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.