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Sunday, March 20, 2011

Peace Corps Training...Zarabanda, Honduras

I have been in the beautiful country of Honduras for almost a month now, and am just now making it to an internet cafe! Life here is relaxing, and I am definitely learning more about myself and how I adapt and react to challenges. A typical day for me is to wake up at 5:45am, make my bed, shower and get ready for the day, then have breakfast with my amazing host family around 6:15am. Breakfast often consists of beans, tortillas and cheese, or toast and beans, or fresh fruit, and I have even recently been allowed to use the kitchen to make eggs. There is also the infamous ¨mantequilla¨which is this white sauce similar to a mayonnaise/sour cream mix and it is put on EVERYTHING for EVERY MEAL. I´ve even seen people here put mantequilla on fruit...it is definitely an acquired taste. After breakfast, I meet up with 4 other volunteers that live close to my house and we make the 10 minute walk to school, passing by people on horses, donkeys, children playing soccer, mothers cooking in outdoor ovens, dogs and cats and roosters every few steps. It is certainly rustic as we walk along paths and skirt around piles of horse dung and critters, meanwhile saying ¨Buenos Dias¨to every passerby.

Spanish classes begin at 7:30am, and I am in an intermediate level class, so we have been doing lots of practice talking and using the correct verb conjugations as well as learning tons of new vocabulary. I feel that every day, I learn 200 new words and probably retain about 10, so at this rate, I hope to be able to speak less broken Spanish in 2 years. :) We have lunch with all the other volunteers and it is always a fun hour, discovering what was packed for you by your host family. My lunches are always fantastic, usually including rice, some kind of meat and fruit as well as juice. Others aren´t as lucky and this has spawned a ¨Lunch finishers Club¨of hungry volunteers (usually guys that don´t get enough food) who will eat leftovers/unwanted food of other volunteers so that none of us throw any food away.

After lunch, we have project training which consists of learning about the health issues in Honduras and the various projects and initiatives Peace Corps has to address these health issues. We have just finished the Family Health unit where we learned how to lead charlas (lessons) in nutrition, common illnesses including diarrhea and pneumonia which are the leading causes of death in children under 5. We also planted a garden, helped build an improved stove, and learned to teach a healthy cooking class and also visited a local health center. Next week, we will move on to HIV/AIDS topics and move to a different site where we will be doing more hands on training.

I walk home after class around 5 and play with my 3 host sisters and 1 host brother...they are all under the age of 8, so you can imagine the fun we have with balls, games, frisbee, you name it. They are all in a bilingual private school so we also practice language and I ask them how to say words in Spanish and vice versa. We then have dinner around 6pm, do homework after, and go to bed around 8:30pm. It is nice to have a consistent schedule every week and not have to worry about bills or transportation or making meals. It is also frustrating to not have the freedom to go watch movies with new friends or choose what I eat for each meal. I am really loving my time so far though and have nothing to complain about, I am certainly excited for all the new possibilities of my life here.

As for some other interesting things that have happened here...I have gone to Catholic church every Sunday with my family, although I haven´t taken communion yet. My family also took me to La Tigra national park where I got to ride a horse and eat the famous ¨Mondongo¨soup which is a soup of vegetables and tripe, muy delicioso! I have attended 2 birthday parties, gone to a karoake night with all the other volunteers, and also taken the chicken bus to the capital and haggled for better prices for avocados and guavas (I could eat these two things every meal). I have already made some incredible relationships here and learned a lot about this country and I can´t wait to share more with you as time goes on. Please update me on your lives as you get a chance and keep in touch!

I will post pictures next time, hope you all have a wonderful rest of the month and Happy Spring Break!