Field Based Training

I am unsure of whether I have written a blog entry since we began Field Based Training just less than three weeks ago. I think I have finally adjusted to schedule and sleeping and food and all the other incidental things that had made my life a little more difficult since arriving. One of the major components of training with Peace Corps in Honduras is Field Based Training in which we have been divided into projects to complete more intensive technical training. During these five weeks we have the opportunity to work in our communities on individual and group projects that may be similar to work we will actually be completing in our sites. I am living in Cantarranas, a small city outside of Tegucigalpa and working in a nearby aldea, San Juansito. Cantarranas is pretty small but amazingly clean and everyone has been really nice and welcoming. The site doesn’t have internet but we often travel Valle de Angeles or Talanga on Saturdays to accomplish this.

I am living with a small family of all women. I have a host grandmother, her daughter, and her granddaughter. It’s definitely a family whose lives have been somewhat defined by the pull to leave Honduras for work outside. Liliana, my host mother’s daughter, is probably in her mid forties with three grown up boys and her husband has been living in the states for the last eighteen years. My host sister, Danielle, is eight years old and her mother works as a nanny in Spain while her father lives in a nearby Aldea with her brother. The family runs a small comedor, a two to three table restaurant, out of their home and Chabe has been serving food here for more that 35 years. These ladies work so hard, it’s amazing. The home is fun of animals. There are chickens, two dogs, a cat and occasionally I see frogs hopping around out back. One of my favorite things about living here is that every morning I wake up and Chabe is in the living room with candles lit in the corners of the room sitting in front of makeshift alters with pictures of Mary and Jesus and the Saints and she stands and says the rosary. What makes this whole scene truly unique is that throughout this whole process she has the radio blaring the local radio news station. I used to think that there was someone in the next house who was playing the radio so loudly but then I realized that it is coming from the next room!
I am working in San Juancito with one of my fellow volunteers, Eric, and we are attempting to help a group of the local leaders form a development plan for their community. It is either going to be a really great process and be really successful or no one will show up and it will be entire train wreck. I’m not yet sure which.

Major accomplishments for the week include: being really sick for the first time and getting through it alone and without having to go to the hospital for a nasty IV, getting more sleep and feeling more positive!, not killing my host sister when her cry baby doll started crying in the middle of the night and she didn’t notice for twenty minutes (I know those last two don’t really correlate well!), conducting an entire conversation with the woman at the local bank branch about how I lost my PIN number and what I need to get a new one.

Much LOVE