Christmas

It never did feel like Christmas, but after all of these emails refering to it, maybe we did have Christmas...hmm. Daniel and Ben, I totally sympathize with you. This Christmas was so out of the ordinary that I didn´t miss home hugely (or I didn´t think I did, until I talked with Mom and Kathleen on the 25th).

I have had a great past ten days with my friend Juliana, who has been visiting from the states (we lived together in MPLS two summers ago). She was traveling central America, and decided to come to Planes to pass Christmas with me. Her spanish is quite good, so we were able to do things that I normally do, but it was so much better acompañada! The first few days I talked until I was hoarse. I had no idea that I had learned so much! But with her here I was able to explain everything that we were doing and everything related to my job (from the local dialect, to integrated farming techniques, to the relationships and characters of my community members). It was amazing to have someone to share my life with, because I can´t tell anyone from my community those things, and other volunteers are having their own crazy personal experience that is hard to relate.

As for highlights...we took a hike to Cienegal (the community in which I am doing the latrine project) and spent a wonderful afternoon with Doña Josefa. She was a little penosa (shy) at first, but then she opened up and started telling us about her experience with the duende (the legendary Central American elf that bewitches young girls), anecdotes with her husband (one day she told him she wouldn´t wash his feet anymore to get rid of the althlete´s foot, and so the next morning when she got up to start the fire, he put his feet where his head should have been in the bed so that she would come back and kiss his feet! And she did, on accident...), and finally, her serious question for us: your country is amazing and everyone in my country wants to go there, so why are you two here? I find that question coming from a Honduran very humbling, because I can´t use the same language that I would with my friends and family in the US (well, see, I was born into wealth without doing anything to deserve it, so I feel compelled to help those who just happened to be born with a lot less). I can´t tell her exactly that because I don´t want to tell her that she is poor (although she would say it) or seem like I have great facility to do whatever I want (although I do: options are our blessing and our curse). Juliana and I did a lot of thinking and talking after that. On our way home, we lost the path as the sun set...I knew that all we needed to do was climb to the top of the mountain and then we would be in the road again, but we had to hack our way through brush that was taller than us up a steep slope. That´s the kind of story that´s fun to tell later, but at the time it was rather scary. I´m going to have màs cuidado with that camino...

On Sunday morning last week, we were doing yoga in the living room when Don Alonso showed up at my window, inviting us to go fish for talapia in his ponds so that we could eat some. So we hiking down to his ponds and watched him fish with just a hook on a string, baited with tortilla. Then Melvin and Nata showed up and invited us to go bajar naranjas with them. So we held their horse and burro while they climbed orange trees and threw them down to each other (you have to catch them or they´ll break). We got home in time for church, after which my friend Maria de la Luz stopped by and cleaned the fish for us (thank goodness). I gave her most of the fish as payment, and she told me about how she wants to go al norte when her baby is 18 months old (she´s 9 months right now). She wants to find a home to work in, so that she and her husband can buy a house (and not rent). But wow...she was saying she could wash the clothes and clean, but she has NO idea about what that entials (a washing maching, and vacuum cleaner, many houses instead of one).

On Christmas Eve (that´s the big day around here), Juliana and I awoke to the sounds of squeeling pigs. Everyone kills their pigs for Christmas tamales. We got dressed up and went over to Oneyda´s to help make tamales. On our way a young man, one of my most persistent admirers, called after us ¨con todo gusto la llevo a mi casa...¨ Oneyda returned from cutting coffee (she was working on Christmas Eve! and she had a bunch of family visiting from out of town) and set us to work cutting up red pepper, potatoes and onions and kneeding dough. Tamales are made from a masa of ground corn and LOTS of african palm oil (white vegetable fat). You spread the masa out on a banana leaf, and then put a little dollop of potatoes, rice, and a chunch of partially cooked pork (usually with a bone inside and skin still attached to one side) on it. You dribble a spoonful of broth on the top and then roll up the banana leaf. You make a whole bunch of these (at least 25) and then put them in a pot with a little water and steam them for at least an hour. They´re pretty heavy. But Juliana and I have already been daydreaming about a party we want to have next christmas when I come home for a visit...we want to make a bunch of tamales (without the palm oil and gross pork) of different sytles (sweet thai, spicy mexican, etc) and LOTs of ingredientes. You all are invited. I´m sure it will be delicious.

Even though we were invited to at least four houses, somehow we got off with only eating one tamale! What luck! Oneyda was really excited to tell everyone that she had the only tamales in town made by gringas. She´ll be talking about that forever! We also learned how to make Torrejas, which are amazingly disgusting fried corn cakes soaked in sweet water. Oneyda was very patient with us, teaching us how to cook and letting us (most women don´t trust other people to prepare their entire christmas dinner). She´s an amazing person.

At around seven thirty, we saw that there were lights in the church so we went over for Christmas service. It was pretty much like normal, except by candlelight. The sermons are done by lay people, and generally just sound like a collection of platitudes: you should be fishes of men...loaves and fishes...invite Mary into your home, that way you will have strength...people are bad and need Jesus. They are so confusing that I generally daydream. On Christmas Eve, though, Fermina, Oneyda´s mother, gave the sermon. She had a confusing speach she made up on the spot (I think that was supposed to be focused on Mary), but halfway through she started talking about what an amazing person I am, about how much she respects me, that I talk with everyone and am always happy. It was a wonderful compliment and also wildly innappropriate. I am glad I am generally used to things like that here, otherwise I would have been very embarrassed.

After church we went back to Danilo and Oneyda´s for a little dance. It was fun (I´m glad I´m used to Honduran men...), but it was broken up around 10.30. I felt like I was in college again. The policeman that broke it up told everyone that someone had died in the next community, using scare tactics to make everyone go home. It was a lie. But I understand more than I did before--Honduran men from the campo drinking guaro is kind of scary. Nothing happened, I have just heard too many stories.

Besides all of that...in the last week I have had two attempts at meetings with my library committee. But we´re having trouble with the committee; only two people consistently arrive. The two people are amazing (Doña Ana and Alonso) and really fun to be around (together they tell jokes and tease and laugh, using vos--the central american familiar verb form--between each other). But the lack of the rest of the committee is frustrating--it´s hard to help people that don´t want to work on something. We´re going to try one more time, on the eleventh of January. Hopefully we can have success.

Now Juliana and I are in Valle de Angeles to spend a few days with the host family there. I am so glad to see them, and they are still as welcoming and amazing as ever. Juliana is leaving on Tuesday to go back to Nicaragua to work on a documentary about organic coffee, and I will be going to Agua Azul (near the Lago Yojoa) to spend the New Year with a bunch of Volunteers. I´m pumped!

I love you all. Thanks for your emails (Daniel especially) and for the packages and letters.

Jennifer

Thanksgiving, Graduation, Coffee, and meetings...

So, I haven´t sent pictures in over a month. The first ones I´m sending are from the day I went to cut coffee (they call it cortar café). It´s rather like picking apples--you tie a bucket around your waist and then just pick the red berries until it´s full. Then you dump them into a bag. The girls I went cutting with are Kelin, Juliana, Julisa and .... I hang out with them sometimes in the afternoon around 5 pm...we sit on this plastic drainage pipe they call los muebles, or the couches, and just hang out and joke for a while. They always ask me, when I see them, if I´m going to come to los muebles this evening. I can´t really deal with the picture of me, but I wanted you to see the process. I´m just picking the red berries. It´s hot and sunny, but the long sleeve shirt is kind of necessary because of the bugs and the close branches.

The last picture is of the tambo, or tumbilla that I´m filling with coffee berries.

Here´s a picture of me in case you forgot what I look like. And so that you know I don´t always look as bad as I do when I cut coffee. My hair is wet--I just took a shower. This picture is of Eulalio, my landlord, making a pila (water cistern) out of bricks and cement. He finished it, and this week when I filled it the water drained out within only a few hours. it is not supposed to do that. I let him know and he´s going to patch up the leak.

So, last week I was nearly entirely preoccupied with my new house. I went there nearly every day to clean, whiten the walls with lime (cal), or start decorating.

The other pictures are from the same day. Oneyda came over to help me whiten the house. We´re wearing old clothes, and trapos on our heads and fat and rubber gloves on our hands to protect ourselves from the burning basidity (I know that´s not a word) of the cal.

Here is a picture of how my room used to look, before I whitened the walls, bought new plastic for the ceiling, and decorated.

At the top was a picture from that same day. I´m with Eulalio´s youngest daughter, and Pichin (my little friend) is learning how to use my camera.

Besides working on my house last week, I had my first community meeting in El Cienegal, where I will be doing a latrine project with the community.

Here is a picture is of a man Danilo and I met on our way over. I´ve actually seen him quite a lot--he frequently comes to the catholic church to preach. He is working in his feilds in an immense and impressive valley where many people farm called Tapiquilares. I´m pretty sure he´s using a chemical to kill the greenery in between his corn plants from his last harvest so that he can plant beans for this one.

This next picture is just greenery, but it´s to give you a taste of what the hike between Planes and Cienegal is like. The village is in the valley between the picture and the next mountain. It´s very wooded, with pine trees. When it is nice out I love the hike. It´s very steep, though, and when Danilo decides he´s late I can´t keep up with the way he runs down the mountains. He´s like a mountain goat!
So, I was pretty nervous about the meeting. I think understandably, because I don´t have that much experience conducting meetings even in English.

Here are some pictures of the people waiting for us to start. As you can see, it was mostly women and children (which could be a problem, as most of the latrine work needs to be done by men!).

But Danilo was there supporting me (which was great, especially at the beginning). He sat in front with me, introduced me and the meeting, and then I took over. I introduced myself and the PC (we do not just give projects, we help the community develop them and learn the process). Then I asked everyone to introduce themselves and tell me something they liked about their community. This is when my nerves left me, because they were so embarrased! I had to do lots of encouraging and joking to help them share with me just a little. And they´ve probably known each other all their lives! In the end, most of them ended up just telling me about how happy they were that I had come. (yay!). From there, we identified community needs, then voted on one we wanted to work on. People unanimously chose latrines. We elected a committee, I gave them homework (visit every house in the community and do a census and convince people of the necessity of all of them working on this) and we decided on the next meeting date. So I´ll be going there next Sunday. I´m working on planning the meeting.

On our way out, Danilo and I stopped at a woman´s house (he can´t resist conversation and coffee). Here is just a taste of what the houses look like in Cienegal.

They don´t even make their houses of adobe, but just use wood slats. They all have dirt floors. I have gotten used to the way things look, there, but the first visit was tough. So that´s how I spent my Thanksgiving. (give thanks for you water system and your indoor plumbing).

On Friday I went to the clausura (graduation) of the sixth graders. I served as a testigo (witness) for Doña Ana´s daughter Isidor Juliana.

Here is a picture of the entire class with Profe Ana (my former host sister). They were all forced to buy the same dress. People in the community made the dresses.

And here we are at the celebration afterwards, eating enormous quantities of food! (unlike Grad parties in the US, people serve your food here. And I was invited to numerous parties, so I had to chose between feeling enormously full or wasting food. I was feeling rather ill from some juice I had been given in Cienegal the previous day, so I was able to turn down food). You can see Alayda standing in the background (she came for the party, and then left again...boo). And her daughter is in the dress nearest to us. The last pictures are of my decorated house. In the first one, you can see my hamock, my big work table, and my maps.
Then you have my pictures on the walls (thank you Ben and Kathleen and Jacqueline). I have another wall full of pictures on the other side.

The last picture is of my hornilla. This week, on Monday, when I moved in, I realized that my chimbo didn´t have any gas. So I went to get firewood and Ocote (a really sappy pine used for starting fires) and cooked over the wood stove. It was a rather frustrating experience. I had trouble starting the fire, and keeping it going, and it was VERY hot. But I´m through with that, now. It gave me something to do. And introduced me to new people (when I went to buy wood).

All for now. Until next time,

Jennifer

p.s.

i almost forgot,

This morning, I got two lovely surprises at my mail box. Thank you so much for the thanksgiving package, Aunt Kate (And Andrew, Jacqueline, and Tom). It was wonderful. I made sure to give the little christmas light up magnet to the post office worker, Claudia. Now she loves me (and the little magnet) and will make sure to treat my packages well). I also got an extraordinarily heavy package from Grandma Pat and Grandpa Al. Thank you so much, as well! I am so excited to see the nuts and dried fruit. They will last me a LONG time, and I will enjoy every bite. Thank you for all of the love!

My cat, new friends, and the Catholic Church

The first picture I´m sending is of my new kitten! We´ve decided (my friend Alayda and I) to call him Concetido, which means something like ¨dear one¨ (I think). Sol (soledad), Alayda´s sister and Ana´s daughter, is holding him.

Here we have Omar, Betty, Marleny and Daniela at dusk by the soccer goals. The kids play here every evening as the sun sets.

These are Alayda´s oldest daughters, Marbelie and Jolibet. They are standing in the doorway of their house. This is the Catholic Church I go to every sunday for a service (there is no priest, so there is no mass). Alayda usually goes with me (you can see her back in this picture). There are three women that lead the song and do the readings. It is pretty simmilar to mass in the US, but the content of the sermon is usually a little more literal.

These to photos are of my new house. As you can see, it needs a little work. Today I am buying cement and some other supplies so that we can fix it up this week. I will be moving in in the begining of December (hopefully).

This is little Luis (people call him Pichin), who will be my neighbor in my new house. Oh! He´s holding his little brother. The afternoon that I took this photo he told me that his mom had gone to pick coffee--he was at home caring for the kids. He is eight.

This is Ana (the teacher I live with) and Jairo (her brother). This week we went up to their coffee finca in the mountain to look at the construction they have done there. The cement structure they are standing on is where they are going to pour out the coffee to take off the shells. This is Marjorie, peeling an orange with a machete. That´s right, a machete. Until I came to Honduras I never knew that a machete has so many uses, but now I know that you can cut the grass, chop up firewood, dig holes, all with a machete.

Here we have the whole troop in Jairo´s truck. From left to right, starting in back, is Ada (the other teacher I live with), Jennifer (a girl from town), Ete (Ada´s sister), Ana (the teacher), Omar (Ete´s son), and in the truck is Panchita (the mom of Jairo, Ana, Ada, Ete, and the teacher in the school) Marixa (Jairo´s wife) and Jairo.

Finally I´m sending a picture of my closest friend here in Planes, pictured with the flowers she loves to care for outside of her house. Her name in Alayda. She is about 32 (I think), and went to school until 4th grade, after which she helped her mom by selling bread in the community and the nearby ones. She married for the first time (well, here people don´t marry often, they just live together and call it marriage) when she was around 17 I think. Now she is living with her third husband (this one of eight years) and she has three really sweet daughters. Every time I visit Alayda I end up staying longer than I planned, and we laugh a lot. She teases me about Ben a lot, calling him Mincho.

Well, that´s all for today. This next week, I am looking forward to a community meeting in Cienegal, a town a two hour hike away. We are going to do a community needs analysis and hopefully start working on a latrine project. Wish me luck at running a meeting in Spanish! I will try to take pictures there!

Pictures Part 3.1

Hi again!

This next picture is of my counterpart, Danilo. It´s only his profile, but I wanted to catch him at what he does best. He was chatting with a farmer down the hill (the farmer was planting beans) about planting fruit trees. Danilo´s job right now is reforestation, and he spends his days traveling to other communities setting up tree nurseries. He loves it--he loves to walk and he loves to shoot the breeze with everyone he meets. He looks unnassumming, but he is the way that politicians should be.


As you have probably heard, it has rained an exceptional amount in Honduras over the past two weeks. There have been landslides and people have had their houses washed away. Luckily, we haven´t had any calamities in my site. But the road to get out of my town is being washed away. As you can see in this photo, half of it has washed away. A small truck can still pass. Hopefully they fix it soon, but that is not too probable.


Here we have some of the beautiful girls in my town that shout to me as I pass their houses. ¨Jennifer,¨ they call. They are pictured in front of the house of the teachers, where I live right now. In the background is also the football feild.
This is Oneyda, my counterpart´s wife, and her daughters Daniela (sitting) and Tanya. I spend a lot of time with them.


This is me with one of my possible future cats. I decided that in my new house I want to have a cat (sorry, Ben) to eat the cockroaches and mice. I found some kittens in some nearby houses and had a great time petting them one afternoon. The Hondurans around thought I was pretty weird (cats are for kicking) but I made the kids only touch the kitten nicely. As you can see I am wearing a sweater. It has been pretty cold.

I spend my last few hours of the day at my desk by candlelight, so I thought I´d take a photo so you can see how it is. I spend time writing letters, writing work notes, and reading. There is only so long I can operate by candlelight, though, so I always end up going to be early, around eight thirty.

This is Profe Panchita, the dueña of the house I currently live in. She is a teacher at the school (second and fourth grade, I think). She is sewing out on her patio (it´s an open space connected to the house with a roof). She is serious and doesn´t talk much, but she takes care of me. I´m sorry I have no photos of her daughters Ana and Ada. Next time.

Pictures Part 3

The first picture I´m sending is of my fellow volunteer Gail playing guitar after the wedding we went to at our FBT site months ago. We are at our friend and trainer Terencio´s house. Gail was a PCV in Tanzania before she arrived to train with me in Honduras, so Ben knows some of her PCV friends from Tanzania. It´s a crazy world!

Next pictured is my PCV friend Matt and Terencio´s son. Whenever I have a question about Agrictulture, I first call Matt, and then I consult my books. He always has information (or at least he pretends to). He now lives pretty far away from me, so I don´t know when I´ll see him again.

This is a picture of me with my PCV friend Gabe on the day of our swearing in, in case you have forgotten what I look like. Gabe is from MN, so we have a good connection. He lives near me, so hopefully I will see more of him.

This next picture shows you the streets of my village! The picture is of María de la Luz, one of my new friends, and her husband and daughter. Note the cow in the background.

This picture is of Ete, and her adorable son Johnaton, who can now walk alone! Ete is one of Ana and Ada´s sisters (there are six of them and all of their names end in linda--Etelinda, Analinda, Adalinda, Olinda, Bettelinda, etc...). She lives in a house just across the feild, but she always comes over to visit with Johnaton.

The landscape is the beautiful veiw that I see when I walk over to Danilo´s house in the morning. I think this was taken one day last week when we left at seven in the morning to hike to a nearby aldea (2 hours there and back...it was a great workout!).

This is Oneyda, my counterpart´s wife. She is a good friend of mine--I frequently stop at her house just to see how she is. She is pictured with a new fogón (cooking stove) that she had just made that morning. (David, in case you´re interested...you mix clay with dry manure and ashes and fashion the clay around bricks. Leave a hole to put in the wood and a hole for the chimeney. Cover it with a peice of thin metal (I don´t know what kind). On that you can make tortillas or place your cooking pots!)

This is one of my counterparts´ family´s dogs. It looks like it just got a chicken! The dirt floor is typical for my community, as are the mud walls covered with a white paint they make by mixing a rock they find in the mountain with water. The plastic chairs are also typical--people sit on those or wooden benches.

This last week, I learned how to plant beans (and impressed all the men in my town), walked to two nearby towns (both two hours away) and made tortillas for my host family. Time is going quickly.

More pictures to come soon.

The new routine...

I think it´s a sign that I´m adjusting that events do not stand out in my mind as much as they did the first time I wrote to you from my site. My life is becoming more normal in Los Planes. What I am most happy about is the fact that even though my job is unclear and unstructured (get to know the community, think of projects) I am thriving. I guess, contrary to what I previously thought, I don´t need so much direction to be able to find things to do. I am actually rather good at self directed activities.

It seems that with each week that passes, a new window opens of things that I need to investigate. And that´s how I feel right now. I feel like a spy with an ongoing list of people to see and questions to ask (all over cups of coffee, surrepticiously slipped in after I´ve talked about the weather and the health of the kids). Last week, I started visiting houses of men and women in the community whom I had heard held leadership roles. These visits went really well--I have found that it is very interesting to me to hear about other people (I have to be careful about gossip!) and I really like to hear about these peoples´ lives. I have gotten to know many people in that way.

This week, I have become obsessed with agriculture improvement. There has been a tropical storm in the Carribean, so I have spend my time inside (the rain hasn´t stopped for three days) reading articles about improved farming techniques. From what I have read and already knew, I can see some very easy and important improved agricultural practices that could greatly help the yeild of produce in the area. As I have mentioned before, people here mainly grow beans, corn, and coffee (their coffee fincas are always intersperced with fruit trees--lemons, limes, oranges, mandarins, mangos, bananas). I have discovered that people don´t grow other veggies because the costs of the pesticides and fertilizers necessary to do so are too high to make the crop worth growing--the market selling prices end up being devastatingly low. From what I´ve read, it´s better to improve the techniques of the crops already grown than to introduce something new. So, although I´d like to start a women´s group to teach how to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, I´d like to work with them men in the community to teach them how to use barriers (live and dead) on their sloped land, cultivate leguminous green plants in between their corn to naturally fertilize the soil, and help them find alternatives to burning their crops in the feild after the harvest. I have become pretty fired up about these things, but the problem is that I have not yet visited many farms with the men in the village.

I really appreciate my counterpart´s wife, Oneyda. Whenever I am not sure what to do with myself, I go visit her. With her I make tortillas and listen to talk about the entire aldea, which always interests me. Oneyda loves flowers--she has about forty flowers growing in plastic bags outside of her house. They are propped up on wooden benches so that the chickens won´t get them. She harvests the seeds herself. Needless to say, she is very excited to start growing tomatoes with the women´s group!

I have found a house to rent! It is owned by a respectable man who I would like to get to know. He is the pastor at a church in the community that meets about four days a week. I can hear them singing late into the night. The house is a little place--it has a bedroom, a kitchen and a little sitting room. Right now it has a dirt floor, but Eulalio is an albañil, so he is going to put in a cement floor next month. There is a bathroom outside, and he will also make a pila outside (water cistern). The house is a little dark, but that is common for houses here--they usually only have one small window per room. But there is a big yard, and he is going to make a fence so that I can make my garden. I hope to start working on that in the begining of November. I am very excited, and in my spare time I dream about how I´m going to make a compost pile, and a place to bury my plastics and burn my papers and grow such delicious veggetables...I am sure such dreams don´t make sense to most of you (who dreams about garbage sorting?) but trash is such a problem here that I can´t wait to have one place that I can control. It will be clean.
And since this has been more general, I think I will let you know more specifically what I do with my days.

I usually wake up around six or six thirty, and stretch for a half an hour. My limbs tend to be sore here from all of the walking on steep terrain. I get up and shower and eat breakfast (oatmeal with raisins, honey and fruit--right now that means bananas and oranges) by about seven thrity. People here eat refried beans with tortillas for breakfast, but I have bought my own breakfast to avoid eating that plato tipico three times a day!
I wash my clothes from the previous day in the morning to avoid a pileup of dirty clothes (it is no fun to wash all at once). Recently it has been a problem because nothing dries in the rain. I am continuousy putting out my clothes or taking them in, depending on what the sky looks like. Usually I leave the house around eight. Many days I take a walk to the river. This means I have to walk through the town, greeting whomever I see and entering houses where I can. Occassionally a kid will see me and take me to their house (this has happened twice this week), and I always like that--it is a good excuse to get to know new people. Sometimes I get a second breakfast (it is hard to turn down food here in a polite way). I like to visit one or two houses before noon. I am usually done by eleven o´clock, at which time I return home to record what I have learned (about local farming, people, problems, concerns, or positives). I usually hang out, reading, playing guitar, or writing, until about one, at which time I eat lunch (refried beans, rice, tortilla. Maybe an egg, maybe pataste, a veggie like zuccinni). In the afternoon I like to visit one or two more houses, where they give me coffee and usually something else to eat (fresh oranges are popular right now--you could say they grow on trees they are so plentiful!).
Last week I played soccer with the high school students a couple times (great fun, and I don´t feel too bad at it because I am good at running, at least). I also like to walk again in the afternoon, up to a farm or the mountain or to the river again. I eat dinner around six, and spend the evening (from six to eight) reading and writing letters by candlelight. I listen to music for a while and then go to sleep around nine. I get lots of sleep here.

Well, this is a long one. But I´ve got to let you know what I´m doing!

Today I arrived in town at nine am. I have been using the internet (almost four hours!), visiting the post office and getting to know the city. I met Michelle, another PCV who lives here. I will be staying at her house tonight. At five I will be going to dinner with David, another PCV I have met, and his girlfriend (a Honduran) and Michelle. I am glad to speak English and see other PCVs today.

Tomorrow I´m going to a workshop on parlimentary procedure with a new coffee coop that has been formed in the aldea by an organization called CoHorsil. I´m still figuring out the goals of the organization. I´m going to support the leading group, to tryto help develop their leadership skills. That will be all day long, and then in the evening I will return to Los Planes.
I think that I will not return to town for another two weeks. So tentatively, lets say that I will be back here (and use the internet) on November 1st. I will bring photos next time.
I´ll talk to you soon!

Week 1 in Site

Hi Everyone!
I can´t believe it´s already the second week of October! Time passes quickly.
I´m sorry I couldn´t get an email out last week about my first week in site. Transportation is a little difficult for me right now. The PC doesn´t want me to spend nights away from site, but the bus is down right now. So the only way that I can go to Siguat is in Paila, or truckbed, and the Paila´s leave me only three hours to do my shopping and internet use in Siguat. Once a week. I think I´m going to find a way to stay the night next week (The PC allows me to on ´business´). That way I can have time to get to know the city and maybe chat with Ben online.
But to start with an update from last week...my life feels like an adventure recently. I just never know what is going to happen. I was really afraid for this transition from the busy schedule of training to the entirely new life and free time of a new volunteer. But really, it has been going well. Every night I think of a few things that I could do the following day. I try to carry it out, but inevitably, my day takes a crazy turn and I end up on some adventure. This started the moment that I arrived in Los Planes. On Sunday, the 28th, when I arrived, I went to see my counterpart. He wasn´t home, but his wife was making a torch (plastic wrapped around a wooden frame with a candle in the middle). She told me that there was going to be a parade for the Día de la Biblia. So I went to the school, where all of the children were assembling. They were all wearing colorful outfits. From there we paraded around the town, accompanied by drums. It was dark and it started to rain, but everyone came out of their houses to walk with the parade anyway. It was a great entry into life here!
The next day I wasn´t sure what to do with myself, but somehow I ran into some kids, my first friends here. I played soccer with them, and then we climbed the mountain in our backyard. Their names are Herly (who is 11 and very inquisitive and capable) and his sister Marleny (13, she would like to live with me!). With them I planned more hikes for the following day.
So on Tuesday I climbed the mountain again, and then in the afternoon I took a walk with Ana (one of the teachers from the school that I live with) and a bunch of her students. Last week I started to feel more comfortable with the teachers...they are very kind even though at first it was hard to get to know them. Now I have been spending more time with Ana. She is young, close to my age, and very daring, for a woman here, which is fun!
On Wednesday I wasn´t sure what I was going to do with myself, so I took a walk to the river. On my way back, I ran into three little boys. I asked where they were going, and they told me they were going to the mountain, to the milpa (corn patch), to pick corn (maize, rather). They invited me to go with, and were very surprised but excited when I readily assented. I asked how far away the patch was, and they told me allí en la montaña, no más. So suposedly it was very close, but I know enough of Hundurans to have a little doubt about right over there in the mountain. We walked for about an hour, climbing the mountain in a narrow path of mud. I stepped in mud up to my calf! But I had some quick 7, 10, and 12 year old´s to keep up with, so I hiked without complaining. I discovered that they boys´ names were William, ....(now I can´t remember...). They go to their father´s corn patch twice a week to pick corn, which they eat and sell. When I was able to look up to look at the veiw, it was astonishing; we walked right on the mountain, and I could look down into the steep river valley. We arrived at the milpa and started picking corn. Most of it was wormy and bad. I discovered that the family rents land--they clear cut and burn it, then plant corn, and then beans, and then move on to new land. Wow!
On our way home, we stopped at the river. There I waded into the water to wash my shoes and pants. It was quite a hike! In the afternoon, I hiked again with the kids from school, and this time I went with both teachers (Ana and Ada). I hiked for about six hours that day!
On Thursday, I got another example of my adventure of a life. I went to the school to observe, and when I arrived, the teachers told me that I was to go teach the sixth graders for half the morning, and the fifth graders for the other half. I taught English, which was great fun! I quickly made up activites that we could do to learn basic English vocabulary. I think I will go to the school every Thursday to teach English and other things. I am happy to be spending time with kids, because it is a great way to get introduced into families. The kids can report to their parents about me (and they have...).
On Saturday I went to pick Cacao with some boys from the school (Gabriel, Rene, and Rito Manuel). Cacao is a big yellow fruit that grows on trees: you pick it and break it open to suck on the seeds. The seeds, though, if you dry them out and then toast them, are what you make chocolate from...I have been trying to make chocolate but I have not been successful yet. I have two years! In the evening, I was invited to dance down the street. I went, but didn´t stay long, because there weren´t very many women there and it seemed like a bad idea to stay. I was right--I have found out since that I shouldn´t have gone at all. The whole town is talking about it! People keep asking me if I´m going to go again. I have discovered, though, that it is not really acceptable to dance just for fun...one needs to be celebrating a birthday party with friends for it to be okay. So I won´t do that again.
On Sunday I went to the Catholic church. They told me a service would start at ten (there is no priest, so there is no mass), but it actually didn´t get going until 10:30 (I should have known...). Religion here is something else...but the people are excited that I have religion (they say so in front of me) so I will keep going.
On Monday I worked on a vivero (tree nursery) with Danilo, my counterpart. The seventh graders came to help out. I decided that I don´t much like making vivero´s...I would much rather start a veggie garden. Speaking of that...I have met about three women who would like to start a women´s group to grow veggies..we could sell them to the rest of the village. I would like to start that project sometime soon!
Yesterday, I didn´t know what to do with myself again, so I took a walk around town (for me, that seems to always lead to something good). When I passed a local pulpería (local store), the owner invited me in for coffee. I stayed with her for about an hour. She offered me tamales, cheese and tortillas, sweets. I left with vegetables, plantains, and sweets. People here are so hospitable! I think yesterday´s visit gave me the courage to start visiting more houses. Hopefully I can do that the rest of this week.

Love,
Jennifer

Pics Parte Dos

I have a new set of photos to let you all in on my life a little bit...

This is me with my host cousin, they always called her ¨niña.¨

The second photo was taken during the goodbye dinner our families had for us. The white guy is another PCV. His host mom was my host grandma. On his back is my host brother (tito) and in the front of the photo is my host cousin, who always came to play card with me (or just bother me). He´s pretty cute.
This picture is at that same party. So the picture is of my second host mom and her daughter who really liked me.
This picture is of my spanish class in our FBT [that stands for Field Based Training for all you non PCVs out there {Peace Corps Volunteers} ] training site (the one we just left).

This is of the kids in my second host family´s community playing cards (games that I taught them!). The kids are all cousins, and aren´t they cute!

This next picture is of my site. It is right outside my new host family´s house, and it is of the cancha de futbol and the mountain that is right outside of the town.

The next photo is also of my site. I took it when I hiked to the neighboring community up the mountain. The houses are my new community. As you can see, it is indescribibly beautiful.

September 15 was Honduras´ indepedence day! So, we all went to town to see the neice in my first family march in a parade with her classmates. So this next picture is of the family; my host brother, with whom I get along very well and talk with a lot, my host mom, my host sister who lives nearby, my host brother who lives up the hill, and my host sister´s daughter.

I am doing well today--it is really festive here and the weather is beautiful.