actually in honduras!

Sorry about the randomness of the following, maybe eventually I will start writing smaller more timely entries but…take what you get and skip the rambling parts….

I am finally in Honduras. Woooo. Honestly, I wasn’t always certain it would happen. I am not sure what exactly I expected considering I don’t think I have ever actually gone from point a to point b with no hitches (or lime green high speed chase/hit and runs) but it has certainly been an adventure getting here. The following is a detailed diagram (string of words with lines between them) depicting my journey:

Womb-Virginia-Good COUP byes- Miami Staging (aka South Beach vacay)- Republica Dominicana (3 weeks, see previous entries)- Honduras? Nope, stuck in Miami because of weather/flight crew/other rumors. They told us we would head to Honduras the next day. However, during the meeting held to go over departure details our (for lack of a better term) babysitter got a call, his face fell, and he told us we would be stuck in Miami (b/c of political shiz) for another week of Posh Corps*- HONDURAS!!
*I won’t lie; I did not mind the hot showers, ample spending money, or hotel pool. And I most certainly did not mind the complementary cookies.

Random story about leaving the DR: So the night before our flight to “Honduras” (Miami) we all had to stay in a religious retreat center because our flight left really early and it was too dangerous to pick everyone up in the barrios at like 3 in the morning. Imagine me in a place surrounded by nuns and religious paraphernalia. I was out of my element. We all hung out and had a decent time and then headed to bed early. I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I was going to die. Literally, I have never felt so sick so fast in my life. I was already planning what I would do about rescheduling my flight because in my condition there was no way I was flying anywhere. After spending about an hour in the fetal position on the bathroom floor (gross) I felt okay enough to get back into bed. I still felt sick the next day but made it on the flight. My conclusion? God does have it in for me, just a little. Thanks kt.

I felt like a 5 year old on Christmas morning when the plane finally took off at Miami Airport and we were officially on our way to Honduras. I was even more excited (or 5 years old?) when I realized our in-flight movie was Hotel for Dogs, I highly recommend this movie, it has a complex and well-developed plot and the acting is unparalleled.
Now, I hesitate to report this next bit because I want you all to visit, but… while I was enjoying Hotel for Dogs, the pilot came on and told us to buckle up cause we were landing soon. I tore my eyes away from the cinematic masterpiece and looked out the window to get my first view of my new stomping grounds. A rough estimate of my train of thought during landing: <> When you plan your visits, please keep in mind that I tend to exaggerate and that the orphans do escape and run the hotel for dogs with their new parents.
So. I am finally in the promised land. I lived in a little town outside of Teguz for about a week with a great host family. It was way more fancy than I was expecting, I had my own bathroom with hot running water and the family had a housekeeper. Not exactly roughing it. My host parents were great and there were 3 kids (10 months, 4, and 6). The older two were both girls and were a lot of fun. We played hours and hours of tennis (I use the term tennis loosely) and they got a kick out of my ridiculous butchery of the Spanish language. In particular, they loved when I referred to myself as a man. It is a little unfair. In English it is pretty common for a non-native speaker to accidently say him instead of her, but you don’t insult yourself (like: hehe she called him her!). In Spanish however, you call yourself out. Estoy cansado: I (am male) tired. I frequently do this. I (am male) happy. I (am male) excited. I (am male) full. It is awkward and I would think I would learn after being laughed at by a 4 year old on multiple occasions but nooope, I (am male) stupid. One day I will learn to embrace my…womanhood?

Random story: So the necklace molly and Erika so sweetly gave me to protect me in my travels is now a nice black tarnished chain because of my excessive sweating in the DR (attractive.). For some reason I got it in my mind that SVP once told me that tarnish can be easily removed with toothpaste. So, being the resourceful PCT that I am, I proceeded to squeeze out half my toothpaste onto the stupid chain. Toothpaste does nothing to remove tarnish. It is however difficult to remove from skin when applied in mass quantities. Please take a moment to visualize me, finally in Honduras, standing in the bathroom covered in toothpaste. In celebration of my stupidity, I opened SVP’s letter (I wanted to save my first letter for when I finally got to Honduras) Thanks Sarah! Misssss you.

After a week it was time to split up into our three project groups (youth development, municipal development, protected areas management) for field based training. Leaving training for fbt was hard. We have all been through a lot together and I really like everyone in the other programs and will miss them (sappy). But now I am in another, more urban town, with all the other YD trainees. We have 4 hours of Spanish in the morning, lunch at home, then 4 hours of technical training in the afternoon (and two days a week, since I am inept at Spanish, I get to enjoy an extra hour of tutoring after tech classes woo thanks pvhs/uva Spanish classes). Now, the technical training can be a bit painful. As you all may know, I was never a huge fan of the warm fuzzy atmosphere in my ed school classes and tech classes are about the same. I suppose I will just have to find my inner santa claus (a task made all the more difficult because drinking alone before classes is frowned upon in the peace corps).

My family here is good. I live in a little compound-ish place. The main building has the living room, 3 bedrooms, and a small kitchen that no one uses. Outside in the enclosed yard, there is another kitchen with a wood burning stove, the bathroom, the abuelos house, the pilla (giant cement thing for holding water because we only get water for a little bit of the day twice a week so you have to fill it up all the way so you have water on the off days), some corn, and a bird. My room is one of the three in the main house. It is a decent size but only has a window into the kitchen so it doesn’t really get much air. My host mom is obsessed with me keeping my door and kitchen window closed to keep out the mosquitoes but I have a mosquito net and enjoy breathing so I sneak them open. The mosquitoes here are not nearly as bad as in the DR but this is the first time I have used the net (I risk administrative separation with that confession). In the DR there was nowhere to hang it so I just doused myself in OFF every 10 minutes or so. I probably wouldn’t have bothered with the net here but there is a slight termite problem in the ceiling above me. It is rather unsettling because I can actually hear the little guys gnawing away. The net keeps some of the wood poops (I hate that word but don’t really know what else to call them) off me but I still wake up feeling like I slept in a nice sandy beach bed. Every night before bed I spend a good 3 minutes sweeping off a place to lie down. Termites aside, I like my house. My family talks to me and doesn’t mind my mangled Spanish and they try to help me. The other night I actually had a conversation about religion, politics, and higher education…in Spanish! It mostly consisted of me acting out how Mormons come door to door and ride bikes a lot but hey, it’s a start.

Random story: My first morning at my new house, I woke up and went outside to shower. The toilet in the bathroom flushed, which I didn’t really understand because the sink didn’t work so I knew there was no water. I jiggled the shower handle and nothing happened and I saw a big bucket in the shower so I grabbed it and filled it up from the pilla and prepared myself for a bucket bath, which was no big deal because that is what I did in the DR (I am SO worldly). I took off my clothes and got in the shower. First off, I realized that there was no small bucket for dumping water on myself. Shit. I scooped water out with my hands and did my best to get relatively wet. Then I needed to get my hair wet. I hoisted the giant bucket up and attempted to dump it on my head. This did not go well and resulted in near decapitation. At this point I thought I heard my host mom yell something at me but couldn’t really hear her. After several attempts I felt reasonably rinsed and got dressed. I left the bathroom and my host mom was standing outside with her daughter giving me a funny look. Then she said: “Why didn’t you just turn the shower on? There is a giant tank on the roof, there is always running water for showers” Oh. You have to turn the knob that way. To make things even better… the bucket in the shower? For mopping. This gringa is (male) stupid and (male) not clean after her shower.