Brain Drain

July 16^th, 2011

            Again I have gone a couple days without posting, I apologize. Our training group has been really busy this week and we will most likely remain really busy throughout all of training. I need to do a better job of budgeting my time so I can write more often. Meaning I need to stop playing computer games with my host brothers all night and instead exercise my brain muscles a little bit. However, I feel like exercising my brain muscles is all I do lately. A normal day for me starts at 5ish when I am awoken by the buses driving by, the dogs braking, and the birds making all sorts of noises. I do my best to go back to sleep for another hour or so but it is usually a pretty light sleep. Once I get up at 6 I head to the bathroom, there (sorry for being graphic) I either have a good start to my day or a bad start to me day (I think you can understand what I am saying there). After I have finished with my business I have to flush the toilet by hand, this means filling up a bucket with water from our sink and pouring it into the bowl. This is a skill that takes some time to master as you have to use the right amount of force as well as aim. After that I brush my teeth and then jump in the shower, which again by Honduran standards I guess is a hot shower, however my chattering teeth beg to differ. I towel off and then head back to my room where I apply bug spray and get dressed for the day. Then I eat breakfast which is usually corn flakes with milk and a banana (I have gotten sick of bananas at this point…) Then I head up to class which is about a two minute walk for me at another home in our neighborhood. From 8 to 12 we have Spanish class, I am in a class with two other volunteers are our level is novice advanced which means I only need to gain two levels by the end of training which is easily attainable. In our class only Spanish is spoken and if you use any English you are fined, we also can not use any dictionary or reference source. I find this actually very helpful as it forces us to try to explain ourselves using the words we do know etc. I find that it is a very effective strategy in learning a language. After Spanish class I head back to my home for lunch, we have an hour for lunch and after I eat I usually do a little bit more studying of the new things I learned that day. In the afternoon we  usually have some sort of technical training that has to do with youth development. This past week we have done some very cool activities including visiting local schools, meeting with the major of the nearby town, and going to the national museum. This goes until 4:30 when we are free to head back to our houses. Most of the volunteers will get together after this long day and hang out for an hour or two before heading back to their houses. Once I get back to my house I attempt to get my host brothers to do their homework. An already hard task however when you factor in the lack of language skills on my part it becomes almost impossible. My attempts usually turn into playing with my host brothers, sometimes we play made up games, sometimes soccer, and sometimes computer games. After a long day of learning this is a much needed and welcomed break. Playing with them, though our communication is not the best is so rejuvenating and it reminds me constantly why I like working with youth. After we play around for a little bit my host mom usually comes home from work and we eat dinner. After dinner it is back to the attempts at homework only it usually works a little bit better with my host mom there. I do my best to help my brothers with their homework and actually find that they are around the same level of Spanish learning as I am so it is also helpful to me. Once we are finished with the homework it is usually around 9 and by that time I am spent and ready for bed. I head to bed and try to do a little bit more studying done and then go to sleep ready to do it all over again tomorrow. I think one of the most surprising things about this experience so far has been how mentally draining it all has been. At the end of the day I do not feel that I am physically tired but my brain is so completely fried, at the end of each and every day. The energy that it takes to really be focused in on all of that new learning during the day is enormous and once I am out of classes I am still learning at all times, whether it is the culture or the language. It is nice to know that I am always learning and always getting better with the language but I am not sure that I thought it would be this much work. At the end of the day however it is still so incredibly rewarding even though I have not even become a volunteer yet. Simply becoming integrated in the community and in my family has been such a rewarding experience and I think that I have already learned so much, I can not imagine how much I will learn over the next two years. I really am looking forward to those two years and getting an opportunity, when things slow down (things slow down as a volunteer I have been told, much like the transition from high school to college), to really think about things and process this whole experience. While I think that I have been able to process next to nothing of this whole experience so far I do have many good starting points in my head and in my notebook. I also have realized one thing for sure and that is just how lucky and blessed I have been to be given this opportunity. I thank God every day and try to not only do his work but also truly appreciate what I have been given and the beauty that I see.

Side story: I couldn’t really find a place to share this story in the above post so I am just going to put it here. The other day me and two other volunteers went to the campo (local field) with some baseball equipment because we wanted to play catch, along the way we picked up some kids and played with them. It was a good time. After we were done playing (around 6:30, when it gets dark here) we were heading back to our houses. We had the kids lead us because they were taking us a shorter way, keep in mind that Honduras is very mountainous so there are houses all up and down the mountainside with basically dirt paths as a means of getting from here to there. These paths can be made of rocks or concrete but are mainly just worn earth. Back to the story, we are heading back with the kids in front of us and I am in between the other two volunteers. We pass by a house on our right and as we are saying hello to the people outside of it I hear a crack. I look in front of me and see water flying out of a pvc pipe that was in the pathway. The other volunteer in front of me had been saying hello and took a step right onto the pvc pipe and cracked it. So here we are, three gringos with little knowledge of Spanish and we have just broken this families water supply as they looked on. We apologized right away and tried to figure out if there was any way that we could help or any way that we could fix it. We decided that we could get some duct tape and try to fix it that way, we headed back to a volunteers house and when there told their host mother what happened. She offered us some pvc pipe and glue, so we brought that back to the other house and tried to be of any assistance. As we are standing in the now flooded pathway trying to fix it one of the young men that lived at the house took the pvc pipe and the glue and after about 20 minutes was able to fix it. We again apologized and went on our way, we of course felt really bad and were trying to figure out if there was any way that we could help that family out seeing as how we just lost a lot of their water. Well when we got back one of the volunteer’s houses we spoke with one of his host brothers (who speaks English) and he told us that it happens literally all the time and that it is not a big deal at all. He said usually people just let the water flow and they call someone who comes and fixes it the next day for free. So in the end it was a happy ending but it was a really funny situation at the time to be in and I was just happy to know that someone else had a bigger mishap with water in Honduras than I did. So lesson learned to not step on pvc pipes when walking in Honduras.

New pictures as well:

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