Well I am officially a Peace Corps volunteer and in my site! Oropoli is very agricultural and not very well off. In addition, during the winter which it is right now, the municipality is pretty much completely cut off from the world. We literally had to drive through, not over but through 15 rivers to get here. It was scary driving through some of those rivers. One of them had a very strong current and I could feel the tires of the pickup sliding on the rocks. There has been no passage in or out of the municipality at all this week because the road is so eroded from the rain that the bus got stuck in it so the municipality has been trying to level the road out. In addition, one village in my municipality is completely cut off because the river you normally drive through to get to the village has grown so much that the river split and took the path of the road, and it’s no little river it is raging and not possible to cross. The municipality needs a lot of help, and I don’t know where to begin. When they said this would be the toughest job you’ll ever love they weren’t kidding. I am extremely stressed. The municipality just isn’t sure what to do with me. In addition it is always hard for me to start a new job and find out what I am supposed to be doing, and here it’s worse. Not only is it hard for me to meet people and get to know them like always but it’s even harder here because of the language barrier. I feel like I can communicate more or less, but I feel personalityless when I speak because I have a hard time expressing my personality in another language. To top that off I feel like I don’t have the skills they need to help them. We will see how it goes I have a few plans of what I am going to do in the next couple months. Hopefully they work out. My last host family is very nice and they have like 50 chickens in the courtyard of our house which wake me up every morning. Their children are in their 30s and they are very nice also and have introduced me to some important members of the community because one is the director of the schools in the municipality and the other works in the high school. My family also has a farm in one of the outlying villages with cows and they have already taught me to make Honduran cheese and butter. My room itself is also very nice it has its own door out to the street so I can come home last and not feel guilty. I just wish I would have been told to bring furniture. All my room has is a bed and a wooden table. I have nothing to put my clothes in and no fan or anything, and I was in a Wal-Mart on my way and I was in a car so it would have been very easy for me to buy something and bring it. Unfortunately now I have to wait till I can go to a big city and I am going to have to bring it back on the bus. Also I can’t wait till I can move out into my own place! Peace Corps rules say we have to live with a host family for 2 months but after that I can move into my own house. I have already been shown a really nice house that’s for rent in my town. It’s perfect right in the town center, right by the town hall where I work and it’s new and looks really nice. It will be nice to cook for myself! I don’t mind the Honduran food. But I can only eat beans rice tortilla and smoked meat so many times before I go crazy. Not to mention they give me such giant portions and my host mom doesn’t understand why I don’t want to eat it all. Every time I tell her just a little and she makes some comment about how I am on a diet or about how I don’t eat anything. And I don’t like everything that my family gives me for food. I had cow tongue for the first time the other day! The meat itself isn’t bad tasting but the texture is horrible. It’s so tough and you can feel the taste buds still. I couldn’t finish it, but my host mom was ok with that and said she wouldn’t give it me again. I am starting to make friends slowly there are a couple unmarried women without children around my age in my town and for that I am very lucky its not very common in Honduras especially in rural areas. These women are nice and have started to try and befriend me, and they even brought me to the dance last weekend at the municipality. It was a lot of fun and I got to know some of the people better. The mayor even was there and he bought me a beer! I am really not supposed to drink in public because I am a woman and the idea here is that women that drink are loose. However we were behind closed doors with just friends and I was handed a beer and was told it was from the mayor. So I drank it. It hasn’t seemed to cause any damage I figured if the mayor said it was ok it probably was.
Things have started to get better here in Oropoli. I have made some friends so life is not quite so boring and I am starting to help them out with some small educational projects and life is going well. I have also helped to organize the municipal education committee and have become a member. I hope things continue this well for a while
