Lauren's Peace Corps Experience in Honduras

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed and experiences described in this travelogue are mine personally. Nothing written here should be interpreted as official or unofficial Peace Corps literature or as sanctioned by the Peace Corps or the U.S. government. I have chosen to write about my experience online in order to update family and friends; I am earning no money whatsoever from this endeavor. Please do not copy or forward any of these contents without my permission.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Gearing up for my Volunteer Visit

Hey people!

Well, it was another good day in Honduras. To catch up a bit, Sunday night I watched the Super Bowl with my Honduran family - I tried to explain a little bit about American football in Spanish, which I am sure Chris would have loved to hear, and I even acted out some of the important parts of the game. Anyway, it was in Spanish and so I missed out on all the commercials (I did hear about the cat one though from the volunteers who went into town to watch it at a bar) but at least I could see the game and knew who won.

Monday back to training. Things are going pretty well in that department. My Spanish is coming along and I am slowly getting more comfortable, but I have to remind myself I have been here less than 3 weeks now, though it seems like I have been here forever in a weird way. Today for our Spanish class we went into town to ask questions of the vendors in the market - what do you sell, what is this odd looking food, how much does this cost, what is this used for, etc. The whole market experience is really fun and everyone there was really nice. I also found some really nice cheap hammocks that I want to get before I leave for my site in a few months - here, having a hammock for a nice siesta is key. Since we finished our assignment early we walked around downtown, and I shared a banana split (in Spanish: "banana split") with my friend Ben, which was absolute heaven. Then we went back for lunch. Quite a nice morning actually.

In the afternoon we spent a couple hours preparing a charla with a partner. Charlas are talks about various topics, for me health, to groups of people. My topic today was Respiratory Infections, the leading cause of death for children here under 5 in Honduras - and the sad thing is they are preventable if mothers can be educated about them. Well my partner and I drew up our posters (here we use Charla paper with lots of pictures to show the main ideas, since many people in our communities will be illiterate - I'll show you some pictures of them eventually). Well considering it was our first and it was in Spanish, it wasn't half bad. We will be working on them a lot and giving them to various groups when we go to Field Based Training in about a week, which is a month of training in a different city, living with a different family. Then we will come back to Siguatepeque for our last month of training.

This Thursday I will go on my much anticipated and somewhat scary "volunteer visit". I am visiting a volunteer named Grace who lives pretty close by, around 2 hours by bus. We all have to find our own way to their house with the directions given to us. So that involves figuring out the bus schedule, how to transfer, when to leave, etc. Luckily I won't need to transfer, so assuming I get on the right bus, I will be fine. She lives between Comayagua and Tegucigalpa, right off the Pan-American highway. I will stay at her house for 2 nights, observe what she does, go to the health center to see what it´s like, and just generally see what a volunteer´s life is like here. Some people get to go to the North Coast, the beautiful beaches, which sounds awesome, but they have to ride in the bus for like 8 hours. Other people are going in the opposite direction 8 or 9 hours. So I feel pretty fortunate to have a short trip. I´m excited to meet Grace, she wrote me a nice letter and it´ll be interesting to observe her life.

Oh I still haven´t gotten the packages people have sent me, but I expect some will be arriving by next week. On Monday I did get a nice card from Mom, thanks Mom! Also, Chris told me my Valentine´s Day card reached him in 10 days, so that´s not too bad. Keep writing! It really is a huge pick-me-up.

Well I love you all and miss you. I hope to write again soon!

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