Checkin´ in...

Well it's Thursday night and I'm here at the internet cafe with my host sister Lizeth. I had to come in and type up a resume in Spanish that my counterpart will receive, when I get a site assignment and someone in my site to be my counterpart that is.

Today I got information about my next host family (for the next month starting Monday, then I'll return to my current family again in Siguatepeque). There are two parents and two adult children, a son 30ish and a daughter 27. They live a block away from the central park of Santa Cruz de Yahoa, which should be convenient as far as meeting up with people and using internet, since right now it takes 30 minutes to walk downtown from my current house. Our facilitators said that the houses the people in my health project group will be staying in are poorer than the houses we live in here in Siguat. They paper I got says they own a small business, but who knows what. I am disappointed there are no kids in the family - they ease up the pressure and you can speak bad Spanish with kids without feeling awkward :) I just hope we get along half as well as I get along with my current family! We leave Monday morning and then will eat lunch with our new family and then meet up in the afternoon for the introduction to Santa Cruz.

Field-based training is basically we start integrating into a community, working with a community organization, do a few projects, work to improve our Spanish as always, practice giving charlas in the community, and basically getting more hands-on practice within the health project. The water and sanitation people in my group are going to a different town so we will be split up for a month, which is kinda sad because we all have friends in that group. Several married couples will be split up since they are in different projects, but the Peace Corps pays for them to stay in a hotel on the weekends so they can see each other - nice huh? And I think we will probably meet up and do weekend trips together to the nearby national parks. But there are 18 or so awesome people in the health project and I´m excited we will be spending more time together.

Yesterday we had a "Fiesta Cultural" so we spent most of the day decorating our big meeting space for the party (balloons, streamers, pine needles covering the floor to dance on) and everyone brought in different kinds of traditional Honduran foods. I made "horchata" which is a yummy drink that has sugar, cinnimon, and pumpkin seeds, mora seeds, and rice ground up and strained into the drink. It tasted like a Christmas drink. We all stuffed ourselves with carne asada (grilled seasoned steak), baleadas (flour tortillas filled with eggs and beans and cheese), tacos with chicken, fresh salsa, corn tortillas and lots of other things made out of corn, and lots of other kinds of food. Then some our spanish teachers showed us gringos how do dance and it was really fun (I have some great pictures). Then we commenced with the ping-pong tournament, a not so cultural event. It spilled over to today and I won 20 lempiras side-betting on the eventual champion, my friend Michael (20 lps is only a little more than a dollar but it seems like more here!). It was really fun. We have been playing ping-pong pretty much every day during our lunch hour. Since everyone put in 20 lps the winner got 140 lps, and the second and third place winners less.

While I am on it I´ll give you guys a few comparisons of how much things cost here. There are 18 lps to the dollar. Seeing Ocean´s Twelve in the movie theater cost the equivalent of $1.50, a two hour bus ride costs $1.00, a personal pizza costs about $2.50, an hour of internet costs about $1.00, a pack of cigarettes according to my host sister cost $1.00, a jar of peanut butter costs $2.50 because it´s imported, a beer costs about 60 cents, a tube of toothpaste $1.00, a Snicker´s bar costs a whopping 75 cents (pretty much all American foods are more expensive), a meal at Wendy´s about $3.00 (pricey!). So American money goes a long way here. That it why pretty much every family here has a member living "mojado", or illegal, in the states who sends money back to their family.

Then yesterday I went with two other girls to the house of a lady who mades t-shirts.We negotiated prices and options as far as color and sizes and it went pretty well. Our training group has designed 4 shirts, one for the guys (Hondudes), one for the girls that is way cute, a creative one for the 2 projects, water and sanitation and health, and one nicer polo shirt with the PC logo on it and our training year. They are all great, I´m excited. The regular tshirts are costing about $2.30 each and the polos much more expensive at $7.50.

Well that´s all for now. Keep writing to me at the address I gave before. The PC people will continue to bring over our mail from Tegucigalpa! Love you all lots and miss you!