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.

Saturday, February 26, 2005

It's Saturday and life is good

Hi friends and family!

Well it's a beautiful Saturday morning here in Santa Cruz. The busyness of the week has been forgotten momentarily and I am enjoying having 2 days ahead of me to relax. At 11 this morning my family is taking me to El Cajon, which from what I have heard is a dam/waterfall/swimming hole that is supposed to be beautiful. I think it also powers electricity to the area around it, although when it was built it was intended to do much more, so it was considered a failure. But from all accounts it is gorgeous and a must to bring your camera. I have my bathing suit on and I'm ready to go :) My mom is preparing steak to grill (carne asada) and a large spread to go with it. So I'll tell you all about it!

Yesterday was a momentous day. My first real charla! In true Honduran form, we ended up waiting at least an hour for any of the youth to show up, and when they did it was only half the size we expected. So Lauren and I gave our charla to 3 young guys, ages varying from 15ish, 18, and 20. We had a blast. Within the first minute our nervousness went away and we realized we had some great youth in front of us. One reminded me of Ian, because when he introduced himself he said his favorite thing to do is praise God with his voice and his guitar. Also, and this really got me to the point of tears, he said his uncle had died of AIDS a few years ago. He said he believed that if his uncle had heard a charla on HIV/AIDS, he might have lived. That's why he was there, so he could learn as much as possible and prevent other deaths. It really gave new value to what I am doing here, hearing a story like that. Another youth about 18 was a jokester, and knew a surprising amount about HIV already, although none of them knew the answers to our pop quiz before the charla, and they knew afterwards. We just had a good time - we did lots of interactive activities with them, and we had them debating different forms of transmission, how risky certain behaviors are (from a french kiss, holding hands, a mosquito bite, to unprotected sex and a mother with AIDS breastfeeding). After the charla, which lasted about an hour and a half to 2 hours, we got them started on making their own charla materials. The younger quieter one we discovered loved making the puppets, another one had very nice handwriting and could draw, and the other we taught how to trace so that he could get past his unartisticness. I really hope they show up on Monday to give the charla to the 6th graders. If they can't come, Lauren and I will do it again, which is fine too, because it is fun to do this. To see lightbulbs go off in their heads and be surprised about learning things completely opposite to what they thought (for example, many kids are taught that condoms are not anywhere close to reliable, less than 50% as opposed to the actual 99% reliability when used correctly-they are also taught that bad people puncture condoms, and it is pretty safe to say that these beliefs come from the fact that this is a strongly conservative culture, where abstinence is the only way. But meanwhile kids are doing what kids do, and contracting diseases and getting pregnant and creating a whole host of problems). Anyway that's the end of my shpeal. But let me just finish and say that it was a great experience yesterday. And now I feel more motivated to get through all of the projects that had me feeling overwhelmed earlier.

Well I just wanted to share that with you. I am hoping to have a great weekend, just winding down and hanging out with my host family and as always, working on my Spanish. I hope you all have an equally pleasant weekend, and I'll write again soon.

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