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