I´m alive

I know I haven't posted for awhile - but I am still alive and kicking here in Hondu.

One of the things my site is famous for is its caves. Right outside the town on the main highway, there's an entrance with lights, and I think walkways. I haven't been. But up in the mountains there are unmarked entrances as well. One of the reasons they're famous is because (apparently) so many people have gotten lost in them. My guide book encourages adventurers to be careful and consider hiring a guide at the main entrance. One of my Honduran friends offered to take me the back way, and of course, I took him up on the offer. He and his friend (we'll call him Oscar...All Hondurans have at least four names. When you ask their name, they will tell you all four of them, but won't tell you what they go by, often a different nickname. One of his names was Oscar, but that's not what Alan was calling him. However, I could never catch exactly what he was actually calling him) had been before, and assured me they knew the caves well. I should have suspected something, I suppose, when they couldn't even remember how to get to the entrance.

After finally getting there, and probably about an hour of caving, we reached a large, spectacular cavern with no easy way to continue, rested for another hour or so enjoying the complete darkness, and decided to head back. And promptly got lost.

(Honduras is spectacularly rich in natural beauty. And Hondurans take very little notice of it. In the US, you would never find a cave like this without lights, walkways, and big signs telling you not to touch the rock formations. Here, Alan decided he wanted to climb one of the formations – and did so. Made for a much more exciting (also, free!) experience for us, and once you learn to ignore the occasional discarded food wrappers... Well, it's incredible. But it also means that so many people will miss out on its beauty. It's a dilemma.)

I think the caves diverged and then by some stroke of luck, re-converged later. We definitely did not come and go by the same path, but miraculously got out to the same entrance. Oscar was serving as our guide and several times had to go on ahead to scope out paths. I, of course, hadn't been paying special attention to our route, because I had come with two guys who knew what they were doing, right? We did eventually get out, obviously. Ah, the joy of seeing outside light after hours of only the weak light of two puny flashlights. I came out covered in mud and bat droppings (doing laundry was fun), a huge bruise on my leg and several scratches all over (what d'ya know – one of the disadvantages of not having lighted, safety-railing-ed walkways is that you have to navigate over loose, slippery, muddy rocks around bottomless abysses), but alive to tell the story, and with some good pics of Alan climbing a stalagmite (I'll upload someday).

Oh, and after we got out, Alan insisted that he knew the way to a great lookout spot. Ha. And I still hadn't learned. At least then we were outside and could see where we were walking. And when we were still out there when it got dark, we already had flashlights on us from exploring the cave :)

But it was totally worth it. PS, who wants to visit me? I'm a total caving expert by now :)

And now for your Spanish lesson:

cabello – hair

caballo – horse

If, for some strange inexplicable reason, you happen to mix up these two words, any sane Spanish speaker (or host sister) will be doubled over with laughter for at least five minutes. Just a warning.

Words I would have never learned if it weren't for Honduras

golpe de estado (coup d'etat) and toque de queda (curfew)

The short version: I'm STILL not a Peace Corps Volunteer

The long version:
Monday – Mel Zelaya decides to return to Honduras
3:30 – curfew announced (starting at 4:00), teachers freak out, because our training center is at least half an hour from Teguc where they all live, we all go home early
I start feeling sick, but don't think anything of it
Tuesday – curfew extended, no classes, I stay in bed all day feeling pretty awful, curfew extended again
Wednesday – I do not receive the news about not having class again, get up and get dressed, despite still having a fever of 101, learn that there is no class and go immediately back to bed. I'm hungry at lunchtime, someone decides that an appropriate lunch would be french fries, greasy rice, and fake processed chicken nuggets. I start to have stomach issues and skip supper. I get a call from the medical officer asking if I'm sad because my family is worried about me since I've spent 2 days in bed. I tell her, no, I'm just sick
Thursday – feel much better, fever is gone, but still having stomach issues. We learn in training that because we've missed so much time (2 days), we have to postpone swearing-in 5 days (granted, only 3 of those 5 days are weekday/classes). We then proceed to do practically nothing all day. I eat 4 crackers for lunch, then manage to sneak out to take a power nap. Also, I have my language interview and learn that I've passed the language requirement for serving in Honduras! (I'm at a level 5 on a scale of 1 to 10.. I think that means I can only say half the things I might need to say in order too survive.. but pssh, that was while I was sick.. ha.)
Friday - a day of classes aka not much all day. We had reservations for a restaurant afterwords to celebrate being sworn-in.. HA! We didn't even get to take advantage of those reservations because Zelaya was creating noise in Teguc and there was a curfew put in place again that night
Saturday (today) - I wake up feeling good, and decide to go for a walk to a waterfall, but start feeling awful on the way there. I worry that it might have been a mistake, but after forging up the river to the fall I feel 100% better. totally worth it, it was gorgeous.. one day I'll get pics up

Food

I've decided there are a couple foods that have to be brought back to the states... one is mantequilla, which I believe is a strictly Honduran thing. Spanish speakers will know that mantequilla means butter. Well, not here... Honduran mantequilla is a wonderful, wonderful thing... sort of like sour cream, I guess, but different.... It's delicious with everything, from fried plantains to beans to pancakes..
Baleadas are my favorite food here, definitely.. flour tortillas (the only time they ever eat flour tortillas is baleadas) with refried beans, scrambed eggs, and mantequilla. When Kathy's host mom makes them for us, though, she usually puts avocado in as well. it's wonderfulness..
and finally, fresco de avena.. (or oatmeal drink) two scoops of oatmeal (I guess it would be like instant oatmeal) a little sugar and cold water... so good and refreshing...

I've also decided (as if there was ever any doubt in my mind before) that I never want to be famous... As an example, I was making a banner the other day on my front porch. you know, just writing feliz cumpleaños on a big sheet of paper.. and had no less than 7 kids crowding around me, touching me, crawling on the paper, asking me what I was doing, which marker I wanted, offering to draw on my banner for me...

I've been told that I'll be working with catastro (sort of like a mix between city assessor's and planning) and a school in my site. My mayor is known for being honest and is expected to win the election this year. I'll also be near some other volunteers from my group. On Thursday, I'll find out where my site actually is...

uvas

The other day, my host mom brought home some exotic Honduran fruit that I didn't recognize at all... Excited to try this new fruit, I asked her what it was...... They were uvas (grapes). haha.. I guess I was just convinced that since we were in Honduras, clearly it couldn't be something familiar like grapes.

We're half way through with field based training (A month and 3 days from swear-in, and only about 3 weeks until we find out our sites!). We've started our semi-individual projects in the surrounding communities.. considering my still terrible Spanish, I had mixed feelings about our project, because I was afraid that my group would just get in the way. But after starting it yesterday, I feel much better. The guy we were going to work with is out of town until September 6 or something, but we were able to help another lady who has been having trouble with some software. She had (as far as I understand) been copying charts from the tax software cell-by-cell into excel to play with the numbers, but we were able to figure out how to export the data into excel almost perfectly. So hopefully her work will get a lot easier after this. Our next step is to figure out what she's trying to do with the data and see if we can help her with that.

we're here!

We've been here in Honduras for about 2 weeks now... about a week of regular training, and then our first week of field based, so our training group is now split up into our three different projects. It's hot, but not like the DR. I live in a house connected to another volunteer, so we basically we share two families. I did my laundry by myself for the first time yesterday - my wrists were really sore all day.. Kathy and I both got in trouble for not cleaning our clothes well enough, though...

links

Just wanted to give you these two links. The first is a video that one of the other trainees put together of our training thus far. The second is my flickr, which has some photos, although I haven't taken many :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnnGN9tDKTg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigpinkt/

Still in Miami.

Si Dios quiere....

We got up this morning at 3:30 to go to the airport, with plans to arrive in Teguc around 1:00 local time (3:00 Dominican/eastern time). To make a long story short, it's now 5:30 and we JUST got to a hotel in Miami.

So yeah.

Honduras may or may not happen tomorrow....Si Dios quiere, as they say

Stuff

As Phil noted, yes, we only have electricity part of the day..... at the training center, we have a generator, so I don´t notice the power outages as much. it seems to generally come on in the evening..maybe somewhere between 7 and 9, but turns off around 6:30 or so, when I wake up. Water and internet are the same way... Everyone has huge plastic canisters to store water whenever it comes, to use later in the week. As I understand it, the shortage comes from the utility companies not being paid enough by the government, so they´ll just shut it off whenever they feel like it so they don´t lose money.

Our barrio has unpaved streets and very few sidewalks.. Maybe I´ll have time to upload pictures someday.... The driving here is crazy in general (not in our barrio, but on the surrounding streets.. traffic lanes are poorly marked, if at all, and even then are really just suggestions :) it´s not uncommon to see someone driving the wrong way on the shoulder of the road - especially on a motorcycle.

A couple days ago, we got to visit one of the volunteers here in the DR. It was cool to talk to him, but since the Peace Corps doesn´t do Municipal Development in DR, we (the Muni D´ers) went to a youth volunteer´s post instead. It was exciting, though.

Honduras, here we come!

We recieved official word today that we will, indeed, be going to Honduras! We´ve been planning on it all along, but it wasn´t official until now. Our swearing in date was pushed back a week to giveus some extra time for training. Of course, the situation could escalate at anytime and plans could change, but for now it looks like its actually going to happen. They say that Hondurans speak a lot slower than Dominicans, which is good, because I still can´t understand anybody here....

My life here can prettty much be summed up as: I can´t speak spanish, I can´t stop sweating, and I itch all over (mosquito bites plus heat rash = ick) haha, fun times...

Over the weekend I got to go to the beach (Bocachica). It was a lot of fun... the water was really shallow and warm.. it rained a little, but ended up being a really nice cool day. Last Thursday, we went to a car wash...which is more exciting than it sounds.. the car washes here are the place to hang out. They actually are car washes during the day, but the at night, they turn into bars. It was a lot of fun, and we got to try out our new found merengue and bachata dancing skills. Everywhere here plays really loud music. I´m lucky that my window faces away from the local shop (colmado) so I don´t get too much noise at night. Oh and last Wednesday, I think, we got to go into Santo Domingo.. They have a pedestrian street, just like good old c´ville!

The power and internet were both out all day today..it was pretty unbearably hot. Luckily this internet center has AC (must have a good generator) and somehow the internet is working :)

I´m pretty sure there are some mathematical geniuses in my neighborhood

They say that the national religion of the Republica Dominicana is baseball, and the national sport is gossip. Well, the other national sport is dominos. I didn´t think dominos was a difficult game until two days ago. The people here play so fast, and are able to keep track of all the dominos as they´re played. When they count the score, even if there are 15 (or more) dominos left, they can add up the points in a matter of seconds. And they´re not blow trying to trick the gringos into giving them more points than they deserve ;) If you hesitate in playing, they will skip your turn, and even so, we slow down the game a lot. It´s really amazing... but of course every evening is spent with at least a couple hours of dominos before dinner, and they´ve probably been playing since they were kids..

I really like this community.. it´s super mixed use and dense, although not too overcrowded, and really close-knit, but also very wlcoming and hospitable. Oh, and I already resond to ¨gringa¨ just as well as ¨Teresa.¨

slight change of plans

Because the Peace Corps wants to remain as apolitical as possible, they have decided it's not a good idea for us all to go to Honduras right now. Instead, we will be sent to the Dominican Republic for a couple of weeks of training, until the situation (hopefully) blows over. The don't think the situation is a serious threat at this point and all the current Honduran PCVs are remaining at their posts. Since this change in plans happened yesterday, we're not all flying together anymore - some of us are leaving tomorrow, and some of us (including me) are leaving on Thursday. I think we're all really excited that we get to experience two countries for the price of one, so to speak. Also, in DR, it's possible that I'll have internet connection more readily available :)

Miami!

Made it safely to Miami. Haven't heard anything more about the coup, other than what CNN tells me. I expect I'll know more tonight. Registration starts soon, so I need to go downstairs, I guess.