¡Feliz Día del Padre!

Yesterday was fathers' day in Honduras.  Apparently it's not that big of a holiday, but we had a barbeque today at my house for all the extended family, with hamburgers and CUPCAKES, which were the highlight of my month.  Chocolate with white frosting and M&Ms.

Other than that, we're finishing up this part of training and getting ready to move to Field Based Training (FBT) on Wednesday.  This means I'll be in a town about an hour farther from Teguz, just with business people, and I'll be getting a new host family.  I'm excited about some aspects but sad to leave my family and neighbors here.

Friday, my Spanish class went on a field trip to the market in Tegucigalpa, where our "test" was to take the bus and a taxi there and then buy things at the market for our host families.  We sped through that portion so that we could have time to go to the supermercado, where I splurged on some Nutella.  We also went back to Teguz yesterday to fill out paperwork for our residency cards, which took hours.  It was basically Honduras' version of the DMV, and just as disfunctional.  At one point, the system completely shut down, so we had the bus driver take us to Pizza Hut for lunch until it got fixed.  There are some things I like about Teguz, but it is very polluted, and after 2 straight days there I am glad to be back in clean air.

A lot has happened in the past week other than cupcakes, Nutella, and Teguz, but of course I'm blanking.  I've been getting schooled by the neighbor kids in soccer, watching the NCAA tournament with the other gringos, and of course spending time with my host family.  I also organized a march madness pool amongst the trainees, which as been fun.  And I suppose my next post will be from FBT!

Gatitos & La Tigra

Ironically, right after I got back from posting that last entry about the animal noises, my host family greeted me with the news that one of the cats had given birth to a litter of 5 gatitos.  It was raining that evening, so we weren’t able to see them, but they were wailing all night.  It kept us all up, to the point where I got out my camera in the middle of the night to document the racket.

I did go outside to see them the next day, and they were precious in a sort of rat-like way (1-day-old animals aren’t the cutest).  Unfortunately, things haven’t been going so well since then.  Apparently the mom wants nothing to do with them, and although Paco has been trying to feed them milk with a dropper, 3 have died since Thursday.  I hope the other 2 make it, but I’m not optimistic.  I wish I could think of a better solution, but I’m leaving next week and can’t really do much to care for them.

Apart from the gatitos, I had a busy weekend.  Paco took me and another aspirante to Teguz on Saturday to look at guitars at a music store.  He plays in a band here, and I actually learned one of their songs on bass and piano last week.  They really want me to play a few songs with them (preferably on drums if we can fix our neighbors’ set), but I’m only here for 3.5 weeks, so there isn’t really enough time.  They have been pestering me to sing so they can play American songs, and I could probably do it, but it’d take a lot of guts to sing in front of a crowd as the only gringa in a Honduran band!

Anyway, we looked at a bunch of guitars, but they only had one cheap one in stock, so I’ll have to go back later to buy one.  I also really want to buy a new baseball glove… for those that don’t know, mine was stolen at Boys & Girls Club last summer, and I never replaced it.  As much as I’m going to try to like soccer here, I’d feel better getting involved with a baseball team.

Yesterday I went with a group to La Tigra, a nearby national park, and we hiked there for about 6 hours.  It was a really tough hike, with gorgeous mountain views and jungle.  We hiked up to a waterfall, which was really tall but didn’t have much water flowing.  I put the pictures on Picasa.

When I got back, my house was full of extended family and neighbors, and I was so exhausted that I barely made it through the obligatory conversation.  I just missed the NCAA selection show, but I have been explaining the tournament to my host family.  It’s going to take a lot of self-control not to get sucked into watching all the games (I’m doing Peace Corps … just because I get CBS doesn’t mean I should be watching it).

Los perros ladran

I´ve been here 2 weeks!  We have basically been slogging along with training, which includes Spanish classes, sessions on things like health and safety, and technical sessions with the business group.  I can feel my Spanish getting better, which has been really encouraging – I guess that’s what 4 hours of Spanish class a day does to you.

We did our first business project this week, traveling to a nearby town (the one that’s walking distance from where I live) to visit small businesses.  We split into 4 groups, but there are only 3 advanced Spanish speakers in the business project, and my group was the only one without a near-fluent speaker.  It was scary at first, but wound up being a great opportunity.  We went to a leather store, and because we didn’t have a native speaker to fall back on, we were forced to really put ourselves out there to interview the woman.  It went really well, and turns out, the man who owns the business is my next door neighbor.  Small world.

As I mentioned before, my “town” is very small, basically just a road going up a hill, and the houses are all close together.  The very first house has a pool table, and we have gone down there a couple times with my host dad’s dad (Don Paco).  It is really fun, but the family has 5 dogs, 2 of which are huge, and they bark the entire time we are playing.

The dogs at that house are only the beginning.  Our street is dog central – I can’t even estimate how many there are… maybe 30?  You literally cannot walk anywhere without setting off a chorus of barking.  There’s the sad emaciated dog near the pulperia, our buddy Guardian (who follows us wherever we go), the two dogs that barrel down their driveway and crash into the fence, the dog with the opposable thumbs, the two dogs that wail from the roof of their house, and the great dane that’s caged perilously close to the road.  Once I get through the dog assault and get back to my house, Fiona starts jumping at my feet, biting either my shoes or my pant leg, to the point where I can barely walk.

I never thought dogs could play such a role in daily life, but the barking that is so constant it’s like white noise.  There’s also one rooster and a herd of really cute small chickens (not chicks, but not full grown either), and my host family has 3 cats that like to jump on the roof, so there’s a nice chorus of animal noise at all times.  I kind of like it, except when they wake me up in the night.  Also, I have no idea how someone with a dog allergy would survive in Peace Corps.

Poco a poco

¡Hola!  Things are still going well, and I feel like I’ve been here a lot longer than a week.

All the trainees (aspirantes) are dispersed in villages in and around our training site, and there are 7 of us in my barrio.  It’s a really nice setup because the houses are all close together, and pretty much everyone is related, so we do a lot of things together.  Several of us like to run, so we went Monday after training… the problem is that we live on the side of a mountain, and the road goes straight up.  I think we made it about 50 yards, no exaggeration.  We “hiked” the rest of the way up, with some great views of the villages and of Tegucigalpa.  But I never really caught my breath, and when I got back to the house, my stomach was not having it.

My host mom kindly pointed out that it was silly of me to run up a mountain when I’d already been sick from the altitude, and I have to agree.  Still, I want to push  myself because I’m probably going to be in the mountains for my entire time here.   The good thing is I’ve felt fine ever since, and I walked up the mountain again yesterday with no problem.

On another note, I am completely spoiled by my host family.  Not in the obvious sense, although they do have a TV and electroducha (warm shower), but most importantly because they run the neighborhood purified water business.  From my limited experience in the developing world, I would say having access to drinkable water is the top priority… moreso than a flush toilet or shower.  Having a water cooler here takes a huge stress out of the experience, and I’ll surely be spoiled in a few weeks when we move to our business training site.

Speaking of the TV, it’s been really fun to watch shows and attempt to discuss them with my family.  I watch cartoons with Andrea Pequeña, and chick flicks or novelas  (soap operas) with my host mom.  If you’re not familiar with novellas, they’re crazy: in about 30 minutes, two new couples hooked up, a mom on her deathbed told her son who his real father was, and a woman was reborn after being cryogenically frozen.  I’ve also been watching the Spanish version of Around the Horn on ESPN and found some college b-ball, so I’m hopeful that UNC-Duke will be on here on Sunday.

Training has been going well.  We started meeting with the business team this week, and it sounds like all the business volunteers here have multiple projects that include working with small businesses or NGOs, giving trainings to adults in accounting and basic computer skills, and reaching out to youth at local schools.  This makes me really happy because I think I’ll be more successful if I get involved in lots of different things (i..e when one project is slow/frustrating, maybe another will be going well, so I won’t get as discouraged).  We also have a lot of input into our projects and site placement – I think much more than most PC volunteers.

My Spanish is better than I gave myself credit for, but I still feel really hindered by the language barrier.  A lot of times there are things that I want to say but I don’t know the vocabulary or sentence structure.  Also, for those familiar with Spanish, they don’t really use “tu” here, only “usted” and the ever-frustrating “vos.”  So it’s one of those “take everything you’ve learned and throw it out the window” situations.  Also, Hondurans have their own words for a lot of things; for example, a pen is a lapiz, and there’s another word for beer.  But I can definitely function, and we just started formal language classes, so it’s only uphill from here.  (Uphill in a good sense, as opposed to my “run”, which was uphill in a bad sense.)

¡Cheque!