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.