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:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150303441232359.388312.593887358&l=1f4fae03f7

La Vida Buena

July 10^th, 2011

Sorry that I haven’t posted in a day or two, I have been out really trying to explore, get to know the people, the culture, and most importantly the language. Yesterday we only had a half day of classes in which we went over some cultural differences such as we should not throw things (such as candy in meetings) and we should not use sarcasm (that should not be too hard for me, I never use sarcasm). After that we got a chance to talk to our country director for a little bit, her name is Emily and she is very nice. All of the staff have been extremely welcoming and nice and really helpful. All of us volunteers do not have a bad word to say about them. After training we went to la Valle de Angeles, which is a nearby town with lots of shopping and is a touristy place according to the Hondurans. However I do not think it was very touristy at all so I guess it all comes down to perception. Some volunteers got different supplies that they either forgot or did not think they would need. We took a little mototaxi there and back and it cost us 10 limperas which is about 50 cents. Everything is much cheaper here, for example a large bottle of water like the ones that they have at offices, and select houses (ours), etc. cost 25 limperas so just over a dollar. I have a funny story about those water bottles which I will share a little later on in the post. Once we got back from la Valle de Angeles I again played the racing game with Diego on the families laptop, we cannot seem to get past level three. After a long day I then got some sleep. I was able to fall asleep very quickly since it was raining, and when I say raining I mean it was raining. The noise that the rain makes on the tin rough is very peaceful and put me right to sleep. I was able to sleep in a little until around 7:45. While I say that I slept in until 7:45 that means I laid in bed until 7:45 but most likely woke up around 6, due to the rosters, dogs, and vans. In Honduras there is always tons of noise, but the noises seems very natural like it is providing a soundtrack to our lives down here. Once I got up I took my cold shower and shaved in the shower without a mirror and without shaving cream because that seemed like the easiest way to do it, I feel like I did a nice job. After that experience I walked down to the local church with another volunteer named Ryan who lives about 20 feet from me. The church was very nice and it was packed, probably around 250 people. It was standing room only (as it should usually be). Church was very interesting, it was all in Spanish so on one hand I had no idea what was going on but on the other hand I was very familiar with what was going on. This idea of lots of similarities as well as lots of differences keeps popping up throughout my experiences and I am only on day 4. During church there was two dogs that just walked around and did not bug anyone, it was kind of odd. Also during church 5 phones went off (told you it wasn’t that much different than the states), every time a phone went off the priest would stop completely what he was doing and look in the direction of the sound with a death stare on his face. After the 4^th phone went off he finally asked everyone to shut off their phones. Someone did not listen because another one went off later and they too received the death stare. Towards the beginning of the mass some people brought in a coffin so from what we could gather it was both a mass and a funeral, which was interesting. After church me and Ryan decided to go explore and see what else was around us, as we were walking the priest drove past us and asked us where we were from and wanted to know what we were doing here (in a friendly way). We told him we were with the peace corps and he thanked us and wished us well, we asked where he was from because he spoke English and he told us he was from Quebec I figure he likes our town then because it is the same as his home country but just with a different pronunciation and a “s” at the end (Canada, Las Canadas). Once we got back from exploring we sat and talked with Ryan’s host mom for a little bit and tried to learn some more Spanish. I feel as though my Spanish is constantly improving, like every five minutes I feel like I have learned a vast amount more of Spanish. I have for sure learned more in these four days than I ever did in my four years in high school (take that PHS foreign language department). I then got a phone for down here, the phone system is really complicated and I feel as though you have to have a PhD to fully understand it. Basically there are three major phones companies (tigo, claro, y digicel), it seems as though they are all working together because tigo works best when calling other Hondurans while claro works best for portable internet and digicel works best for calling international. They are prepaid phones so you put a certain amount of money on the phone by going to any store basically where they send a text using a special phone and then you have your minutes. Depending on the last number in your phone number you can get triple the minutes for what you pay if you put money on the correct day. The phone I got has a chip (sim card) for tigo so I will be using it to call other volunteers and when I get to my placement my counterparts, etc. I can get a chip for digicel and that has cheaper calling to the U.S. and I will probably not get a chip for claro at this point because I do not need internet. I want to put a disclaimer because this might shock some people so be careful reading this next sentence. The phone numbers down here are 8 numbers long (they clearly have not read outliers). So my number is 9632-1882. I believe that if you want to call me from the states that it does not cost me anything but I do believe that it may be expensive for you. I also think that in order to call you need to put in 011-504-9632-1882, that’s going off memory so maybe someone could check that and post a comment on it. With the rest of my day I spent almost all of it playing with my host brothers and sisters as well as the other neighborhood kids. It is amazing how accepting kids can be and how well we can communicate. They do not seem to care at all that I do not speak much Spanish and at the same time I am learning an unreal amount from them. Okay now on to the story about the water bottle which I know you all have been waiting for, thank you for being so patient. So, I was outside playing with the kids and my host mother came out and asked me to go across the street and get another water bottle. I was more than happy to and readily accepted, she handed me the money (25 limps) and I went and got the water. As I was walking back across the street (I was holding it on my shoulder) it began to leak so I adjusted it and dropped it right there on the road. I was able to pick it up very quickly and salvage almost all of the water but the top of the plastic bottle broke off. Well long story short, after some very broken Spanish and some awkward moments accompanied by lots of lo sientos (I’m sorrys) the situation was fixed and we are just pouring the water in little by little. My host mother was so nice about it which was very nice to see, I even offered to pay for it and she would not accept it. It was a really funny experience from the outside I am sure and even on the inside I thought it was pretty funny but at the same time I felt really bad because I know these people have very little. Well that just about updates everyone on my life so far which I have decided is la Vida Buena (The Good Life). I have to constantly stop and pinch myself and remember that I am not dreaming (or at least I think I am not, they did say that the malaria pills we are taking could cause vivid dreams…). I feel so blessed to have been given this opportunity and have been constantly saying, “I am so lucky.” This experience has been more than I ever hoped for and I am only 4 days in to a 2 year adventure. I have been telling others that I think everyone should have to join the peace corps even if only for a week or a month because I think it opens up your eyes to a lot of new realities, some ugly, but most beautiful. Life here is much more simple and the people seem to be much more happy. All of the Hondurans are very happy and everyone says hello to everyone in passing (I am used to it after going down to the farm with my dad, so thanks for preparing me for that dad!) I feel like I probably have more to tell but this post is already going to be incredibly long so I guess I will just end it here, if you got the end then congrats to you I am not sure I would have made it myself haha. Hasta Luego! (See you later).

I put pictures up on facebook, this is the link. It is a public link so it should work for everyone.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150303441232359.388312.593887358&l=1f4fae03f7