Peace Corps Volunteer!!!

Well... the days of training are long gone... Friday, at about 3:45pm my time, I became an official Peace Corps Volunteer... After spending the day with our counterparts at the training center, we went to the US embassy in Teguz, had a lovely ceremony, and were sworn in as PCVs. From the 57 trainees in our H17 group, all 57 were sworn in! I am so proud of everyone!

It was an emotional day for sure... I am so grateful for all of the love and support from the PC training staff, and everyone in my training group. Ronaldo, our project training specialist (aka training director for youth development) is absolutely fantastic, and it is because of his energy and leadership that I made it this far. Our language facilitators, Jose Luis, Ana Maria, Angelica, and Jota Erre... super-equipo right there. And Youth Development as a whole, thank you so much for everything... even though I am pretty far away from most of you, I came out of training with a whole new support network and I am so glad I met every one of you. COMO ESTAN??????After the ceremony, we went to a restaurant to celebrate/say our goodbyes... Almost everyone was able to come, even Ashely whose appendix exploded the other day and was in the hospital! We got our Youth Development shirts (thanks to all Anna's hard work!!).
It was so nice to get to say hasta luego (not adios) to everyone... it was really hard since we've had each other to lean on for the past three months (and i am more than 8 hours away from some of my favorite people, 12 hours from two of them!), but rest assured, once the next 3 months are up and we're allowed to leave our sites, we will be reunited. It makes me feel better that there are several trainings that will start in January, so as much of a pain as it will be to get myself to Teguz once a month for 5 or 6 months, it's a chance to see some of my favorites and check in!

Yesterday began at 4am when I put the rest of my stuff together, got the bus to Teguz, and met my counterpart and her son (who had come along too) to begin our adventure getting all my stuff (and me) to Gracias, Lempira via public transportation. It was a long day, but we made it here by the afternoon! My counterpart (the one from the Youth Center) was wonderful- she took me on a tour when we got here, and to meet my other counterpart from the infant center, and then she let me stay at her house because my host family wasn't home yet. She made me dinner, and talked to me all day.

I finally made it to my host family's house, which is right down the street from my counterpart's house, and in the same neighborhood as both the youth center and the infant center. They seem nice and tranquilo... my room is set apart in the backyard, and has its own bathroom... there are two dogs, Oso and Blackie, and three kids. I have a 13 year old sister, 15 year old brother, and 23 year old brother whose in Washington DC until December.

I have four site mates! I met three of the four today- they were super nice and welcomed me with open arms, and showed me around a bit. Gracias is a quaint little colonial town (well, big for Honduran standards) with a central park, a mix of cobble stone and dirt roads, with a few mini-super markets, plenty of pulperias, some restaurants, hotels, churches, a castle, and they hot springs are set out of the center a bit, so i haven't seen them yet. Tomorrow I am going to work! Well... I am going to meet my new colleges at both organizations, get an idea of what it is that they do and what they want my support for, and get acquainted with everything. This week will be getting to know everybody and everything, and next week I think we will look ahead and figure out some short term goals for the first three months.

This is all so crazy... I can't believe i'm here! In my site! Where I am a Peace Corps Volunteer... whoa when did that happen??

Christmas Crafts, El Rosario Parade and Site Announcements!!!!!!

WOW what an exciting update this will be!!!!!! But first note that tomorrow is the last day of field based training, we will head out Saturday morning to the capital to get our residency cards and then return to our original host families. I am beyond excited to see Lordes and the fam again! One week of wrap up training and friday afternoon we become Peace Corps Volunteers. The next day, we ship out to site!

BUT FIRST. We had the chance to teach everyone else in training about something we're really good at, or something we like a lot. Naturally, I chose MANUALIDADES DE NAVIDAD! o, Christmas Crafts! I was very excited to celebrate a little bit of the festivities so soon. I made reindeer, penguins, candy canes, stockings, a Christmas tree, an ornament and a hand print wreath! To give you an idea of the other things people shared, I learned a bit of self defense, how to make soy milk, cloud story telling, and the differences between the Catholic and Evangelical churches.

I finished up my story hour with a book about a little elephant that gets lost, and is adopted by a pig couple, and he thinks he is a pig too because they are round like him. Then we colored elephant heads! One of the teachers at the kinder is absolutely lovely, and was so sad I had to leave. She was so sad that she wanted to keep the elephant head model that I had made to remember me by. I was touched to leave it with her.

PARADE! OUR PARADE IN EL ROSARIO! It was our last day of our self directed projects, and we went out with a BAM in El Rosario. The parade included masks, instruments, songs, chants, dance, and snacks! The kids hugged us about 20 times before we left (the teachers did too). They were such a wonderful group to work with!

And finally....... SITE ANNOUNCEMENTS!!!!! Wednesday was the big day! We had an intense powerpoint presentation...... For each site, first we saw a quote from that persons aspiration statement that he/she wrote after accepting their invitation to serve in Honduras. At that point, we couldn't really guess because everyone had pretty much forgotten what they had written. Then what popped up was the site that person was going to. And THAT point, we had a good idea, as we had narrowed down most people to one or two possible sites. And THEN their picture popped up!

I will be spending the next 2 years in Gracias, the capital of the department of Lempira. I was worried about a bigger site, but I am beyond excited. With a pen, i've already added an S to my ankle tattoo to say, Una poca de Gracias (instead of just, una poca de gracia). Its supposedly a quaint little colonial town about an hour from the Mayan ruins in Copan. They say its beautiful, and has hot springs! The climate is more fresco than the rest of the country.. which is PERFECT! Growing up in New England hasn't quite prepared me for a subtropical country. And fresco in no way means frio. I read somewhere that average temps are in the 60s.

I will have a few site mates as well. And I am thrilled about my counterparts... I am assigned to work with an infant center (children under 6) and a youth center. It looks like i've got my work cut out for me, and I am not sure where to begin, but I can't wait! The organizations have asked for things such as parent workshops, recreational activities, collaborating in structured activities for the kids, teaching english to teachers, sex ed/leadership workshops with the older kids in the youth center, reading activities, etc.

Regarding safety and security, ever since I found out I was going to a bigger site (which by the way, in the heart of Gracias there are only about 8,000- the 32,000 constitutes the outlaying aldeas as well) I have been tweaking out a bit. I even made an offer to Juan Carlos, PC-Honduras's safety and security guru, to be my roomate for the next two years in my site. BUT. Gracias a Dios, I read in the site booklet they gave us that there are limited security issues in my area... of course they exist, but it's a fairly safe place. And my host dad said that you never hear of anything bad happening in the department of Lempira on the news. YAY!!!!

I can't believe training is ending so soon... it really went by fast! And I have to say, the H17 Youth Development group is fabulous. It's weird to think we will all be separating next week, but now I have 18 people I can go visit when I need to breathe!

Miss you all, take care!
love, lisa

Fuego Shakers, Site Predictions and Ending FBT!

Hola!!!!!!!
I can't believe this is our last week of FBT here in Talanga.... holy moly did that go by fast.

Last Friday we had a fieldtrip to a place with a pool, to go over everything we've covered these past few weeks, and to just... hang out. I bought a coconut from a man who chopped it up with his machete!

This week we made compost piles and little garden... ohhhh manual labor, how you've found me again... Oh! But a man from a tv station walked by and filmed up, and supposedly we made it on the Honduran news! Literally it was a man with a camcorder, meandering around the streets of Talanga, looking for something interesting.

We are wrapping up our self directed projects, next Thursday is the big parade in El Rosario! We are showcasing their masks, instruments, banner, singing abilities and potential dance abilities. Last week Margarita and I were in charge of making FUEGO SHAKERS!!!!


I have 2 more story hours next week- this past week i read a book about a boy who gets made into a pizza, and then we all decorated paper pieces of pizza! They had to draw their face in the middle, then they could decorate it however they wanted.... i made a model with my face, and about 3 kids gave themselves red hair, freckles and glasses... one of them actually drew an exact replica of my face.

Site announcements are Wednesday! We had our last interview this past week, and from that i gathered that I am being sent to a BIG site. AHHH!!! It will be ok... I mean... I had hoped for a small site, but there is a reason for everything. It's more about the work than the site, anyways. And it sounds like I will be doing some pretty awesome stuff. I am assigned two counterparts, one at a youth center (which I guess requires a lot of energy, as they told me even though i would have preferred a small site, i was the only one with enough energy to handle this youth center), and the other is at an infant center with little little ones. The second is paid for by the government, and is for extremely poor families. On Wednesday I should get more details! But given what we know already, and some internet research, I am ALMOST positive i know where i am going... but in case there are any Peace Corps rules about disclosing information, I won't say...

We had a lovely gathering last night at Alicia's house, everyone came! We celebrated Stacie's upcoming birthday. It was so much funnnn... I am going to miss everyone so much! It's weird to think that in just two weeks we will be dispersed all over Honduras.

Ohhhh we were taking some group pictures, and someone decided we should do one of them Honduran style... which means you don't smile and just stare... I dont remember whose camera it was taken on but I will try to snag it off of facebook to share with you all!

Thanks for following! I will leave you with a picture of my Spanish class.... And stay tuned to find out where I will spend the next two years of my life! ABRAZOS!!!!
love, lisa

HOLA!

This is a test... can you see the picture? Let me know! I feel that my last blog entry was naked, as it lacked photos, but the photos seemed to be causing the previous problems.

Huelgas, Catrachas and Brushing your teeth!

I can’t believe its August… more than halfway through August at that… I wore my bathing suit for the first time this summer yesterday when we went to visit the MuniD site (we picnic’d at a pool). I keep forgetting its summer since it’s not summer here… The school year goes from February through November… And we’re not near a beach!

We have three more weeks of training in Talanga and one week in Zarabanda before we all, hopefully, get sworn in as volunteers. LOCO!

What’s been going on… lets see….


Our El Rosario group gave mini health classes (health was a topic that the parents wanted us to cover) so we split it up between the 4 of us into washing hands, exercise, healthy food and brushing your teeth. I did brushing your teeth…. And made up a song to teach them!! It goes to the tune of Far-e-sha-ka (pardon the spelling):

Cepille los, Cepille los (brush your, brush your)
Dientes… Dientes (teeth, teeth)
Yo hago cada dia (I do it everyday)
Despues de la comida (After the food0
Sonrisa, Sonrisa (Smile, smile)

I POSTED A VIDEO ON FACEBOOK IF YOU WANT TO SEE IT IN ACTION!


We also made an AWESOME BANNER to carry in our parade! The big day is September 2nd. Whooooo! Thanks to Margarita's mom, for the daises! I'm having blog problems so i will hopefully post pictures later!!


Last week we did Dental Hygiene training, and then went and gave a class on it in a school (we threw in my song!). Peace Corps does a program with Colgate, and Colgate donates toothbrushes and toothpaste to kids if we work with teachers to carry through with the program. We talk about basic hygiene, cavities, healthy food and preventative measures… the kicker is getting the teacher to hold up her end of the deal and get the kids to brush their teeth at school (they get one toothbrush for home and one for school). Dental hygiene is a huge problem here... dentists are hard to find, and when you find one, they are too expensive to visit... a lot of kids have black spots on their teeth, which can only be removed by dental tools, and are caused by food/bacteria that was never removed. I feel quite strongly about the Colgate program given my recent dental fiasco... baaaahah..... if only someone came to talk to me about flossing during those 8 years I abstained from the dentist.....


We’ve also gotten training on TEAM, Teaching English and Methodology, which is a program to teach teachers how to teach English. They say that pretty much every YD volunteer ends up having a TEAM class. This week we have a two day training on HIV/AIDS.


This week marks the second week of the latest teacher strike… This is one of the challenges of youth development volunteers, as much of our work is scheduled around schools. It’s just the public schools that go on strike. There are also some private ones (which, as you’d imagine, they cost a lot of money that most people don’t have), and there is another kind of school that doesn’t get funding from the government to pay the teachers (though they get resources, like text books/materials) so every parent pays a little bit to pay the teacher, and since the government is not paying those teachers, they don’t go on strike (we did our dental hygiene class in one of those schools).


Despite the strike, the kinder I'm doing my individual project in has remained opened... some teachers (very few) have chosen to continue classes, just out of good conscience and devotion to their students (as they are the ones suffering the most)... it's a sticky situation because the teachers that continue to give classes during strikes are usually targeted by their colleagues. Buttttt I've had my story hour the past two weeks! We read a book about a puppy who didn't want to eat his dinner and got sick off of caramelos and made puppy masks (adorable, sadly I forgot my camera that day). And then today we worked with numbers and we made number necklaces! One of the teachers was so impressed, and the kids were so excited (yes, about NUMBERS!) that they got to take home their necklaces. Fun activities are lacking like whoaaaaa.


Oh! A kinder. That's like... a mix between preschool and kindergarten... its kindergarten aged kids, but there isn't much of a preschool system, and the kinder day is shorter, AND it is usually separate from the schools...


We had another interview this past week with the YD director and the Training Director, where we talk about our strengths and interests, and concerns about where we will be placed…. I got them to admit (kind of) that they know where they are sending me, butttt I’ve got to wait until September 1st to find out what Honduran community needs Lisa the most…. a community desperate for arts and crafts???


Friday was cultural day…. We all had to make a typical Honduran dish with our families to bring, and then each Spanish class gave a presentation on an aspect of our culture in the United States. One class did Thanksgiving, one did Football, one did Hollywood, one did the four seasons, and my class did the melting pot. There was quite the array of food… my host mom and I made Catrachas, which are deep friend tortillas topped with refried beans and cheese (a heart attack waiting to happen)… the word Catracha is actually another term for Honduran, and the connotation has a lot of national pride in it, so these little friend tortilla things are one of the national foods of Honduras.



OH! So. One of the aspirantes (trainees) met a man who wanted help in his english class.... so a few of us signed up to help last weekend... a few went in the morning, and Margarita and I went in the afternoon... The teacher thought we would stay until the school closed, and come back all weekend (8-5)! We went thinking we were going to meet with the class and talk about something that they wanted to learn but we went in and were assumed to be teaching the class... so, we gave an impromptu intro to English course.... I explained that we had other commitments and could not come back all weekend, but would return for an hour... I'm not sure why this happened... The teacher just... wanted us to teach his class... but this is probably going to happen an awful lot when we get into site... The problem is that it's not sustainable if we just pop in and take over.... But since we are just here for 3 more weeks, we'll just... teach some numbers and colors. It was such a weird situation.... hahahah we had said we had to leave at 4, and hour after we got there, and it was about 5 of 4 when we were asking the students (three 17 year old boys) the kinds of things they wanted to learn next time, and the teacher stops me and says we still have 5 more minutes of teaching left to do... WHOA! Tranquilo, budddy, tranquilo.


Annnnd.... Anything else? We've been having our dance classes.... i gotta say... i am not too graceful on my feet... Thats all i really have to say about that.


Thanks for reading, sorry about the technical difficulties, i really don't know what's wrong! Miss and love you all, take care!

Huelgas, Catrachas and Brusing Teeth!

I can’t believe its August… more than halfway through August at that… I wore my bathing suit for the first time this summer yesterday when we went to visit the MuniD site (we picnic’d at a pool). I keep forgetting its summer since it’s not summer here… The school year goes from February through November… And we’re not near a beach!

We have three more weeks of training in Talanga and one week in Zarabanda before we all, hopefully, get sworn in as volunteers. LOCO!

What’s been going on… lets see….

Our El Rosario group gave mini health classes (health was a topic that the parents wanted us to cover) so we split it up between the 4 of us into washing hands, exercise, healthy food and brushing your teeth. I did brushing your teeth…. And made up a song to teach them!! It goes to the tune of Far-e-sha-ka (pardon the spelling):

Cepille los, Cepille los (brush your, brush your)

Dientes… Dientes (teeth, teeth)

Yo hago cada dia (I do it everyday)

Despues de la comida (After the food0

Sonrisa, Sonrisa (Smile, smile)

I POSTED A VIDEO ON FACEBOOK IF YOU WANT TO SEE IT IN ACTION!

We also made an AWESOME BANNER to carry in our parade! The big day is September 2nd. Whooooo! Thanks to Margarita's mom, for the daises!

Last week we did Dental Hygiene training, and then went and gave a class on it in a school (we threw in my song!). Peace Corps does a program with Colgate, and Colgate donates toothbrushes and toothpaste to kids if we work with teachers to carry through with the program. We talk about basic hygiene, cavities, healthy food and preventative measures… the kicker is getting the teacher to hold up her end of the deal and get the kids to brush their teeth at school (they get one toothbrush for home and one for school). Dental hygiene is a huge problem here... dentists are hard to find, and when you find one, they are too expensive to visit... a lot of kids have black spots on their teeth, which can only be removed by dental tools, and are caused by food/bacteria that was never removed. I feel quite strongly about the Colgate program given my recent dental fiasco... baaaahah..... if only someone came to talk to me about flossing during those 8 years I abstained from the dentist.....

We’ve also gotten training on TEAM, Teaching English and Methodology, which is a program to teach teachers how to teach English. They say that pretty much every YD volunteer ends up having a TEAM class. This week we have a two day training on HIV/AIDS.

This week marks the second week of the latest teacher strike… This is one of the challenges of youth development volunteers, as much of our work is scheduled around schools. It’s just the public schools that go on strike. There are also some private ones (which, as you’d imagine, they cost a lot of money that most people don’t have), and there is another kind of school that doesn’t get funding from the government to pay the teachers (though they get resources, like text books/materials) so every parent pays a little bit to pay the teacher, and since the government is not paying those teachers, they don’t go on strike (we did our dental hygiene class in one of those schools).

Despite the strike, the kinder I'm doing my individual project in has remained opened... some teachers (very few) have chosen to continue classes, just out of good conscience and devotion to their students (as they are the ones suffering the most)... it's a sticky situation because the teachers that continue to give classes during strikes are usually targeted by their colleagues. Buttttt I've had my story hour the past two weeks! We read a book about a puppy who didn't want to eat his dinner and got sick off of caramelos and made puppy masks (adorable, sadly I forgot my camer

a that day). And then today we worked with numbers and we made number necklaces! One of the teachers was so impressed, and the kids were so excited (yes, about NUMBERS!) that they got to take home their necklaces. Fun activities are lacking like whoaaaaa.

Oh! A kinder. That's like... a mix between preschool

and kindergarten... its kindergarten aged kids, but there isn't much of a preschool system, and the kinder day is shorter, AND it is usually separate from the schools...

We had another interview this past week with the YD director and the Training Director, where we talk about our strengths and interests, and concerns about where we will be placed…. I got them to admit (kind of) that they know where they are sending me, butttt I’ve got to wait until September 1^st to find out what Honduran community needs Lisa the most…. a community desperate for arts and crafts???

Friday was cultural day…. We all had to make a typical Honduran dish with our families to bring, and then each Spanish class gave a presentation on an aspect of our culture in the United States. One class did Thanksgiving, one did Football, one did Hollywood, one did the four seasons, and my class did the melting pot. There was quite the array of food… my host mom and I made Catrachas, which are deep friend tortillas topped with refried beans and cheese (a heart attack waiting to happen)… the word Catracha is actually another term for Honduran, and the connotation has a lot of national pride in it, so these little friend tortilla things are one of the national foods of Honduras.

OH! So. One of the aspirantes (trainees) met a man who wanted help in his english class.... so a few of us signed up to help last weekend... a few went in the morning, and Margarita and I went in the afternoon... The teacher thought we would stay until the school closed, and come back all weekend (8-5)! We went thinking we were going to meet with the class and talk about something that they wanted to learn but we went in and were assumed to be teaching the class... so, we gave an impromptu intro to English course.... I explained that we had other commitments and could not come back all weekend, but would return for an hour... I'm not sure why this happened... The teacher just... wanted us to teach his class... but this is probably going to happen an awful lot when we get into site... The problem is that it's not sustainable if we just pop in and take over.... But since we are just here for 3 more weeks, we'll just... teach some numbers and colors. It was such a weird situation.... hahahah we had said we had to leave at 4, and hour after we got there, and it was about 5 of 4 when we were asking the students (three 17 year old boys) the kinds of things they wanted to learn next time, and the teacher stops me and says we still have 5 more minutes of teaching left to do... WHOA! Tranquilo, budddy, tranquilo.

Annnnd.... Anything else?We've been having our dance classes.... i gotta say... i am not too graceful on my feet... Thats all i really have to say about that.

I will leave you with

a picture of our awesome El Rosario group!

Thanks for reading, sorry about the technical difficulties, i really don't know what's wrong! Miss and love you all, take care!

Technical Difficulties?

I have received several notifications from several people that my blog was encountering problems (thank you for your concern, and continued support!). This is a test entry. Can you see me? Can you see my prior blog posts? I posted one over a week ago with some awesome pictures, including some fabulous masks we made in El Rosario. I will upload it again in case it was lost.
Let me know if you can see my previous entries! I've got more to say but want to make sure everything is showing up first.
The thing is, everyone in Honduras can see the updates no problem... which makes it hard to determine what's wrong.
Love you all,
Lisa