my site!

My site is San Pedro de Copán! It’s in the west, near the Guatemalan border, near the town of Santa Rosa de Copán, which is a popular tourist site for the beautiful Mayan ruins that are there. You should really google pictures of the ruins of copan, honduras, you´ll get some beautiful pictures. I´m a few hours from the actual ruins, but it is really cool. There are some indigenous groups that still live in the area. I am so excited. My site description sounds amazing and it’s supposed to be absolutely beautiful there, and I’m near a national park. I was expecting to be extremely hot for the next two years, but my site is actually really cool, with an average tempearature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit, because of the high altitude, so I was surprised about that. I’m going to need to buy some more jeans. I have all kind of possible projects to work on. There is a volunteer there now, Nicole, and she wrote me a very long, very informational letter about the projects she’s worked on and about possible projects I can start, and about all the people I can work with. It’s really helpful. It turns out she’s leaving her service early to start a job in the States, so we won’t be overlapping at all. I’ll get to meet her Thursday when we go to visit our sites, but I think she’ll be gone be the time I get there for good. Hopefully I’ll get to inherit a lot of her stuff, which will make it much easier when I go to live in my own house. We swear in the 27th at the embassy and then we leave the 28th for our sites.

For the first two months I have to live in a homestay, which will be in an aldea (small town) of San Pedro, probably like 500 people or so, but I’m not sure. My conterpart is my homestay. After two months I can keep living there or I can move to San Pedro, and I can even take over Nicole’s house there. I’ll be about a 10 hour bus ride from the capital, Tegucigalpa, which is hard, but at least I’m near a popular area to visit, so hopefully other volunteers will be in the area visiting, and when people come visit me we can go there and go to my site. There is another volunteer about 20 minutes from me, and from our training class, there is another volunteer, Brianna, about 2 hours away, and Rachel, about 2 or 3 hours away, I think, and they’re both really great, so that’s exciting we’ll be close. Most of the others will be really far away from me.

Some of my possible projects are working with a group of women who crochet sweaters, shirts, skirts, dresses, and bags, and are looking to market their products. I’ll have the opportunity to work on fair trade initiatives with them, which is pretty exciting. There is also an interesting latrine project my counterpart is just starting, and an improved stove project in progress. My counterpart is an NGO (non government organization) that is working to develop the munincipality. Also, there are several active schools that I can work with. She listed a lot of other possible things I could look into. I basically have a lot of freedom to explore and work on what interests me and what I think I could be useful in. My site sounds pretty much perfect, hopefully I stay this excited when I go visit it. We meet our counterparts on Wednesday and then go back with them on Thursday to visit for the weekend. I’m soooo excited.
Most people are pretty happy about their sites. There were some surprises about people who thought they were going somewhere else. One girl is going to La Ceiba, which is a really touristy, fun city on the North Coast, on the beach. So that’s pretty exciting. Five people are going to the South, where it’s really hot. The others are near the El Salvador border, but southeast of my site.

We also had our goodbye party today, which went really well. We made American food, like deviled eggs, hotdogs in a blanket, potato skins, veggie trays, cheese and crackers, guacamole and salsa, stuffed jalepenos, ricekrispie treats, cookies, and blackcows (because there is no rootbeer for rootbeer floats). Everything was so good.
I’m really sad to leave here, because I really like the town and my family. I’ll miss Brayan a lot, he’s really sad I’m leaving. I told them I’d come visit, but it would take me days to get here from my site. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to come. I’ll miss everyone in my training class, too. It was really nice being all together here, and we got pretty close.
I can’t wait to go see my site, I couldn’t stop smiling while I was reading my site description and my letter, it sounds so amazing.