Lo bueno

I've been informed that my last post seemed a little dark, so I want to assure everyone that things are great here, just wanted to switch things up a bit with some sarcasm.  It has been pouring here for about 3 days (welcome to rainy season in Honduras), so I'm a tad bored and eager to be able to go outside again without risk of a wipeout on the muddy road.

Plenty of exciting things have happened lately.  For example, my network of cajas (CAMACO) was just given a new office and computer, and my counterpart has been completely through the roof ever since.  He has been so giddy that he and some of the guys at the municipality are talking about taking me on a trip to see ¨all the nice parts of Honduras.¨  Not sure what that means.

Yesterday a couple of coworkers took me and Tricia to a town in Comayagua to pick up furniture from a departing volunteer.  We'll be moving into our apartments soon, so we're trying to get as much stuff as possible from other volunteers (table, chairs, pots/pans, appliances, etc).  We ended up taking back the volunteer's guitar, and had a singalong in the car on the way back - with the two songs that we had learned for the colegio chorus.  Too funny...

My town is building a new mall, and the two stores in front are the two major phone companies here, Tigo and Claro.  They've been in a marketing war for about a week now, blasting reggaeton, passing out promotional ads, and using large ballons and windsocks to attract people.  It's been entertaining.

The ex-president of Honduras, Mel Zelaya, also paraded through town a couple weekends ago, which caused quite a buzz.  Google him if you want the backstory.

I started working with an NGO called FIPAH last week - they are the ones that collaborate with the UNC/Nourish volunteers.  They took me to a small town to meet with a group of girls that just started a coffee cooperative.  I'm going to be giving them some business trainings, and we also played soccer for about an hour before it started to rain and I crapped out (everyone else kept playing).  Very authentic PC experience.

I'm also going to be collaborating with a new USAID project called ACCESO that is being implemented in the western part of Honduras.  Basically I'm going to be facilitating communication between all of the local governments and aid organizations that work with small businesses (mostly in agriculture), and help them enroll in this program.  I'll also probably help schedule and give trainings.  Have a look if you'd like!  http://www.usaid-acceso.org/