Training continues...and i share my skills!

I had an exciting morning. I had my first tech interview, so I talked with the person that will be placing me in a site. We talked about possible niches for me and project opportunities. I am excited about it, because it seems like there will be a place for me in small animal husbandry (working with people on chicken coop projects and etc) and also in integrated farming techniques (that is helping people plant a variety of crops and doing this in a specific order). I am very excited about the prospects of doing either of these things, because I feel like I have real experience and knowledge to bring to the subject. I am passionate about these things, and I have concrete experience from home on chicken coop design and etc. Today I talked about the possibility of keeping chickens with larger farm animals (like horses or sheep) so that they have a place to graze, but also making small coops for them to stay in at night and lay their eggs in. I am excited, because my director hadn´t heard of that idea before. So I do have ideas of real value. It really helped to realize this, and it made me feel that I will be able to make a worthwhile contribution here. I am quite happy about all of this.

I am going to be going on a site visit from Sunday morning until Wednesday. I am pretty excited about the visit, and I am going with another PCV who is very nice and whom I would love to get to know better. It sounds like we´re going to tour some coffee fincas on horseback and go see the PCVs fruit tree cooperative. So I think the whole thing sounds great!

Training begins...

I am in a town that is close to the one I live in with my host family right now to use the internet quickly this evening. I am doing really well today. With my classes in the Peace Corps we have settled into a little schedule: each day we have Spanish class from 7.30 until 11.30, and then culture, safety and health classes in the afternoon. I am excited about what I am learning, even though at times the classes get long and a little tedious.

I have never lived among this much poverty. My host family lives on a hill down a busy paved road. To get to the house, I have to walk down a little rocky trail. Sometimes it is wet, and when it is dark I have a really hard time with the trail. I have learned to take bucket baths every morning (with cold water, of course). I use a five gallon pail, and pour buckets of rain water over my head that we collect in the pila. I use an outdoor toilet that one ¨flushes¨ by pouring a bucket of water down. Last weekend, I learned how to wash my clothes by hand (my family uses a neighbors washing machine, but they say I need to learn to do it myself). My host family has a lot of chickens that walk around the yard (which isn´t really a yard, more like rocky trails to the bathroom and the shower) and don´t seem to have a purpose except wake everyone up at 4 every morning and poop all over. They don´t even use the eggs, because the animals eat the eggs before any person can get to them.

It is the rainy season right now in Honduras, and I am living in the mountains (about 2.000 ft), so the weather is pretty cool. It rains a lot, and when it is cloudy I like to have a sweatshirt. Today we saw the sun all day (which is rare) so that made me very happy. I also got to take a walk (I have been pretty sedentary for the past week), so that made me happy as well. It gets dark really early here (it is light from 6.30 to 6.30). My schedule has changed a lot, though

I have found a few cockroaches in my room, which isn´t too bad, since I haven´t seen anything else. It´s hard not to feel dirty most of the time, but I am getting used to it.

Know that I am doing well, learning a lot, and enjoying myself.

In a foreign land...

I have arrived in Honduras!, and I am doing very well. I met my first host family this afternoon, and I am having a great time with them already! I have a wonderful host sister who is eighteen and very fun to spend time with already. We have laughed a lot together already. I feel very confident about my Spanish and so interacting has been very fun and not at all nerve-racking. They were a little worried about what I could eat, but my host mom was very relieved when she found out that she could speak to me without problems. This host-family transition is much easier than the last one language-wise, so I feel very happy and excited about the whole thing.

Honduras is a beautiful country. We traveled through rugged mountains yesterday and saw lots of animals and people outside. The people that I have met so far in training and in the family are very welcoming and friendly. I am very excited to learn more and know more.

My training with the Peace Corps has been and I am sure will continue to be fun and intriguing. I am very impressed with the volunteers that I am working with, and I expect to learn a lot from both the other volunteers and also my trainers. It looks like we will have very full days, but I am very excited to learn.

Love you and miss you all a lot!

Jennifer