Feliz Navidad y Año Nuevo

Hey everyone, it’s strange entering the holiday season knowing that I won’t be seeing you all or be having the normal end of the year traditions that I am so used to. I’ve never written holiday cards either, so this is another first for me, but I’m listening to Frank Sinatra, Mariah Carey, and Sufjan Stevens Christmas music and wrapping gifts so it’s beginning to look a little like Christmas. Many Peace Corps Volunteers say that Christmas is the hardest part of the Peace Corps, forget culture shock, work, strikes, political coups or Dengue fever, a Christmas alone can be the worst. Fortunately I am looking forward to all of the activities down here in Honduras and I have made many great relationships and have new families to spend the holidays with, it’ll be different.
Just a quick summary of the year of 2010 that is quickly ending: 10 months ago, in February, I took off from Seattle to serve my 27 months in the Peace Corps. I have been working with the health project down here whose main focus is on HIV/AIDS prevention/education and Maternal/infant survival. I am working and living in San Marcos, a small town in northwest Honduras and loving it. I work a lot in the villages around here, mostly with school kids and pregnant ladies…who saw that one coming? I also am playing the piano in the Catholic Church down here and playing soccer on a team. I also have a great Honduran girlfriend from Tegus named Katherine (pictured below). Next year should bring about more work, a youth project, infant nutrition project, a latrine project, and a new HIV/AIDS project, all of which I’m really excited about. For more info checkout my blog stuflu@blogspot.com.
It seems odd being almost Christmas and I’m sweating in my room with the fan on, even Seattle winters aren’t that mild. Around town you can see a couple of houses with lights up and a couple places with fake Christmas trees, definitely not the usual cheer I’m used to in the Northwest. Yesterday I did make our family Christmas classic teddy bear bread with my host family, they thought it was fun and a little weird…what else is new?
Hope all is well with you all, enjoy the holiday season, eat a candy cane for me and don’t complain about the cold weather too much.

Adios
-Stu

Adventures in Copan

Copan is one of the departments that borders my department of Santa Barbara; it is located to the South West of where I’m at, about an hour bus ride west from San Marcos. Although it is really close it is quite different (much cooler and wetter) and was relatively unknown to me. This last week we had a workshop for “Yo Tambien Merezco” in Santa Rosa de Copan, which, according to most volunteers, is there favorite/best city in Honduras. It isn’t a big city it has everything that you need, it is pretty, has stores, a market, nightlife, paved streets, and great food while still having Peace Corps budget prices. This workshop had the benefit of being in the city as opposed to previous ones that were in the outskirts, this meant that during breaks, lunch, and at night we could actually go out and do stuff instead of being confined to a conference center. The workshop was a great success, I feel like my counterpart, a 6th grade teacher, is really interested in implementing it in site, also people had a lot of fun and made good friendships. This was also the first time that I had met any of the new H-17 volunteers, all very interesting in their own ways. Other highlights of the workshop were great food, eating 10 pieces of cake in one day, buying a phone, discussing future projects with my boss/other volunteers and finding a random Christmas store with trees, lights, Santa Clauses and everything. The workshop was a quick Wednesday afternoon through Saturday morning trip.
Halloween is one of the biggest Peace Corps events of the year and it is always celebrated in Las Ruinas de Copan, a small town famous for their Mayan Ruins and a hotspot for tourists in Honduras. The thing about having Halloween be such a big deal is that for the rest of the year Volunteers are constantly planning and working on costumes. In the past 8 months I don’t know how many ideas I have gone through, but somehow John and I, by the time we were at the workshop still hadn’t really decided about what we wanted to be. We had almost given up and gone with a simple backup plan, Mormons, when all of a sudden we got the chance to spice it up a notch. For the last month we had joked around about being colegio (high school) girls. All students in Honduras wear uniforms so everyone knows what students look like, people had been talking about being high school students for Halloween, but we decided to kick it up a notch and play the gender card along with it. The problem was that asking to borrow a uniform (uniform top, high socks, and a pleated skirt) is a little bit awkward for male volunteers to do. Fortune shined it{s face upon us when, in Santa Rosa, while wandering around the market, we found a vendor that sold school uniforms. With the help of a female volunteer we managed to buy uniforms for $10, well worth it.
Saturday night in Las Ruinas was the night of the big party, a series of dance parties at bars around town. John and I shamelessly donned our uniforms and walked through the central park to the bar. We knew instantly that our costumes were a success, people stared, shocked initially and then started shouting out piropos (catcalls) and laughing hysterically…turns out two over six foot tall gringos in skirts aren’t the most common sights in Honduras. Throughout the night we got many sexually charged comments and even a few pinches and squeezes, fortunately neither of us cared or were worried, but I completely understand how uncomfortable actual girls would feel while wearing skirts…lots of funny stories that I’m not going to write down. It ended up being a very amusing and late night, one that won’t be forgotten by me or the local Hondurans for some time to come.

Barcelona

As I have repeatedly written in past blogs, soccer is king in Honduras, everybody has a favorite local team, Honduran national league team, and an international team, Barcelona is hands down the favorite international team in Honduras. Barcelona is arguably the best soccer team in the world right now especially after trouncing Real Madrid 5-0 last week; the same is true in San Marcos. How is it the same in San Marcos you ask? /Why are you writing a blog about this? There are a lot of different soccer leagues, Barcelona happens to be one the names of one of the teams in the 3rd division of 20-25 year old soccer players in San Marcos. Our region (San Marcos, San Francisco, Quimistan, La Flecha, Santa Rosa) has about ten teams, Barcelona is the best, it also happens to be one of the teams that my host dad runs, and also the team that I have recently begun playing with. So far we are first place in our division; we roll over most teams, last game winning 7-2 over a decent team. My first game came a few weeks ago, I didn’t play much, but in the time I did play I had a great time and it was real exciting. We were losing almost the whole game due to some sloppy plays, with 15 minutes left in the game we were down 3-2, that’s when I got into the game. We scored an equalizer but then we quickly let in another goal and it was looking bleak until one of our forwards scored again to make it 4-4, I was playing right mid and was involved in a couple plays, with about 5 minutes left in the game I was passed the ball for what would have been a simple give and go to an overlapping defender from our team, unfortunately a player on the other team had a different idea, frustrated by our comeback he slid tackled me from behind getting all leg an no ball, I went down hard but wasn’t hurt. I jumped up quickly to see what the ref was going to say, apparently I looked angry… the ref quickly gave the opposing player a red card, but my coach, wanting to protect me from doing anything rash rushed onto the field and began yelling at the ref, he got ejected too….oops. We ended up scoring from that free kick and winning the game 5-4. It’s funny, because we are in first place most of the fans were mad because of our comeback and generally root for the opposing teams so all the games have a lot of energy and passion. I’m getting to know the guys on the team better and it’s been a lot of fun, besides the frustrating paperwork problems being a foreigner. Today at 3 we play the second place team in the league in what should be another great game; I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Día Mundial De VIH/SIDA Manteniendo La Luz sobre VIH/SIDA y derechos humanos

World Aids Day is celebrated on the 1st of December around the globe, since HIV/AIDS is a large part of our work here in Honduras it would make sense for us to do something right? Kinda. As of the last week in November we hadn’t talked about World AIDS day at all in my health center or maternal clinic and I was OK with that, I figured I’d try to put something small together and give some talks in the health center, nothing too flashy. I’d been really busy with other projects and if nobody else was on board to do something I wasn’t going to take it personally. Just when I had gotten that all rationalized in my mind everything changed, of course. The head boss in our Maternal Clinic, the licenciada Francisca, with less than a week before the big day casually comes up to me and says, “so Stu, what do you think about doing a big World AIDS day celebration next Wednesday?”, I said that sounded good if other people were on board too, she promised me that they were…they weren’t really. I tried to gather some support from two of the health promoters, but because of some communication error they had yet to hear about the plans and were busy with other things. Monday rolled around, 2 days before the first and the the Lic. asked me how things were going and I said slowly. That’s when things kicked into gear. She ordered a meeting with all the health personnel and we got working, deciding that celebrating on Friday would be a better idea. All week we worked on stuff for the project, I’ll spare you the details, but we worked long hours but had fun doing it. We made torches and posters as well as decorating a truck for a march that we did around town with a drum band to get people attention. We also decorated the park gazebo with AIDS ribbons and posters and had pamphlets to pass out with info. The march ended up being a lot of fun, lots of people came out to watch us, this was followed up by educational activities in the park. All in all it was a success I’d say, there are definitely a few kinks that we will work out for World AIDS day 2011 but we learned lots and hopefully taught more.

Los Estados Unidos

So now that I’ve been back for about three weeks and gotten back into the thick of things back in Honduras I feel like I should probably talk about my time back home. For a little over a week I rushed around, didn’t get any rest, and was freezing cold…and it was great. There are a lot of Peace Corps Volunteers that don’t go home at all during their 27 month commitment, and then there is Peace Corps Honduras. Because we are so close to the US it isn’t uncommon at all for volunteers to head home for a family funeral, Thanksgiving or Christmas, if you live in Texas or Florida you can be home in 4 hours and $250, Seattle is the furthest contiguous US big city from Honduras. From leaving my house in San Marcos, the bus and taxi trip to the airport, a layover in Houston and touchdown in Seattle it took me about 14 hours to get home, not too shabby. The only problem was that it was 35 and raining when I got into Seattle, a little shock to my system. The main reason for my trip home was Rylan and Mali’s wedding, and for the first 4 days that was about all I did. I got in on Wednesday night, had a family dinner and quickly slept off my jetlag, Thursday was full or errands and then a rehearsal dinner. Friday was more things I had to get done in Seattle before a evening/sleepover with all the groomsmen, which was a lot of fun because most of my best friends also happened to be in the wedding party. Saturday morning rolled around which meant wedding pictures at UW and then getting ready for the wedding and reception. It was a really fun wedding, lots of friends that I hadn’t seen in 9 months and sweet Spearys(boat shoes) that the groomsmen got to wear. It was tough trying to balance my time between my really good friends that I wanted to spend lots of time with and talking to my other friends that I wanted to see and catch up with, talking about my work in the Peace Corps got a little tiresome at times, but it’s all good. Sunday was all family all the time with people showing up at the house at 10:30 and not saying goodbye to my last cousin till about 9:30 at night, but it was great to get to see everyone and get some quality conversations in. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were a blur of errands, friends and family, lots of great food that I hadn’t gotten to eat in too long everywhere too. By the time Thursday came around I was shocked that I had to pack up all my suitcases again and get ready to head back to Honduras, but I had one more activity planned. Knowing that the best flight for me to take to get into San Pedro Sula at a decent hour would be leaving at midnight I realized that I would get to indulge in one event that I had been dearly missing, UW football. UW happened to be playing a night game against UCLA at UW starting at 5. I got to go to the game, all bundled up of course, watch the dawgs manhandle the bruins and spend a little more time with my dad before heading to the airport and heading south. It really was a perfect way to end my whirlwind visit home. Although I dindn’t get to eat all the food I wanted, spend the holidays, or see everyone that I wanted it was still a great break from my work down here, a chance to get recharged for the work that is lined up. Thanks to everyone that made an effort to see me, I’ll be back for a bit in July if everything goes according to plans!

Frozen in Time at 90°F

Somehow I’ve managed to be in Honduras for 8 ½ months now, I really don’t know how that has happened or where the time is gone, I’m almost 1/3 of my way through my Peace Corps experience….crazy! Although I’ve done a lot of things, met a lot of people, and gone a lot of places it still completely blows my mind that the time has been passing so fast. I feel like i have somehow fallen into a bizarre time warp that I can’t really explain. I will now attempt to rationalize a few time bending phenomena’s that I have experienced here.
Work days: People here wake up early because they go to sleep so early, there really isn’t much to do in Honduras at night. For this reason the general work day, at least with the people I work with, starts around 7, lunch around 11:30, and generally finishes by 3, this has been tricky because I prefer to start around 9 and go till 5ish, the problem is finding people who will do work after lunch, most days I will be the last to leave the health center around 4:30, besides the janitor everyone else will have been checked out for about 2 hours earlier, they usually leave me the lock and tell me to lock up when I’m done. This leaves an extended afternoon that mysteriously disappears, mostly I play soccer or nap. The evenings manage to go even faster, I honestly still haven’t figured out where the hours between 6 and 9 go.
Workshops: I have gone to a number of workshops with the Peace Corps, all of them have been very good and beneficial for my relationships with counterparts and work, but they make short work of weeks too. Usually these workshops start on a Tuesday or Wednesday and go till Friday. The problem is that traveling to these gatherings takes up time, because volunteers are all over the country workshops are all over the country too, the closest one I’ve gone to was 3 hours away the farthest 9 hours…traveling kills days.
Traveling: Fortunately for me I don’t mind bus trips and I have gotten used to the inevitable delays that are associated with Central American travel. It seems like no matter where you go it will always take way more time than you expect to arrive and that you will arrive exhausted, it’s just a fact of traveling here, for that reason you usually kill two days on either ends of trips and feel it for much longer. Honduras also doesn’t have night transportation and even if they did I wouldn’t trust it farther than I can throw a bus. Traveling has to be done early in the day or you run the risk of waiting forever or getting stranded in a sketchy bus station (almost happened to me in San Pedro).
Seasons: I would have to say that the most mind blowing aspects of time here is the passing of weeks, months, and seasons. Although there is technically a dry season and a wet season, a cold season and a hot season, it is hardly noticeable and very hard to judge time because it is nothing like the “normal” seasons that we are accustomed to in the US. It is hard to picture seasons because here every day is more or less the same, you can’t see the flowers blooming, the leaves changing, the cold weather setting in, holiday decorations, summer vacation (Honduran schools go from January-November) ….nothing. Talking to people at home has been the only way to picture what season I’m in, hearing sports scores, or weather reports. Even though I know I’m going to be home in two weeks it’s hard to believe that it will really be November, leaves will have fallen, school years started, holidays coming and going.

Lets GO DAWGS!!!

So after getting to go to the UCLA game and then hearing about the Cal game a few days after it happened i knew that i had to do better with the Apple Cup. I was able to fortunatly call my parents during the 4th quarter and got to hear the last few minutes comentated by my parents. way too close but i'll take the win anyway, plus the Holiday Bowl on top of that! great stuff, hope we can do better this time around vs Nebraska

Juegos Traditionales

One of the many awesome things about San Marcos is that every year they host the Honduran Traditional Games Fair. This even happens in the end of April so I wasn’t here for this years fair, but I have been learning about it and doing some work with it. In an attempt to show off a little bit of the culture of Honduras various community members will, once a year, travel to demonstrate these games. In the past they have traveled as far as South Korea, most years just to the US. This year a group of 6 people from San Marcos are going to go to New Jersey and Washigton D.C. I was asked to help them out with the Visa application process because it is online in English and there are some confusing parts to it. I helped all of them get the right information together and thankfully everyone I helped, after their interview in Tegus was granted permission last week, they will be leaving on Sept 24, so it was some pretty close timing. This last Sunday I was also asked to help out with organizing the materials that they are going to be taking, it ended up being some work but mostly playing around. They are taking tops, parachutes, mini-soccer boards, marbles, and a couple other things that I don’t really know how to explain/play, but it is all really cool. I started to learn how to play with the tops, but it is harder than I expected, some of them are amazing with them, throwing them and catching them on their hands or doing other cool tricks. I borrowed one so that I can get some extra practice in so that I can be good when I go home. The day was finished off with going with some friends to see a “carrera de cintas” or a competition where guys rode horses as fast as they could and tried to spear little rings that were hanging from a rope above the road, it was very impressive and hard looking. All in all it was a great cultural day that I wont forget.

Feria en Yarumela

So after going to La Esperanza for the Family Health workshop some of decided it would be fun to head back to Yarumela, where we were for 2 months earlier, to check up on the families as well as go to the once a year fair. Danny and Lauren showed up on Friday, Tayrn and I came from the workshop on Saturday and John came up from Choluteca on Saturday as well. It was great getting to see my family again even though it had only been about a month since the last time I saw them. I got to go check out my families’ watermelon and guyaba farm; I got to slice bad watermelons out of the air with a machete…awesome. The fair was funny and weird because Yarumela is funny and weird, every day they had a parade/dance party in the street where guys in crazy masks and costumes dance to a live marching band, they stop on every corner for a song or two and grab people from the crowd to dance with/make fun of. Saturday night there was also the Yarumela princess coronation as well as a ‘torro de fuego’ a wooden frame of a bull that is loaded with fireworks and carried around in the middle of the park, it’s pretty much the worst idea ever but they love it here. Sunday was the motocross races and then a dance with one of Honduras’s most popular bands ‘Santa Fe’, I have never danced so much in my life, the dance was from 9-2:30 AM and we danced almost all of it, I was a sweaty exhausted mess by the end but it was worth it even though Monday my legs were sore. Saturday and Sunday nights I also got locked out of my house, I ended up sleeping an hour and a half outside both nights till people woke up...oops. It was a great weekend, getting to spend time with friends and family, dodging fireworks and dancing.

UW 32-USC 31

I didn’t find out the score of the game until Thursday when I checked my email and my grandpa told me the score. Good work dawgs, but let’s not have a repeat of last season though.

Family health Taller

So last week was filled with another trip to a Peace Corps workshop. It’s funny because the reality is that I have done a lot of traveling in my 7 months here in Honduras, more than many Hondurans have done in their lives, but I really go to the same places time and time again. This time it was back to La Esperanza, where we had the Men’s Health workshop, and then on to the happiest place on earth…Yarumela. I wasn’t super excited about going to the Family Health workshop, mostly because I wanted to spend some time at home, but I realized that this was a great opportunity for me to learn/review, but more so, a chance for my counterparts to learn and find ways to implement this topic in San Marcos, hopefully with my help/collaboration. I was able to take two counterparts from San Marcos, Nazareth, a health promoter that I have worked with a lot, and Cindy, a nurse that works in one of San Marcos’s smaller villages. It was great going with them because they are both young and I really enjoy spending time with them, they also are very motivated and passionate about their work so I feel like this information learned will really benefit everyone. La Esperanza was cold. Really cold. For the five days that we were there (Tuesday-Saturday) it rained and was cloudy all day, I think we saw the sun for about 15 minutes in total, it felt like November in Seattle….yuck. I knew that it would be chilly there so I brought a jacket and a sweatshirt, the only two warm weather articles of clothing I have down here, but my counterparts didn’t bring anything and they were miserable from the first moment we arrived so I loaned them my jacket and sweatshirt and jacket and I had to manage with long-sleeved shirts and a hat, the last day I gave up and brought a blanked to the conference room. All in all it was a good workshop, talking mostly about nutrition/malnutrition, diarrhea/hygiene, and home improvement techniques (gardens, better stoves, ect). It was a great review of information and a great way to get some ideas rolling with my counterparts and I’m excited to see where this leads.

Good work DAWGS

Although it is not really possible to watch or listen to the Husky Football games in San Marcos or pretty much Honduras in general it doesn’t mean that I’m not excited about the season. I was sad to see that we lost to BYU so last Saturday I took matters into my own hands. At game time I pulled out my Husky gear, two articles that I don’t get to wear very frequently here, sweats and a sweatshirt. Although it was too hot and I got some weird looks it got the job done, a UW victory.

Honduran Schools....blaaaah

One of the problems that Honduras has, this isn’t just me being judgmental, I’m pretty sure everyone in here can agree, is that the educational structure is flawed. Besides the normal understaffed, under budget, and too big of class sizes there lies a number of other problems. One of the things that frustrates me and the other volunteers is the teaching style that is far too common here, it’s like teaching to the test but worse, they teach straight out of a book and have the students copy and memorize, word for word answers, leaving no room for creative thinking, reasoning, or logical thinking. One of our goals when teaching in the schools is to get them participating and thinking, anything to break the monotony of the learning style that they are so used to, it’s not easy to do this because they don’t like participating because they aren’t used to it, but it is cool seeing them become more comfortable with it. The other major problem with the school systems is the ridiculous amount of political power that the teachers have in this country. They strike over any and everything and they can get away with it with no problem, during August they taught 2 days, the rest of the month they were on strike, although their cause was justified, not getting paid, the amount of damage that they inflicted on the students was tremendous. There are already a ridiculous amount of holidays here that they get the day off for, with this 3 ½ week strike it just added to the problem. This long of a strike isn’t unusual either, something to this magnitude happens almost every year, because of this many school teachers, because they have the money, send their kids to private schools so they don’t have to suffer from the teachers actions. The students do however learn during this last strike, and not in a good way, after the strike was over many areas had a student strike that lasted a couple of days where the students just didn’t show up in a show of solidarity…horrible. This is also really frustrating when a lot of our work involves schools and students, pretty much this is a big problem with no solution in site and I am just complaining…oh well, we do what we can.

November

i'm going to come back home for a week in november from the 10th throught the 17th, come find me

Planchar-to iron

It’s been raining a lot down here, way too much in the evening and the night so it’s been increasingly difficult to find stuff to do. Usually it means listening to music, watching tv, hanging out with my family, but one new activity that I have begun to love is ironing! I know most people have probably never seen me in an ironed shirt or pants, it’s probably because I never ironed back in the States, the truth is I didn’t really even know how to iron. Down here my style has had to change, I don’t really ever leave the house, unless I’m playing soccer, without wearing a collared shirt. Not only do I wear collared shirts and slacks every day I also never leave the house in unironed clothes, even my jeans…don’t worry I don’t make a crease in the leg, that’s too much. I really enjoy my once a week midafternoon ironing session, I throw the blanket on the table, get my pile of wrinkled clothes, put on some reggaeton music videos and get to work…what a life I live!

Puerto Cortes

Although I was already running out of clean clothes and I was really ready to head back to San Marcos I had a slight change of plans and got to keep having fun. The fam took off from San Pedro on Friday morning, their plane taking off at noonish, they took off to the airport at 10:15 and I headed to the bus terminal. Instead of heading west to San Marcos I had received a phone call earlier that week and got invited by my old host family in Yarumela to go with them up to Puerto Cortes, a town on the north coast that was going to be having their annual fair. I couldn’t say no to a chance to see my host family and get to see some new stuff. I met up with a group of family members, my cousins and aunts and uncles and we took the hour and a half bus up to the coast. It turned out that there were a ton of family members there, some that lived in Cortes, a ton from Yarumela, and also a group from Tegus, all in all there were probably about 35…crazyness, but soo much fun. The first night was a mini version of the fair, it started out with a couple music groups in the park, that was followed up by the real start of the feria which was at the Municipal Beach or the Coca Cola Beach as it is usually called. We got there about 9:00 and everything was just getting started, there were tons of people, food, drinks, and live music. There were 6 different stages set up along the street that paralleled the beach, tons of fun listening and dancing, many people were quite intoxicated and that was amusing to see. At about 11:30 the bands took a break, we went swimming, and then the music started up again till 2:30, after that more swimming and a cold walk/taxi ride to get back to the house at 5:30, people were already getting up there so I didn’t really get to sleep that night…oh well. Saturday we all went to a beach in Omoa, there were actually waves there so the whole family got in the water although nobody can really swim…Honduras as a whole is a lifeguard’s nightmare. We hung out there for a couple of hours, me getting burned, everyone else turning black. Saturday night meant more live music and dancing, this time in the city and only till 2. Sunday we all went to another beach, here we went on a banana (big yellow tube pulled by a boat) this was hilarious because it was very tame compared to anything in the states, but everyone there loved it, I pushed my host dad off. Sunday night I went with my cousin and host sister to the fair, during the walk there there was a terrible rainstorm so we didn’t spend too much time there, the rides were super sketchy but fun anyway. Then Monday morning it was back to San Marcos. It was a crazy 3 weeks, lots of travel, lots of family, and lots and lots of fun.

Roatán

We spent one last night in San Marcos before taking off to Roatán, my family was so thankful for the hospitality that they received from my host family that we decided to take them out to dinner. This was funny, 12 of us out to dinner, but it was fun and I was glad that we could treat them this way. Monday morning we were off to the airport, from which we would take off for Roatán, fortunately everything went smoothly…más o menos. We almost got left behind due to some gate changes and lack of clear communication, fortunately the plane only had about 15 people including the four of us so they came and found us before taking off. It was a quick ½ hour flight to the island of Roatán, a very beautiful entry to a landing strip that is just off the water, on the way in you could look down on all the reefs that surround the island. Roatán is said to have the best reefs for diving outside of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. We got to our rental house, it was bigger than I expected and right on the beach. It seemed like it was going to be perfect…within about ½ hour however, things started to look not so great. Bryn immediately decided to go for a swim off of our dock, she came back in in about 20 minutes and had started to break out in a rash and hives from an allergic reaction to the sea grass, this is pretty normal for her though. Then Phil went out to do some laundry, within a couple of minutes we heard barking and yelling, Phil came back up to the house with two dog bites from a Rottweiler, one on each leg, great start… After that however things started going better. Although we didn’t end up doing a whole lot there we did have a really good time, I guess that’s what vacation is all about, relaxing. We did go snorkeling twice, we weren’t there long enough to get scuba certified, although my sister already was. We went out with a boat from West End, just a little bit off the shore you could get to the reefs. The water there is the clearest I have ever seen in my life, you could easily see 30 meters without problems. The area we were going was also a natural reserve so there was an abundance of different types of colorful fish. Going into the trip I had a little bit of a cold, which isn’t good for diving come to find out. I wanted to get closer to the fish so naturally I would dive down, my ears, head, and sinuses hated me for that, I thought my head was going to explode any time I went more than 6 feet under, but naturally that didn’t stop me from going 20 feet down…oops. Just an angry side note, the Peace Corps issued sunscreen, although it says is waterproof and SPF 45…doesn’t work, my back and shoulders are now peeling horribly. We returned to the mainland on Thursday, unfortunately we weren’t able to go to the Sounders game against Maratón that was playing in San Pedro Sula, that would have been sweet. All in all it was a great vacation, way too much food, but really relaxing and great to spent time with the family.

VOS

So after the Men’s Health Conference in La Esperanza my next project was going to the VOS (Volunteers Offering Support) training. This was to be held in La Tigra, a wilderness reserve located just east of Tegus. With the Men’s health conference ending on Saturday morning and because I was supposed to have to return to Tegus on Monday for the VOS training I got permission to go straight to Tegus for a couple days before the meeting, thus saving myself 13+ hours in buses for what would have only been one day in site. Fortunately I know some people in Tegus and they let me stay there for a couple of nights, getting to explore the city a little and get some relaxation time. The VOS conference was interesting, I wasn’t completely sold on it at the beginning, it is essentially a network of Volunteers that are available to talk about whatever with other trainees and volunteers that are going through rough times, we offer an ear to listen and a promise not to share any information with other volunteers or staff. VOS people are nominated by their peers and the project managers so it is an honor to get nominated. I was a little incredulice to the effectiveness and necessity of this program but as the training went on I realized the usefulness of it and I learned some new techniques on listening and caring for others. This training session lasted till Thursday morning, after it finished I quickly hopped onto a bus back to San Marcos because my family was coming in early on Friday morning.

Mens Health

One of the health projects in the Peace Corps is called “Aqui entre nos…” or “just between us…” it is a men’s health initiative that targets at risk men, primarily dealing with HIV/AIDS prevention. This is a project that I want to get more involved with because I think it has a lot of potential to grow and improve. I had known about the conference for a while but it was looking like I wasn’t going to be able to attend because I was doing my own men’s health stuff with the military guys. Less than a week before the meeting my boss gave me a call asking again if I could possibly come and bring 2 counterparts that would want to work with this program too. After a few last minute changes in plans I managed to convince the coronel at the military battalion to lend me two people to attend this 4 day conference. It was all very last minute, but it ended out working out, I met the two counterparts at the bus stop in Quimistan at 6:30 in the morning, we got to the San Pedro Sula bus terminal and literally walked downstairs to the ticket office, paid, got on the bus, and left. We arrived in La Esperanza, Intibuca at the hotel at 11:58, 5 ½ hours later, two buses and half the country to get there 2 minutes early, it was amazingly easy…I was worried about that, nothing works that easy here. The hotel was ridiculous, it was very nice, in the woods, had a pool, and bizarre but beautiful wood and fake wood decorations and artwork. La Esperanza is a small town, the biggest in the department however, it is located near the center of the country, a little bit to the west, the craziest thing about it was that it was cold there. Maybe it’s just because I’m used to the heat in San Marcos, but I was legitimately cold there, I wore a jacket and hat all day and used a thick comforter all night, although it was a shock to my system it was a nice break from the heat. The conference wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world, mostly because I had already seen the whole presentations 4 months earlier and I was already implementing the techniques in my site, but it was fun because there were 7 volunteers and 35 Hondurans participating, we had a lot of fun. On the second night we went out to a pool hall as a way to demonstrate how to teach in risky areas and also to have some fun, among our group we had a tournament, me and my partner, a super nice guy from the north coast, won the first game and then got killed in the second round. On Friday, the last day we got to go out in groups and implement the manual, my group was assigned to a group of police, we had a lot of fun and I honestly think that the policemen and one policewoman really learned some things. After doing the 4 hour presentation my group went exploring around the city a little bit before going back for the dreaded debriefing. We got to see a shrine to the Virgin Mary that was built into a hillside/rock face, from above it you could see the whole city and the aldeas. After that we went to see some natural bathing areas that had been built up by the city, also very pretty. All in all it was a fun trip, getting to see some volunteers I hadn’t seen in a while, meeting new people and hopefully strengthening the programs that I’m doing in site.

Yarumela

This last weekend was great, the two month travel restriction where we had to stay in site had just expired, perfect timing for my host-mom’s birthday in Yarumela. After working real hard with the military school a weekend with the closest thing I have to family was a perfect break. After 6 hours on buses I finally arrived in Yarumela, where I had spent 2 months earlier, it was weird being there without the other volunteers, but not much had changed other than that. My parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, everyone was still there. A lot of people from the town still remembered who I was too and the high school girls still yelled ‘estuart my love’… good to be back home? Although we didn’t do much, lots of eating and one adventurous trip to the river, it was a perfect break to rest and see familiar faces, now it’s back to my new home San Marcos and back to work.

El Batallón

So in my first soccer story i wrote about creating a counterpart connection with the Batallon or battalion in Pinalejo, a town about 20 minutes (and two bus rides) from San Marcos, last week I finally started my work there. Like most things here, and when I say most things I really mean everything, it doesn’t go according to plan. I was hoping that because I was working with a military organization that they would be more organized, punctual, and well behaved…not quite, maybe a half step above normal, but it’s been like pulling teeth getting work done here. The only reason I’m sticking with it and trying so hard to make it work is because I think that it is very important and when it does work it is really fun. Last week the plan was to give classes on hygiene, HIV/AIDS, STIs, and drugs and alcohol, the plan was Tuesday and Wednesday 3 ½ hours before lunch and 2 ½ after lunch and then just a half day on Thursday to finish everything up. Getting 15 hours of stuff together, planned and organized is not easy, especially in Spanish and not using the normal materials that the Peace Corps usually goes with, I had to get creative to have a captive audience of military students listening and participating for 3 ½ hours on hygiene, but I put in a lot of work and got it all set. Then I got the call, 10 PM Monday night… “fijase que” (read the previous entry if you don’t get this). It was the Coronel calling saying that everything was set up for tomorrow to give class to the new group for 3 hours before lunch….the whole afternoon session was scrapped. As frustrated as I was about this I decieded that I’d make it work, if I cut some stuff, really was efficient with my time I could try and squeeze it all in 9 hours instead of 15. Tuesday morning came and ‘fijase que’ they had a meeting till 9:30… so I changed my plans again, Tuesday I just did hygiene, Wednesday worked fine, I rushed though the HIV/AIDS in a little over 3 hours just fine, Thursday started good, the plan was do to STIs and Drugs and Alcohol all in 3 hours, rough but doable. Until my class got interrupted for over an hour’s so that a American pastor could give a church service…AHHH! In the end I learned a lot from this experience and hopefully things will go smoother in the future, I did have a lot of fun with the guys, get free lunches, get to see lots of military drills and I know where they keep their guns… we’ll see how next week goes…

Fíjase que….

A very important phrase to know in Honduras is ‘fijase que’, when you hear this said you have to hold on and get ready because it means something went wrong. The English translation would be something like ‘I’m really sorry but…’. It’s amazing how much of a part of the Honduran culture this phrase is, all you have to do is say ‘fijase que…’ give a awkward face and people know what’s up. It’s usually used when people make promises or schedule things and then have to back out of the commitments, which is very frequent. Part of the reason for it’s prevalence is that, in general, Hondurans aren’t very confrontational, they would rather commit to doing something to your face knowing full well that they will have to back out of it later than seemingly letting you down on the spot. This sucks when all your work has to be planned with other people, especially in schools and organizations; they are the masters of the ’fijase que’.

La Esquina Caliente

In San Marcos i try to be pretty social, meeting and hanging out with random people and eventually getting to know their names… usually I know a lot about people before I know their names, it’s kind of a problem I have. Most days if I don’t have any work to do and it’s not raining (which really limits my time) I can just walk from my house in any direction and within about a minute I’ll run into someone I already know or someone who waves me over to talk to the gringo. It’s a great way to meet new people, but it can be tiring constantly having so many acquaintances but no real friends. Fortunately I have become part of a group of guys that has taken me in as more or less one of their own. They call themselves the “esquina caliente” or the “hot corner”, if they weren’t all in high school, part of the church, and very friendly it would be like I was part of a gang. The reason they are called the esquina caliente is because, after hanging out in the park every evening till about 8:30 playing soccer, we walk to the corner store, buy a 2 liter of soda or juice and drink it and hang out talking to whoever passes by. This is how I pass my nights…super exciting. One of my first days in site we went to the rio and had a BBQ and hung out, and yesterday we traveled to Petoa to play soccer against another group from there. I scored a nice goal from 25 yards out, but we lost 3-2, I am now referred to as “Gringo Donavan”. We couldn’t finish the game because we had to leave early because the last bus home was leaving without us…they don’t really think these things through ahead of time, but we managed to make it back safely to San Marcos. Although sometimes I get tired of hanging out with highschool kids because I feel super old around them I really do appreciate the way they have taken me in and provided me with some fun times.

Catholic Church

Here in San Marcos, and Honduras in general, religion plays a big role in society. Contrary to what I anticipated the Catholic Church doesn’t have as much dominance in the towns, the Evangelical churches are growing at a much faster rate. In San Marcos I’m pretty sure the Catholic Church is the larger and more dominant religion. Although I had never been to Catholic Church before, I go a lot here because there isn’t really that much to do here besides soccer. I usually go to the Thursday service and the Sunday night service and I’m becoming more involved with the youth group that meets Saturday nights. It is interesting seeing how divided they can be though, although this is mostly only seen/talked about with the old people. Where it is most seen by me is when people die, if they were Catholics there is a ‘velorio’ or wake the night of the death from 9ish to 4,5,6 in the morning where the entire community comes by and hangs out, the family serves bread, coffee, and rum. Then there is a big church service followed by a procession to the cemetery for the ‘entierro’ or burial. If they are evangelical only a small group of people go to a service and only a handful go to the burial.You’d think that this wouldn’t be that apparent, because we are a town of less than 5,000 people, but somehow there are tons of deaths, at least one a week since coming here, sometimes up to 3 in a week, I really don’t know how it works. During our training they say it can make work difficult if you associate yourself with one church or another, fortunately for me, when people ask if I’m Catholic or Evangelical and I say I’m Presbyterian they have no clue what to make of it and they leave it at that. Gotta go to a funeral right now…seriously.

Youth Group Retreat

This last weekend the Youth group at the Catholic church went on a overnight retreat and i was invited. I didn’t know what to say, but because I’m friends with a lot of them and there wasn’t anything else to do I said “why not?” and went along with them. I didn’t know what to expect on this retreat, all I knew was that we were going to meet at 7:00 AM in the park, bring 70 lempira ($3.50) for food and lodging, and some clothes and a bible. Just like normal at about 8:30 AM we finally left the park and went to ‘las milpas’ which was like a retreat center about 20 mins away. I was amazed when everyone got there, it was mostly people from San Marcos, but also some from Trinidad, Quimistan, and from some of the aldeas of San Marcos, in all there were about 70 people there. The retreat ended up being OK, not the most interesting and fun retreat I’ve ever been on, but it was enjoyable none the less. We had a lot of lectures, 7 in total, all about an hour/hour and a half long about different topics. This was nearly unbearable by the end of the day when it was super hot, no power, and another lecture in Spanish. It was fun getting to know the people, most of the kids were between 13 and 18 and then there were some leaders between 22 and 50 years old. The thing that killed me though was the sleeping situation, in theory it wasn’t bad, everyone had their own bed and sheets, the problem was that there were 30 teenage boys in one big room and we were told that we had to be in the room with the lights off at 10…never going to happen! What did ensue was a 2 hour pillow fight and then tons of talking until about 1 AM and then at quarter to 5 in the morning they all woke up and started fighting again, I am too old for this! At 6:30 we had to go to mass and then another 3 talks to round out the trip. By the time I got back home, 2PM, 31 hours after leaving, I was absolutely exhausted and in a very antisocial mood, but all in all I’d say it was worth it.

More soccer, what do you know…

So the world cup has started! This means that an already soccer crazy environment is even more dedicated to soccer. Thursday afternoon I got back from a 3 day regional Safety & Security meeting, instead of working on Friday I decided to have more of a “cultural integration day” meaning it would be a soccer day. I woke up at 5 to start watching the opening ceremonies and commentaries before the Mexico/South Africa game. After this, because it was ‘students day’ or ‘week’ or something, all public schools in Santa Barbara didn’t have school all week, the high school in San Marcos was invited to play against the military high school in Pinalejo, Quimistan, about 15 minutes away. I went there with my host dad, the vice-principal and soccer liaison of the high school, with no real intentions of playing, but when they asked if I wanted to play (other teachers were playing too), and I saw that we had legitimate uniforms and everything I couldn’t say no. we warmed up for a while and then had to sit around for 2 hours for a girls game to get played, it wasn’t the highest quality game ever, but they played full 45 min halfs… I didn’t get to start the game because I don’t have soccer shoes here, but when one of the teachers got tired I got to borrow his shoes. It took a little while to get used to playing a full field, 11v11 game with people I hadn’t played with, who were all speaking Spanish, but I got into the swing of things pretty quick. Full time ended with a 2-2 tie, but everyone wanted to play overtime, I was tired and wanted to go straight to penalty kicks, but that didn’t happen. We played two 10 min overtime halves, the other team scored earlyand it wasn’t looking good for us, but we scored off of a free kick from 25 yards out with 30 seconds left in the game, sending us into pk’s . I don’t mind pk’s, as long as I don’t have to take them, I told my dad/coach this, but he said that I would be in the group of 5 that would take one anyway…thanks. We made the first one and the other team missed their first one, everyone else made theirs so we were up 4-3 with one pk apiece, and somehow I got stuck taking the last one, although it wasn’t do or die it was still a lot of pressure, if I made it we would win, if I missed it would probably go into sudden death pk’s. I tried not to think about it too much as I stepped up to take my shot, but both teams were lining the 18 yard box and the military fans/drum band were going crazy right behind the goal, and as the goalie walked by me he talked some trash, fortunately I didn’t understand him… I tried to not have my eyes give it away, I always go right, so I stared at the right side, the goalie went right, but for the first time ever I went left, scoring the winning PK. I was very relieved to say the least. It was also good because I talked to the Coronel/ director of the school and organized a meeting with them about doing some health presentations. All in all it was a very good day. Now I’m watching the Ghana/Serbia game, it’s on 8 different channels, another channel has a replay of a game yesterday, and two other channels have WC history on them. When Ghana scored my dad thought it was fun to say Ghana gana, Ghana gana (Ghana wins)…pretty clever.

Futbol

So down here futbol really is life, or at least a huge part of it. Other than chisme and how hot it is down here soccer is the main focus of conversation, especially with the World Cup coming up so soon. There is a Honduran soccer league and everyone has strong affiliation to their home team, which, second only to politics, can be a very hot topic, fortunately I haven’t been forced to affiliate myself with a team… yet. After their Honduran soccer team everyone has their favorite international team, usually one of the big teams from Spain, Italy, or England. Usually at any given time you can find at least 2, sometimes up to 5 different games on TV, your choices are really soccer, telenovelas, or music videos. It’s great with the start of the World Cup less than a week away and Honduras being in it for just the second time ever and the first time in 28 years. Even though Honduras is going to get murdered, even the Hondurans agree upon this, just making the selection is reason to celebrate. On all three days that Honduras will playing work, school, and pretty much everything is going to be canceled even though the games take place super early and people could easily work after the game…but I’m not going to complain, it’s awesome being in a place where just making it to the competition gets more attention than winning the world cup would get in the US. It’s also funny because the only reason Honduras qualified was because of a last minute USA goal against Costa Rica, knocking CR out and advancing Honduras, people actually thank me for that goal, they say It’s one of most important goals ever scored for Honduras soccer and it was scored by an American… Soccer has also been a great way for me to meet people, every night in the central park there are 3v3 games from 7-10 PM, there’s usually about 15 guys that play, it only takes one goal to win so everyone cycles through pretty quick. Also most days at the town stadium a bunch of guys play, last week over 100 guys came through, everyone is really chill and it’s a great time. Even though it’s not necessarily work related, soccer is helping me tremendously in terms of community integration, exercise, and it’s giving me something to do which is always good.

RIP Lobo January 2010- June 11, 2010

I don’t really know what happened, there have been a number of stories that I have heard, but what I do know is that on Friday June 11 my family in Yarumela woke up and found Lobo dead in the yard. There has been rumor that he was poisoned, by who I don’t know, but what my family thinks is that it was probably some infection, either way I’m really sad. It really sucks, especially because I didn’t get a chance to see him one last time, apparently he was getting really big and his fur had changed from black to more of a grey color and he was getting really smart and well trained. Today I also saw a husky puppy here in San Marcos, it was about the same size and color pattern, the only difference was that it was brown and white; it made me miss Lobo a lot. My plan is to either get a kitten or a puppy in about a month when I get my own place.

Rain

I’ll start this off by saying that Honduras has gotten a ton of rain the last week and it has caused lots of flooding and landslides, but I’m doing just fine in San Marcos, it’s doing a lot more damage to the big cities….It’s funny, being from Seattle, the rain doesn’t really bug me, even though it doesn’t rain as much as the myths have it, but for me the rain can be therapeutic. The rain down here isn’t the same type of rain that we get back home though. Seattle rain tends to be more of a constant drizzle that lasts for hours/days/weeks/fall through spring, here it’s different, when it rains it pours, there is no light mist, and it rains so hard that the power goes out, literally. Some of the time the rain is great, those days that it is too hot to do anything, the rain cools us down, makes it less dusty, and makes the green even greener. There are other times however that the rain isn’t as welcome, like when I have to walk the ½ hour walk to the maternal clinic, or when it rains early and then when it gets hot the whole town turns into a sauna, the rain also makes people lazy, myself included, when it’s raining no one really works or leaves the house, you pretty much are trapped wherever you are, even if it’s with a group of high school kids who invited you to watch them practice their theater/miming routine and you have to spend 3 hours with them listening to 50 Cent and Lady Gaga because it’s raining and you can’t leave. It’s also tough when it rains so hard that you can’t hear anything, music, people talking, nothing because the rain drops sound like drums beating on the roof. It can be a little rough when it rains for days on end and it feels like you never leave the house, but on those days when it doesn’t rain, like today, it makes it even sweeter when you get to walk around town meeting new people. Fortunately the rain is warm down here, the frogs come out, and you get to drive through rivers.

La Presa

So today, after fighting the urge to be lazy and not wake up early/ call my counterpart, I had quite a great day. I called my counterpart to ask about todays activities at ten to seven, she told me that the Plan Basica (traveling medical group) was going to be leaving in 25 minutes, I live 15 minutes from the clinic and I wasn’t dressed yet, I told her I’d be there. I had to skip breakfast and book it to the clinic and for the first time in my time in Honduras, things actually got started on time. I jumped into the pickup truck and we were off, to where I didn’t know, with who I halfway knew, and what I would be doing I had no clue. After about 45 minutes of driving to ’who know where’ and after passing a HUGE sugar cane field/factory we got to the aldea La Presa, or at least close. You can’t actually drive to La Presa because you have to cross a sketchy suspensionish bridge over a river in the middle of the forest in the middle of the mountain/hills. After carring boxes of medicine across the bridge I knew that it was going to be an interesting day. We (me, the driver, the health promoter, a nurse, and a doctor) set up shop in their health building, where one part time health provider works and immediately the line started. Our job was to do basic medical evaluations of the people who showed up and then they could see the doctor and hopefully get help/medicine. Out of the tons of people who showed up probably 75% of them were pregenant females, ranging from 15 to 45 and it seemed like they all already had a bunch of kids. I felt completely overwhelmed for the first part of the morning, I was in charge of getting the prescription papers and finding the medicine for the people, the only problem was that all the pills, injection bottles, creams, pastes, condoms, syringes, and every other medical item were shoved into 3 boxes with absolutely no organization. After a little bit of me blindly hunting for pills I decided to use my US organizational skills (bet you didn’t think I had it in me) and I organized all the stuff and by the end of the time I could actually understand the doctors chicken scratch handwriting and find the correct medicine and doses and instruct the patients what to do with them…I felt proud. They also thought I was more experienced than I am, I realized this when I was introduced as ‘medico’ and they wanted me to take blood pressure and do injections, I told them I wasn’t quite ready for that, but maybe next time? All in all it was a great learning experience, getting to see what problems we are facing in the aldeas and what sort of tools we have to work with and hopefully how I will fit into the situation. Tomorrow I’m going to another aldea, leaving at 6:00…woo hoo!

San Marcos

My new home for the next 2 years is the town of San Marcos, in the municipio of San Marcos, in the department of Santa Barbara. It is a pretty small town, it only has about 4,500 people, but it does have a paved main street and, like every town in Honduras a central park with a Catholic church. There are a couple of small restaurants, a bunch of pulperias and small stores. There is a high school, two elementary schools, a Health Center, and a Pregnancy Clinic. Although this might not seem like very much, it is more than Yarumela had and I still haven’t gone very many places in town yet. It is situated about an hour in bus west of San Pedro Sula and about two hours in bus to Santa Barbara city so it’s not far from anything I’d need. Quimistan is another town about ten minutes away, there they have a bunch of restaurants, bakeries, hardware store, and possibly even a hotel, I’ve only quickly passed through but it is pretty nice, another volunteer is stationed there and because it’s in a different municipio we have our separate work zones technically. The municipio of San Marcos is split up into 26 aldeas with a total population of almost 19,000 people, I went to my first aldea today and it was pretty sweet. I’m going to be doing most of my work with the Health Center (going out into the aldeas with doctors) and the educational centers working with the kids. I am also going to be doing some work with the Red Cross, even though they are technically based out of Quimistan, they do some work in some of the aldeas of San Marcos, I’ll probably be helping out with AIN-c, a nutrition/growth program in the aldeas with kids up to 5 years old. My family here is really nice too, my dad (Jose Luis) is the vice-principle of the HS and my mom (Lisbe) is a teacher at one of the elementary schools. I have a 16 year old brother (Jose Luis too) who goes to school in SPS all week, a 10 year old brother Jose Jafet, and a 1.5 year old brother (Jose Yurem). Of course, like all small Honduran towns, half the town is related, making me related to half the town too. Although it might sound like I know what’s going on down here, the reality is that I have no clue what I’m doing or who almost everyone I talk to is, but slowly but surely I’m feeling more at home here, all the kids at both elementary schools already know my name so everywhere I go people shout my name.

Graduation/Surviving/The Wedding Ceremony

So Peace Corps has their somewhat cheesy and symbolic analogy of a marriage for their volunteers. They look at the intensely long application/interview/waiting process as the “dating stage”, in training we are “engaged” because we have made a significant commitment in coming to the country, but there is still a little time to back out (it’s frowned upon), but it exists. The “wedding” (don’t back out now) just took place last weekend, it was all that I’ve ever dreamed for… but not really. We spent one last week in Zarabanda going over last minute details, more rules and regulations, and processing sessions for days. It was nice getting to see everyone all 52 trainees one last time before getting sent off. On Friday, counterparts/community work partners for everyone showed up at the training center. It was decently awkward, all 52 trainees meeting their blind dates and then being force to hang out with them all day making small talk, it was kind of like a arranged wedding I guess. Friday afternoon we went with our counterparts to the U.S. embassy for the actual ceremony. It was pretty fun for the most part, some good, some corny speeches, and one particularly painful speech on behalf of the embassy, his Spanish was lacking to put it lightly… On Saturday morning all of the new volunteers and their counterparts had to make the journey to site. Fortunately for me, another volunteer who will be working near to me had a counterpart from the Red Cross and they had a car, my counterpart Elda and I were able to bum a ride off of him, he was very friendly too and we got to stop at Lago Yajoa for some pics and then we drove around San Pedro Sula to get a feel for it before getting some Popeyes chicken for lunch. Upon arriving in San Marcos I knew that it was going to be different, but also exciting, it was a little over 100 degrees and the power was out (it didn’t come back for almost 24 hours). I’ve been here for two days now and I’m slowly starting to become accustomed to life here. More to come soon.

Site assignment!!!

So, wednesday we recieved the site announcements, a day that we have been waiting for for close to 3 months now. They have decided to send me to San Marcos, a small pueblo of just under 5,000 people in the department of Santa Barbara. I'll go there in a little over a week and live with another host family, I don't know too much about the town besides the fact that every April they have a big festival celebrating a bunch of traditional Honduran games, although it just passed i'm already planning on how i'm going to start my training of marbles and tops and whatever other games they play. I will be working primarily with a CESAMO(health center) the Red Cross, and a local High school. I'm super excited and a little nervous, but i'm sure it is going to be great.

Bigote

Bigote is Spanish for mustache. dont hate on it, they are amazing and demand respect. and yes, i have been rocking one for almost a month now

Club de Ejercicio STU

So some Hondurans are more conservative, reserved, and or hesitant to changing their behaviors, it's just a cultural thing nothing wrong with that. My family in Yarumela hasn't really had that problem too much; they are very receptive to new things, food, hygiene, music, and other new ideas. One of the funniest things that they have started to come around to is exercise. I love my family here, but they aren't necessarily the epitome of healthy eating or good physical physique, but we have been doing things to change/modify this. I've tried, with little to no success to get them to fry fewer things, drink more water and less Coke, and eat more fruit, some of these things have had more success than others, but one thing that my family has responded well to is surprisingly exercise. I have gotten them to join me on a couple of runs and workout activities, and they actually seem to enjoy it, or at least they come back for more. Although it can sometimes be detrimental to my own workout schedule, instead of doing my normal 40 minute run it turns into a 10 min slow run followed by an hour and a half of walking and resting, but is very entertaining. my entire family has even started to try to do some push ups and situps, even my 1 1/2 year old brother. Usually I am able to get my cousin, my 11 year old sister and my dad to come with me, every time at least one of them has thrown up, but they always keep going and having fun. this was one of the things I thought I'd never get my family to do, but it's ended up being really fun and who knows, maybe it'll make a difference for them.

Chisme

To successfully live and integrate/understand any conversation in Honduras there are a couple of key words that you have to learn, they come up in every conversation and are essentially the life blood of Honduran speech. Cheque, vaya pues, and pucha ka, arise in any situation and can mean a plethora of things ranging from 'cool' to 'see ya later' or 'oh snap' , words like bolo, mal criado, and chancho and the dreaded ‘fijese que‘, all being negative statements are also used all the time to describe any and everybody. The one word however that really defines the Honduran culture however is the word and lifestyle that is 'chisme' otherwise known as gossip. Everything is gossiped about here, especially in the smaller villages like Yarumela, anything newly developed is instantly communicated by the lips of children, adults, men, and women anything with a way to communicate will chismear. Some things are harmless, like the spread of the gringo's names throughout the town, every day while walking through the streets a new house or family that I've never seen before will randomly yell out 'estuart¡', this is fun, but other chisme isn't quite as harmless. Whenever anything bad happens, like a death or a fight or an accident over half the town knows about it within 10 minutes, but nobody actually knows the facts, for example the other day a girl got hit by a car in town, she apparently was between 4 and18 years old, possibly had blood coming out of her ears and had to get brain surgery or was completely fine, the driver was also either going too fast or was drunk and on drugs, these are just a few of the 'minor' details that nobody can ever keep straight. It's funny down here because although nobody wants to be known as chismoso there isn't a single person that doesn't deep down inside absolutely love the chisme.

Paletas

Necessity is the mother of invention or so some say. I think that Yarumela is the mother of creativity. When you are in a small town with nothing to do you have to find things to kill the time, my activities usually range from attempting to run to cutting hair, or in my case giving myself a mustache. There are always little things to entertain yourself with, but this last week I finally decided to something beneficial for myself, my family, and the community... OK, that might be a little too far, but I'm proud of my work. When it is ridiculously hot in La Paz there is nothing better than a good paleta or charamusca, essentially a sketchy street vender popsicle or a frozen bag of flavored ice. After my obsession slowly started to take a toll on my bank account I decided that I'd do something about it. The other day i went to the pulperia (corner store) and bought some plastic cups, popsicle sticks, found a stash of limes and went to work. I quickly cranked out 16 very sour lime popsicles to share with my family and everyone who wanted or could stand the sour punch. The next day, in order to appease the sweet glands of all Hondurans I made some amazing paletas de piña. Although it's not the most exciting activity I'm having fun and spreading 6oz cups of joy to the residents of Yarumela. Next on my flavor list are mango, mora, guava, horchata, coco, chocolate, and the ultimate flavor combo thanks to John, peanut butter-milk-Oreo.

La Tormenta

So as I was writing about the orphanage I was very rudely interrupted by a gigantic rain, wind, thunder and lightning storm. It started to rain about 8:00 and by 8:10 it was a full scale torment. It is still pouring rain about 45 min later but i think the worst is over...hopefully. This is arguably the hardest I've ever seen or experienced rain in my life, but being from Seattle I'm loving it while my family is freaking out. The rain is so hard it is nearly impossible to talk, i even resorted to yelling in English just for fun because nobody could hear or understand me, the fact that we have tin roofs that act like kettle drums probably don't help the sound and there are many holes where the rain is coming in, but at least it keeps the majority out. I have also noticed another key difference between the American and Honduran lifestyle, as they ran for cover I did what seemed natural to me, i kicked off my shoes, tossed my phone and wallet in my room and ran through the rain, being soaked to the bone within 5 seconds, my family looked at me like i was crazy, but i had a great time none the less. Also, I'm not really sure what happened, but the US Army seemed to have the same mentality as me because there was at least one helicopter that was flying very low over my house for a while, who knows what they were doing, but word on the calle is that there are some houses in Yarumela that profit from illegal activities, maybe it had something to do with that...who knows. anyway, I'm going to get back the writing about the orphanage and listening to my music with headphones just to try to lessen the bulla from all the lluvia.

El Orfanato

So part of being in the ´avanzado´ group in terms of Spanish abilities means that instead of having 4 hours of normal Spanish class every day we get to actually do something with the Spanish that we already know. I got the last pick out of the group of five of us, but I’m positive that I got the best project, maybe I’m a little biased, but whatever. I get the privilege of getting to work at Hogar San José, an orphanage in La Paz, working alongside Fortunato, a PCV from Seattle, and Sister Edith, an amazing nun from Honduras with a sweet story. In short the orphanage is located in the remains of an abandoned hospital and houses 23 kids from 9months old to 13 years old, run by the Sister and it receives little if no funding from the government. From that quick description you can probably get a little picture of what’s going on, but it is an amazing place. I am in charge of getting records and medical information for the kids, a very important issue from the health aspect, but it is also part of the process for them to hopefully get government help. I am in the process of taking pictures, weight, height, MUAC (middle upper arm calculation) measurements, as well as creating and finishing records for the kids, including going to the La Paz registry department to get birth certificates. This is great practice for me, related to the AIN-C program but also getting me experience talking to government officials, doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals. The thing that really makes my project the best isn’t the work I’m doing though, it’s getting to hang out with the kids and get to know them. After a long day of technical training there’s nothing better than while walking and sweating through the streets of La Paz to have a group of kids run up to you shouting your name and giving you huge hugs, that’s why my project is awesome.

my address... for now

Stuart Fluharty, PCT
Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz
Apartado Postal 3158
Tegucigalpa, D.C 11102
Honduras

Fiesta de Baile 4/3?

La fiesta de balie (the dance party)
So last weekend a couple of us went to the town dance, but didn’t end up dancing, partially because we had to leave early but also because we didn’t know how to dance Honcuran style. My host dad had a good time making fun of our lack of dancing skills so I challenged him to teach us how to. After some planning we decided that Wednesday night would be good because we didn’t have class on Thursday. Tuesday night after another late night painting party (my family, relatives, and I have been painting the house, usually starting at 9 pm and going till 1 AM… don’t ask why) my two host cousins (who can dance like crazy) gave me a couple of dance lessons, a quick intro to Punta, Salsa, Meringue, Bachata, and Reggeton. I learned a little, but not much, but they had fun with it. Last night everything came together and we had the dance party at my house. It started a little slow, like everything in Honduras we didn’t get going till about an hour later then planned, but finally people started to show up and my dad started bumping the music. We ended up dancing every type of Honduran dance possible, or at least the girls did, the guys mostly clung to the walls. It ended up being really fun, about a dozen gringos and probably that many Hondurans dancing the night away, muy cheque.

Lobo, the love of my life 4/3

So Honduras has been full of surprises, especially after coming to Yarumela, mostly all for the good, I just never feel like I know what’s going to happen, why it’s happening, or who I’m talking to and how they are related to me. One example happened last night, after having a fun and full day of adventures I found myself at my house with half the neighborhood kids running around like usual, but at around 8:30 my host dad asked if I was going to help paint the house, not wanting to be rude I said ‘claro’. for the next 3 ½ hours my dad, me, and one of my ‘primas’ (I think) painted the outside of our house while bumping latin music for the whole town to hear. As if yesterday wasn’t random enough, today i got home from classes to find another 20 people at my house, we ended up having an impromptu family dinner party capped off by another painting party at 10:30 PM. Although some of these things catch me off guard, the biggest change to my life here has been that I found the love of my life… in the shape of a 2 month old ‘siberiano’ (husky) puppy named Lobo. When I got here I didn’t even know he existed for the first 2 days because my family didn’t pay him any attention and he is in a small cage behind the house. I have taken it upon myself to love this little puppy as much as I can, a concept foreign to most Hondurans. He is a tinny little guy, pretty skinny and has fleas, but I am absolutely head over heals in love with him. So far I daily clean his cage, give him water, and sneak him my extra food from meals, I also made him a makeshift dog house, donated my only comb to him to keep him clean, and last weekend I gave him a bath. I’m pretty sure my family thinks I’m a little crazy for caring for this dog so much, but they are starting to see that he is really only happy when I’m around him, nobody else gets this much of a reaction, there have even been hints from people talking about how Lobo has ‘a new owner’, although I’m not really sure what to make of these comments if there is any way that I could keep this dog I’d do anything. Although I know the odds are slim that they will ‘regalarme’ him, I keep hoping and keep making hints in hope that they come to realize how much I love him. I’ll keep yall updated and hopefully post some pics of him because right now he’s the highlight of every day for me, oh ‘mi amor’….

El baile en Yarumela 3/27

3/27 El baile en Yarumela
Today was a very Honduran day, hand washing clothes, hand washing my dog, and wandering around Yarumela trying to find something to do. Finally I ran into some other gringos and we decided we’d go to a play put on by the Instituto de la Juventud, a group that we have met before. The play was supposed to start at 3, some said 3:30, others said there was a second showing at 4, but after an hour and a half of waiting we realized that it, like many events here, got cancelled…fijese que… So instead of being active members of the community we went out and got ice cream and drinks. The day was not lost though because there was a community dance planned in Yarumela for the night. I discussed the safety factor of the dance with my parents before leaving, they thought it would be OK so they dressed me up and my dad even sprayed some cologne on me…thanks dad. Somebody said it started at 7 so we thought we’d show up fashionably late at 7:30... But this being Honduras of course it didn’t start at 7 or even 8 so a group of us hung out and discussed the chances of the worldwide hour long blackout that was ‘planned’ to happen from 8-9... I don’t know where that rumor came from, but the power did not even flicker. Since the dance was pushed back so much we hung out with my parents and grandma as they talked about how we should dance, how to ‘matar el guano’ and how on Sunday we could all have dance lessons from my dad. We finally showed up to the dance at around 8:45 to find out that the actual dance doesn’t start till 10:00, but that there is a dance competition before that, we figured ‘why not?’ and proceeded in. there ended up being 7 or 8 groups that danced/sang/break danced to very inappropriate English songs or to regaeton music, entertaining, but not always appropriate… whatever. Because half the group had to be home by 10ish we didn’t get to stay for the actual dance, probably for the best, but there is always dance lessons tomorrow to look forward to. Happy semana santa!

Yarumela For FBT 3/24

3/24 I have now been in Honduras for a month, it’s crazy how fast it is going already. I am now living in Yarumela, a little town outside of La Paz, where we have the majority of our training sessions. Yarumela is really small, all dirt roads and not much going on, but my family is really nice. When I got here they made me a welcome sign and have been very welcoming. There is the mom and dad, Carmen and Misael, who are in their mid 30’s, two kids, Litzy who is 9 and Misael who is 1.5. They also have a employee who takes care of the kids and does most of the cooking and her 7 year old daughter. I’m excited for semana santa because we are going to go to the river, maybe fish a little, swim, play soccer and I’m going to teach them how to cook burgers and omelets as they teach me to cook Honduran food. Today I made the discovery that we have two dogs here too, that might give you a clue to how much attention they get here…. I found Lobo, who is what appears to be a husky puppy, 2months old, today; he is tiny and pretty dirty and has fleas but I think I’m going to try to give him a bath and start taking care of him. Today I snuck him some of my liver that we had for lunch and gave it to him. It’s going to break my heart to leave him so I might see if I can steal him… not really, but maybe. Other than the home life we have a lot of classes, from 7:30 - 5:00 now, but today we got to learn how to do some healthy cooking, learning about nutrients, breast feeding, and vitamins. Spanish classes have also gotten harder, we are now doing ‘charlas’ or discussions/presentatoins, today it was a sex-ed talk in class but tomorrow we have to give a charla on different learning styles to a group of workers in la institucion de salud, it should be fun, but a little stressful, it’s supposed to be up to two hours long, all in Spanish, without very much preparation. That’s pretty much all for now, my fingers hurt a little from flipping tortiallas, but it’s all good. I haven’t been on the internet in 3 ½ weeks, hyopefully I’ll actually get to post these some time soon…

Volunteer visit to Pueblo Nuevo 3-17

3-17-2010
So I survived my Volunteer Visit this past few days, this was to be a chance for us ‘aspirantes‘ to finally get to see more or less what a normal Volunteer actually does. My volunteer was located on the other side of the country and I’d have to go through San Pedro Sula to get there, fortunately it turned out that another volunteer was also going to the same general area so we were able to take a bus to San Pedro Sula together which definitely calmed the nerves, everything went completely according to plans but after hearing all the security talks about that area I wasn’t too keen on going up there. From San Pedro Sula ~4 hours from Teguz I had to find the Costiba bus to Pueblo Nuevo, this ended up being harder than planned since this was by far the biggest bus terminal I’d ever been into and there was nobody to get help from. I finally made it to Pueblo Nuevo and met Iljeen, my volunteer partner, and we immediately went out to get some food, I hadn’t really eaten on my trip 6:30-3:30 so I was hungry. Fortunatly there was a little restraunt in town that served fried chicken, rice and beans, and relleno (vegie mix) all for 30 lemp = $1.50, unfortunately for Iljeen something didn‘t sit well resulting in a 2 day fast for him and frequent trips to the bathroom. Early the next morning we went a pre-school - 1st grade school run by a local NGO where Iljeen teaches English. I thought I’d just observe but instead I was put in charge of teaching English numbers, letter, and handwriting to the kindergarteners, a fun but unexpected surprise, I finished of the 4 hour class with a half hour of PE, aka getting the kids to run around the classroom because it was too hot to go outside. The rest of the day was pretty relaxing, including a 4 hour blackout from 7-11 where we got to listen to neighbors sing along to the radio for our entertainment. Tuesday morning we took a bus to Santa Barbara where we met up with some other volunteers and then were driven to a close by ‘water park’, we got picked up by some Honduran friends of another volunteer who was told to find us by looking for the ’gringos’ in the town center….and it worked. One of the volunteers had earlier talked the owner of the water park to open up special for our group, 12 gringos and one Honduran family. The water park turned out to be a number of connecting pools with some covered areas to sit around under, this might not sound like much but it was amazing! After 6 hours and only $2 each there we headed to Asuncion del Sur, the site of another volunteer where we had a bonfire, roasted hotdogs and hung out late into the night. It was really cool to see volunteers from Health, Water/sanitation, and PAM from different training groups (H 12, 14, 15, and 16) all meet up and hang out, they had some great advice and some crazy stories to tell from their time here, there was even a volunteer from Seattle who had also worked for a summer at Rainier…small world. It was also great seeing how much the volunteers had done to let us trainees have a great experience. After a short nap that night it was back to the Honduran busses by 6:30 AM and then back to the training center by 2:00, where, like every Peace Corps activity isn’t complete without analyzing how it went, what we learned, and what could be improved… All in all it was a whirwind trip across the country but was very encouraging and fun