be interesting... Elizabeth, Hilary, and I gave our HIV/AIDS charla yesterday and it actually went really well. Our class was really well-behaved considering they were ninth graders. They participated and I think they actually laughed less than we did when we received the charla from current volunteers. My favorite part was watching them put condoms on bananas and of course the question and answer part. We got one question asking how to have sex and at what age. Luckily our director was there and he helped us out since my Spanish is not quite that good yet. Kev said that his charla went well too, his group was much larger so he did not have to talk as much which he liked. Otherwise not a lot is going on here. Just hot and humid and I want to die everytime I have to walk somewhere.

Last week of FBT

So things have been rather crazy here. My town has been having a ton of peace festivals which are super interesting, especially when the entire crowd chants “Jesus Cristo” and the Catholic youth group performs plays where the devil tries to corrupt a young boy and Jesus saves him. I love it! A young girl in Kevin’s town was struck by lightening and killed yesterday so that is very sad. I guess she was taking the clothes off the clothesline because it was starting to rain and lightening struck her. Kevin was outside when it happened and is pretty sure that he saw the lightening strike that killed her. I think that she was related to his host family but he did not know her. Now the town is in mourning for 9 days and it is an extremely sad situation. My group had our cultural day yesterday and we got to watch folkloric dancers and eat lots of good Honduran food. We also imparted some of our culture by teaching them games like red light green light, duck duck goose, three legged races, and making rice krispie treats. It was a hit! I am in Tegucigalpa again because I had to get my last rabies shot and another girl had to go to the doctor. We are bringing back a speaker for our AIDS panel tomorrow so we get to spend the night here! All of the volunteers 2 groups ahead of us are leaving Saturday and they are all here doing paperwork and going to the doctor. It is nice to be able to talk to them because we are replacing a lot of them and they give good advice. Tomorrow we all have to give charlas (lectures) on HIV/AIDS for 4 hours to the local high schools. I am missing out on all the preparation but will be back in time to give the charla. That should be interesting. So things are going well and we only have a few days until we are back together in Zarabanda and then we get to visit our site!

free texting to us

Go to www.tigo.com.hn and click on the box that says envia tus mensajes desde la web. Enter the info and only use the last 8 digits of the phone number. keep me up to date on football too, especially the big Fresno State game on monday if you can. thanks

1 more week apart

Shannon and I have one more week apart for training and then we will be back togther for the remainer of our service. I am staying with Shannon and her family this weekend, so that is nice. We basically found out that we will be living in Catacamas, Honduras for our 2 years. It is a good size city kind of away from most of the rest of the volunteers but we are excited for the opportunities there. We will have several counterparts to work with and I will have one person from my project close enough to work with so that is cool. This week, one more person left to go back to the US so we wish her the best. We still have 49 of our original 51 volunteers, which is pretty good. 3 more weeks of training and we all go off to our sites. on our way to use the internet today we saw a boy peeing in the middle of the street and by street I mean dirt road, but it was pretty nice. Really not too uncommon here. There is only one paved street here in Talanga and it is only paved halfway. most of the people are nice though, we do get the gringo yells and the girls get other comments as well. The food is basically beans, rice, corn tortillas, eggs. I eat a lot of fried plantains and eggs as well but they use a lot of oil to cook things and everything has salt in it. There are two kinds of standard cheeses here, salty and saltier. The salty isnt too bad but the saltier is pretty salty. They use a ton of sugar as well but the sodas taste so much better with real sugar instead of corn syrup, at least in my opinion. I definately drink more soda here than I did back home. Shannon went to a pool, had a talent show and wrote a play in Spanish. That was the highlight of her week. I helped make a little nursery at the local school, learned about making Tilapia ponds and visited coffee farms this week along with learning Spanish or at least trying. Once we get to our site, I might have internet in my office, that´s right, I will have an office, and can communicate with everyone more. Looking forward to that.

Immigracion and Puppies!

So this past week has been very busy. I got sick AGAIN and had to go to a specialist in tegucigalpa. It turned out to be absolutely nothing but I got to stay in a hotel with hot water, watch the Olympics in English, eat fabulous food, and use the internet for free so it was a nice vacation. Hopefully I am done getting sick, I think it is either all of the grease that my mom uses (even though I told her the doctor told me not to eat greasy food), or the malaria medicine. We also had our first volunteer return to the US (we miss you Monica!), which was sad but it was also nice because we were together in Tegucigalpa and did not have to get lost on our own!

We all went to immigracion this past weekend and spent forever there getting our visas and ID cards. We got to get pizza and donuts afterwards and that was fabulous. It´s funny how much we appreciate simple things like pizza now! We also went to the US Catholic volunteers´ house for dinner and had spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread. After eating so much greasy comida tipica spaghetti tasted so good.

Yesterday the power was out most of the day and night so there was not a lot to do. However, my family´s pregnant dog decided it would be a good time to give birth. It was an awesome experience, bonding with my dad and brother while watching the dog give birth in the candlelight. I had never seen an animal give birth before and it was very interesting. She knew exactly what to do and what to eat...crazy. She had seven puppies but one was either born dead or died sometime last night. We went to bed because we thought she had finished giving birth and then this morning there was one dead puppy and one more live one so I guess she was not done. Now I have cute little babies to play with!

We have been spending a lot of time in the local schools and that is always interesting. Last Friday I went to a classroom with four grades in it. I guess two of the teachers had not come to work so all of the grades were together. Needless to say, not much work got done that day. Public schools generally only have four to five hours of class per day and much of that is spent at recess, not to mention all of the days lost due to teacher strikes which are fairly common. It is very sad because most of the kids really want to learn and get extremely excited when we come to do activities and teach them new things. Hopefully we can make a difference in some of their lives.