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.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

My first taller!

Hey all, I hope all is well at home!

I can't write much because I am supposed to meet the rest of the group at Happy Restaurant for some beers and appetizers, but I wanted to write a bit about my first taller, or workshop.

Yesterday and today my group of 4 put on a workshop for the community health volunteers, most of which were midwives. I was nervous but these ladies were soooo cute. Most of them were older, and there was only one guy out of 20, but you could tell they were leaders in their community, had a deep love for their community, and had many years of experience and yet were very eager to learn more. Yesterday the theme of the day was self-esteem and goal setting. We did this to empower them to help the youth in their community and to show them they can build self-esteem in young women to prevent teen pregnancy. Today the theme was breastfeeding, and though they knew a lot about the topic they were still involved and interested in what we were saying. There were 3 times I could tell they had never heard something before because they all ooooed and ahhhhhed and looked really excited to have a new piece of knowledge to apply in their communities. When it was all over we gave them diplomas for their participation - diplomas are a huge thing here. They will probably go and display it in their house, as well as the nametags we made for all of them, that's just how they are here. All of the ladies gave me big hugs after lunch, coooing "que linda!" at me and just showing their appreciation of us being there to work with them. So it was a good experience. I never could envision myself working with older community members in that capacity, and I probably will focus more on youth and self-esteem and HIV/AIDS, but now I know that I can definitely have a good time with a bunch of cute old ladies too :)

I have to go, my friend Lauren is waiting for me. But I do want to tell you all about the beautiful waterfall we visited today during our Spanish class and the interview I had with my project manager about my site placement, which I will know by next Friday!! Crazy huh :) Ok take care and I will write soon!

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