Wow I can’t believe I have been in my site for 2 months already! How time is flying before I know it my 2 years is going to be up and I am going to be very sad to leave. I have definitely fallen in love with my village. I love the mountains, and the sun. I love the people! I love going to the river and swimming with the children when it’s hot out. I love that every time I go walking in my village everyone always shouts hello or good day morgaine(well it’s more like morgay because they can’t pronounce my name lol.)I love that every time I pass the guy that sells oranges he tries to give me one for free, just because I am the Peace Corps volunteer. I love that people here are constantly telling me how beautiful I am( and It doesn’t even bother me anymore all the people trying to marry me off to their sons lol) I Love Love going to the outlying villages in the mountains. SOO BEAUTIFIL. I love that my friends come over to hang out or play cards. I love going to the hot springs with my friends late at night. I love that my friends invite me to eat corn on the cob and tamales when their corn is harvested. I love dancing with my friend’s baby girl and how she laughs when we play! I love going to the soccer games to watch my friends play. I love that people with so much less than me are constantly offering me things, just because they are so generous and so honored to have a Peace Corps volunteer in their village. I hope I can live up to their standards. I love the bus systems! I love that even without a car I can get on a public bus and go to the big city! I love that everyone always wants to paint my nails and do pretty designs for me.
Although there are still many cultural clashes and things that I don’t like. For one, FOOD POISONING. Yep that’s not fun. I got it for the first time in my life last week and I don’t remember being so sick to my stomach before. It was TERRIBLE! And I am having a really hard time eating Honduran food now. It’s like my stomach is rejecting it in fear that I am going to be sick again. It is a good thing that I am moving out of my host families house soon so that I can cook for myself and make sure that I don’t get sick again, and I can use a ton less oil to cook with. I am sure my stomach will appreciate that. Another thing I don’t like is the phrases later or another time. Always whenever I ask when we are going to do something the typical Honduran response is later or another time. This annoys me to no end because I like more structure I would like it if they said we will work on the project Monday at 5, not later or another day. This doesn’t tell me anything and I hate keep asking when we are going to do things but the answer is always later. It means I have to push a lot to get things accomplished.
Speaking of getting things accomplished to my shame I still haven’t done too much in my village. I know it takes time so I am trying not so freak out to much right now and am concentrating on networking. Through my networking I have come up with a few potential projects that I am very excited about. I have made friends with the nurse that works in the medical center way out in one of the poorest villages way up in the mountains. He said we can work together on giving charlas(educational lectures) to the people. Also he told me that an NGO is putting computers and internet in their village(not sure why most of them don’t even have electricity yet) However, they are going to need someone to come and teach them how to use the computers and internet and he invited me to come help with that when the project is finished. In addition I think Zamorano( University) is putting up their solar panels in that village for electricity, and I know they said I would be able to help with that when I talked with them before coming to my site. So I will be taking the 2 hour car ride up into the mountains a lot to help out this village. However the village is beautiful and the sights on the drive take your breath away. Another future project is in an outlying village Barro it is evenharder to get to because the road is so bad. Its near impossible to get to by car, but we are gonna try and do it. If not I need to learn to ride a horse, because unfortunately Peace Corps says that we are prohibited to ride motorcycles and dirt bikes which is the major way of getting to this village. My job in this village is going to be helping a Caja Rural( small farming cooperative) I am going to make sure that they are organized correctly and try and help them find funding. I also hope to help out the mayor’s office by helping out the man who works in cadastre (he does all the zoning and properties) Right now he takes measurements of properties and draws up sketches on microsoft word. I am going to teach him to use GPS and GIS so he can do it more accurately. Also the main project that I am really excited about is helping out the man who works in the Environmental Office. He wants to put a tree farm right by the towns hot springs. At the same time the town is trying to build up the hot springs more for tourism. So I am going to help him by going with him to the hot springs and taking exact measurements with the GPS where we want everything, the trees the kiosks, and everything else. Then we are going to digitally sketch up what we want it to look like. I am them going to help him to get a grant for this project and make pamphlets for tourism! I am so excited about the project. The increased tourism would help the area economically and in addition we are planting a lot of trees and helping the environment!!! Furthermore, I am also thinking about starting up two English classes, one for adults and one for children an hour a week or so. So many people have asked me about teaching them English so I am giving in I hope I can do it, I am no teacher! I already taught a few classes to some high school students to help them before their exam, and they well. It was ironic the teacher that teaches them English can’t speak English himself he just reads right out of the book without actually understanding most of it, and his pronunciation is horrible!
I move into my new house next week and I am soo excited it’s perfect! It has a little porch to sit on in the evening and I will have lots of neighbors to talk to plus my best friend is my neighbor, and it’s the main street so everyone is constantly walking by. So I won’t be bored. It has a nice large living room and 2 bedrooms. The kitchen is extremely small but I guess I will just have to put things in the living room if I need more room. The refrigerator and dining table is already in the living room. I have my own nice little yard where I can put a dog or plant some flowers. Its also very safe which is very important here. The yard is surrounded by a large wall and barbed wire and I have bars and mosquito screens on the windows and double locks on the doors! O I forgot to mention my house is coming furnished! The lady I am renting it from lives in the big city so all the furniture is going to stay within for me to use! There is 2 beds so I have an extra for when friends and family come to visit (HINT ;) have to things to hang clothes in and one thing to put my shoes in. I have two couches an entertainment stand (without tv) and an cabinets O an best of all I have an oven! This is very rare in Honduras usually there is only 2 or 3 people in the village with ovens and they don’t use them, and my house is one of them so I can actually cook food that’s not fried!! Lol
As far as adventures go I have been having so many here in Oropoli. I had been wanting to go swim in the hot springs really bad after they cleaned them because the river nearby overflows during the rainy season and all the dirt flows into the hotsprings. So one night my friends call me up and the four of us went and swam in the hot springs. They are so nice just like hot tub pools. I also go to the river a lot with my friends and swim and take pictures. I have gone to my friends house in an outlying village several times and had so much fun doing it. The one time the only car we could get to go was this old beater truck without windows and without a windshield, the door had to be held on by a clamp. We laughed the entire trip to the house driving in that crappy car on the terrible bumpy roads, and my friend was honking at everyone just to embarrass my other friend because of the car haha. I also love my trips out to the mountains with the workers going out there to bring supplies or pick up the nurse. They are always adventures stopping to take pictures on the giant rock table outlooking the mountains, or stopping to let the engine cooldown and exploring a bit. Also, I have been having a few adventures with my fellow peace corps friends. We had our regional welcome party the other weekend. I traveled 6 hours in 2 buses to go probably 50 miles. We had fun thought it was nice to speak English and be able to vent with people that understand. We had a cute little campfire and smores as well. In the morning it was hilarious because the electricity went out right after we cracked 14 eggs to eat. So we decided to make campfire eggs and it actually worked and they were delicious.
Well I hope everyone is enjoying reading my blog!
