back from US

note: this is a delayed post because i haven't had a chance to post in a while

Aug 5, 2008

Well, my trip home was great. I’ve been back a little over a week now. While home, I was able to visit with almost everyone, although I did miss a few people I wanted to see. It was so nice talking to people; the hardest part about being away is that I miss everyone. I thought it would be really weird going back to the US after a year, but I got used to things really quickly. Mostly, I was impressed by how clean and things were. It was fun going places, seeing people, and eating. I ate a ton, I really think I gained at least 5 pounds in the one week I was home. I had to eat everything I’ve been missing. Going into stores was kind of overwhelming; there was just so much selection and everything is so big. I did a lot of shopping, since I was really in need of clothes. I also got some little presents for my friends here, which they enjoyed. My neighbors recently got a puppy. He’s sooo cute so he’s going to be partially my puppy, too. They said I could take him on walks and play with him whenever I want. So I got him some chewy toys and flea collars. The little boy next door named the puppy Dogny, or something like that, which doesn’t mean anything, isn’t Spanish or English, and no one knows how to pronounce it. So I just call him either puppy or perrito, but I’m going to start calling him Doogie; that’s better and it sounds similar to whatever his name is.

Anyway, I had a really good and busy time in the US, and it’s kind of tough being back. I’m happy to be back and everyone here missed me and they’ve all been asking how my trip was and how my family is. But still, now I miss everyone and everything at home more than before, because now it’s all fresh in my mind. And it’s not like when I first got here and I missed everything because then being here was new and exciting. Now I miss everything and it’s no longer as exciting being here, it’s just life. But it’s ok, I’ll get over it soon. The next year will probably go by really fast and I want to make the most of it.

I haven’t had electricity in my house since I’ve been back. The problem is that this house has never actually been connected to the power line; it was somehow connected to my neighbors’/landlady’s house. Because of this, I don’t have enough power to run my electro ducha, which is this small thing you connect to your shower, where the water comes out, and it heats the water. If this sounds dangerous, connecting an electric heater right where the water comes out, you’re right, it kind of is dangerous. In some showers, when you touch the water tap to turn the water on or off, you feel a slight shock. Not everyone has an electro ducha, but a lot of people do. It’s the only way to have a hot shower unless you heat water on the stove and have a bucket bath, which I do sometimes. So anyway, to fix the problem of not having a strong power supply, my landlady told me that while I was gone in the US, she’d get the electric company to come hook my house up to the power line. When I got back last week, my house had been disconnected from my neighbors’ house but not yet reconnected to the power line. The electric company said they would come in 2-3 days, which I didn’t believe for a second. It’s now been over a week, but supposedly they’re coming Friday. So we ran a super-long extension cord from my neighbors’ to my house, which I’ve been using, but I don’t want to plug too much in it. Also, last week, the power went out in the whole region for a day, and this week it went out for 2 days.

Throughout town, they have been digging ditches along side the road so that the rain and sewage water doesn’t ruin the dirt rocky roads, which have just been repaired. (Repairing these roads means that they dump a lot of rocky dirt on them and roll over it to pack it down, which actually makes a big difference) Now my house has a big ditch in front of it, which turns into a creek when it rains, so this guy made me a little bridge, which is really just a plank of wood. I really like it, I feel like I have a moat in front of my house. My house is really secure. I’m improving the inside, too. I’m having the carpenter cut me four planks that I’m going to put on the wall to make shelves and keep everything less cluttered.

I’m not sure if I already wrote about this, but I’m going to do a workshop with one of the woman in our town market to teach her to make cookies and bread and things like that to sell. She recently bought a large oven, so she can make all kinds of things in it. People here don’t really bake cakes or cookies or anything really; they don’t usually have electric ovens, and if they do, many don’t know how to use it. Some people have big wood-burning ovens outside. They’re kind of dome-shaped and made of concrete, I think, and they make different types of cookies and bread to eat with coffee, but they all taste pretty much the same, and are usually really dry and crumbly. I make banana bread and cookies a lot, to give to people, and they really like them. So it’ll be fun if this woman actually starts baking and selling.

That’s about all for now.

things i miss about the US

I leave in a few days for the US! My first trip home in a year! In honor of my trip, I'm posting about things I miss from the US.

-Family and Friends (of course) I really miss people and I miss being among people who really know me and who have known me my whole life. I miss certain conversations and jokes and memories.

-DC I love Washington, DC. I really enjoyed living there. I like that you can walk around and that there's a good public transportation system. It's pretty, it's international, there's always a lot going on, there's free museums and monuments and lots of history. I miss living in DC.

-Food The food here isn't bad, I enjoy it, but I just really miss food from the US.
I miss good ice cream and good bread. There isn't really any good bread here. Like sourdough and wheat bread, etc. Also, I never liked hamburgers, but now I get cravings for a good hamburger, mainly just because there are no good hamburgers here. I miss barbeque. I miss skim milk and cereal. There's skim milk here, but it's not the same. And there's not as wide a variety of cereals, and the good cereals I can't afford. I really like cereal. Also, I miss salads, especially spinach salads. Big salads with lots of vegetables. There's a lot of food I miss, I can't really list it all. I plan on eating non stop while I'm home.

-Hot showers I've always really liked showers. Here, I have no hot water, and sometimes my water pressure is really bad, so the shower doesn't even really work. So if I want a warm shower, I have to heat water on the stove, dump it in a bucket, and take a bucket bath. It's just not the same as a real shower. I never feel really clean.

-Cleanliness- In general, I miss things being clean. Streets without garbage in them, houses that aren't bug infested, dishes washed with hot water in a dish washer, clothes washed with hot water in a washing machine, etc. Just the idea of cleanliness.

-Bathrooms- not that there aren't bathrooms here, but adding on the cleanliness theme, I miss clean bathrooms that are complete with toilet paper, water, soap, and towels. Also, there aren't really public bathrooms, and people are awkward about letting you use the bathroom in thier house. So finding a bathroom is always an issue. I miss being able to go into any fast food restaurant or Starbucks to use the bathroom, or being able to ask to use the bathroom in someone's house without it being weird.

-Internet- I miss having internet in my house. Having wireless internet and a working laptop seems so amazing right now. The idea of looking up any information at anytime, or of talking to someone online at any hour, is just incredible.

There's a lot more I miss, like museums, and safe clean cities, and good stores, and malls, and good places to run, and more, but I have to go now because my time is up on the computer and this little girl is standing next to me staring over my shoulder, because she wants to use the computer to play some game.

I can't wait to see everyone!!!!!!

more birthday parties!

Yesterday my host cousin, Danielle, had a party for her 5th birthday. It was at thier house, in the aldea on the mountain. It was really fun. There were probably around 50 people, my host family, my host mom's siblings and their families. And some of the families of the inlaws of her siblings. There were tons of little kids. We had baked chicken, fresh from thier farm, vegetables, mashed potatoes, and rice. Then the kids beat up the piñata, which was fun, and then we had cake. The cake was really big, and it was a mix of chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla. My host mom's sister, who made the cake, knows I like chocolate, so she found me a piece that was all chocolate. I took lots of pictures for them, since they don't have a camera. Danielle had a pink party dress, it was really poofy. She mostly got clothes for presents, but I got her a mini magna doodle, which she loved. She didn't put it down for the rest of the day! In the evening, after most people left, we had some dancing. All my host mom's brothers wanted to dance with me, they wouldn't let me sit out at all. I was rotating between 5 different men. I thought it was really funny. At about 9, we finally left, one of my host mom's brothers drove me home. I left my house at 11am and got home at 9:30! It was a really fun day, thier family is so nice to me!

Well, the feria's over, it was fun. I have a few new small projects going. I'm doing weekly trips to the public library with the school kids. Last week me and one teacher brought 60 1st graders to the library and I read them a few books whith children's rights themes, like right to education, to equality, to family and care, etc, and we talked about what rights are. It was fun and the kids really liked the books. On Wednesday, I´m going to bring the 3rd graders.
Also, a program called Educatodos, which does continuing education for communities that don't have middle schools or high schools, asked me to help them with English classes. So on Saturday I went up to one community in the mountains to answer thier English questions and practice pronouncing vocabulary with them. On Friday I'll be going to another community to help them. Sorry this entry's short, but I've got to go.

Birthdays and the Feria

My host sister’s 15th birthday was on the 8th and my host parents had a big party for her. They spent over a month preparing. There were 5 big cakes, all different flavors, and one of the cakes was shaped liked a princess. My host mom and my host sister crocheted thier dresses. For the table centers, they hand-made flowers and in the middle of some of the flowers were barbies, which they crocheted little dresses for to match my host sister’s. It was a really nice party. They set up so much, I can´t even describe it all, but it was a very big deal. We ate chicken, pork, rice, tortillas, vegetables, cake, and lots of Coke.About 50 people came and it was fun seeing everyone all dressed up.

My birthday was the 10th and it was really nice. My friend Becky was here from the US so it was great that she could be here for my birtday. Some of my neighbors gave me gifts and I recieved some cards and packages and phone calls from the US. I had lunch at a friend´s restaurant with a few other volunteers who are in the area. It was a really good birthday. I can´t believe it´s been almost a year since I left for Honduras. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been here a long time, but it’s also been going pretty quickly. About 15 months more in Honduras.

Our town feria (fair) has been starting up for a while but this week is the final, big week. Saturday night there was an event for the Queen of the Feria, which was kind of like a beauty pagent with the high school girls. They elected one Madrina (godmother) of the Feria, a Madrina of Café, a Madrina of Ganaderia (cattle), a Madrina of Deportes (sports), and a few others I don’t remember. They also elected juinor madrinas, which are little girls, like between 5 and 8. Sunday was a parade with all the madrinas. The car float for the Madrina of Café was decorated with coffee plants and bags of coffee beans. I liked the float for ganaderia, it was pulling a cart with two baby cows in it. It was a fun parade. All the mothers who had daughters in the parade were excited and nervous and they all wanted me to take a hundred pictures of their daughters.

There are more booths set up now, selling more food, like pizza, french fries, tajadas, candy, and they set up a couple small rides, like a carasol and a tiny roller coaster. The whole fair is about two blocks long, on just one street, it doens’t have a whole fair grounds. This week, there are events planned every day. There will be dances, another parade, bull riding, an art exhibit, a cow show, and a horse race. And it’s good timing because all next week is school vacation, either for all the schools in the department or in the country, I’m not sure.

This morning the high school students I’ve been working with in the next town over sold the bottles they’ve collected. Since they have so many, I arranged for the buyer to go to them, so they don’t have to worry about transportation. They got almost 3,000 Lempiras which is like $150, which is about what most people here make in a month. We spent all morning classifying the bottles.
Although they’ve been having lots of success, I’m not having as much luck recycling in my town. Last week was really frustrating because, long story short, no one wanted to help with the project or offer support. So I’ve decided to drop the recycling project in my town and just focus on working with the high school kids in thier recycling project. It’s disapointing because I’ve been working really hard on this for a while, but it’s just not feasible here. So now I’m looking for new projects and to involve myself more with the munincipality. I have a bunch of small project ideas but I’d like to start something long-term. That’s about all that’s going on right now. We will be celebrating our town feria all week, it’s the most exciting time of the year for San Pedro!

Parades and Parties

I´ve had an exciting couple weeks. The 23rd and 24th of May I went to La Ceiba, on the North Coast, for Carnaval, probably one of the biggest events in Central America. It´s similar to Mardi Gras, but Honduran style, and near the beach. My friend from my training group is a volunteer there, so those of us who went stayed at her apartment. On Saturday there was a really big parade with horses and fire trucks and lots of floats. On the floats there was music and dancing and people throwing bead necklaces. I thought it was really well put together, I really enjoyed it, even though I often don´t like parades. We stood in the central park to watch the parade. The park is beautiful with lots of big old trees, and there were tons of people selling food, jewelry, clothes, and other things. All along the streets people were selling things too.

Toward the end of the parade, we were walking along the sidewalk to meet some other friends, and walking down the sidewalk toward us was the president, Mel Zelaya, and he paused and shook our hands! I shook hands with the president of Honduras! I lived in DC for four years and never even saw the US president or anyone important.

Saturday night was a big street party. There were a bunch of band stands set up with music and dancing. It was a lot of fun. I really like La Ceiba as a city, it´s the third biggest city, but it´s not as dangerous, dirty and crowded as Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. It was a really great cultural event to go to.

The following Wednesday, we had our regional safety and security meeting, so we got to meet all the new volunteers in the area. They all seem really nice. And we got to stay at a nice hotel in Santa Rosa.

Sunday was my towns feria inauguration, so they had a little parade. The people in the munincipal office told me I could ride a horse in the parade if I could find a horse. So I borrowed my neighbor´s horse Sunday morning and rode down to the park. The park was full of people waiting for the parade and the other people on horses were lined up and the school band was waiting, and they all thought it was really funny I was riding a horse. But, as we were waiting, the horse got really scared because of all the noise and motorcycles and other horses, and was beign really skittish and not doing what it was supposed to. So people were laughing and I decided there was no way I could ride that horse in a parade, it could be dangerous. I rode the horse back to my neighbors and walked back to the parade. I did have fun riding the horse, but I just couldn´t in the parade.

Proj Cit

All last week I was at the Project Citizen workshop with the rest of my project group, outside of the capital. it took 9 hours to get there and 9 hours to get back, on the bus. The highlight of the trip was that I got a haircut from another volunteer. It´s pretty short, like a little above chin length, with lots of layers. I like it. I got back Saturday night.
Every town has a feria, like a town fair, which is the day of the patron saint of the town. We are San Pedro, so our saint is Saint Peter, who´s day is June 29th. So it's a month and a half away, but the feria has already started! In the central park, there are booths set up with food, and fussball tables, and people selling candy. When the feria really gets started, there will be a feris wheel and other rides. They also do bull riding and events like that. Some towns only have their feria for a few days or a couple weeks, it´s exciting we have a 2 month feria.
Wednesday I have to leave for another Peace Corps meeting about Safety and Security, which I´ll write about later. I have to go now because the library is closing.

so on wednesday, we went to the special ed school and talked to the teachers. it was great. there are about 15 kids, of a variety of ages, and two teachers. they are in the process of building a new school since the building they are in is being loaned. this woman, the director, has a boy with down´s syndrome, and she almost single-handedly fought to get this school running. they are still lacking a lot. it was so nice to see the students and talk to the teachers. we are setting up a meeting with a lawyer to see what their educational rights are under the law.

i held the meeting to form the environmental committee, and only 4 participants came. so we went ahead and talked about the purpose of the meeting and showed a video on the future of the world in 2070, which was pretty powerful, and then we rescheduled the meeting for next sunday.

on monday, i have to leave for Tegucigalpa to go to a Peace Corps workshop for Project Citizen. i´m not that excited about it, because it´s such a long trip and i´ll be gone for a week. i don´t like leaving for long periods of time. but it´s a good project to do in the schools, and it´ll also be nice to see people I haven´t seen for a long time. That´s about all for now.

I almost forgot, I went with the high school students a few weeks ago to sell thier bottles to recycle and they had about 1,500 pounds, and earned about $150, which will go toward building a water tank in the high school, since it has no water now. I´m worried though about when school is over, because I want this project to continue, not to end when they graduate.

exciting news

Yesterday Rachel, a nearby volunteer, and I were in Corquin (one of the towns next to mine), giving recycling talks at the school. Then we went to the post office and were talking to the husband and wife who run it, who are a really nice, young couple. And the husband told us about a special education school for children with Down´s Syndrome and other disabilities, that´s in Corquin. This was really exciting to hear! It was an issue I had been thinking about for a while, wondering if I could get involved with special education, and I had no idea this school was there.

I´m not sure if it´s true, but he told us this is one of only two special ed school in the country, and to think it´s right here! The normal schools do not have special ed programs. So we are having a meeting tommorrow morning to see what kind of support we can give the school, in the form of funding, book donations, programming, things like that. Right now it´s being run mostly with money from the families. Also, another nearby volunteer in youth development actually worked as a special ed teacher in the US, so she´s going to come tommorrow to talk to the teachers and see what they are doing and what support she can give. I´m really happy we found out about this. I think we could get some funding, expand the school and publicize it so that more students can attend. I´ll let you all know how the meeting goes.

In recycling news, things are going well. I have given about 20 talks about recycling, talking to hundreds of students, in 4 schools and 2 high schools. Last Saturday I went with the high school students to pick up bottles in the streets. People were congratulating them on their trash collection. It´s a really good group, I like hanging out with them. On Thursday we are having a meeting here in my town to form an environmental committee.

On Saturday I held a training session for 5 patronatos in my town. Patronatos are kind of like town councils or neighborhood committees. There is one in each little neighborhood of the town. We talked about democracy, citizen participation, transparency, avoiding corruption, and how to prioritize community needs. It went very well, about 14 people came. There was lots of conversation and discussion, and people had some really good things to say about community participation in the government. Honduras has one of the highest corruption rates in the world, so citizen action is really important. The group decided to have a meeting with the mayor today, since they aren´t really happy about the way projects proposals have been handled lately.

Next week we have a Peace Corps workshop in Tegucigalpa for Project Citizen, a project to do in the schools. We are supposed to bring a teacher or community member but I can´t find anyone who is able and willing to leave for a week, so I might have to go alone. It´s a good project, I´ll explain it more later.