Life Update

February 24^th, 2012

            Alright it has been a while since I have actually written a real blog that passed along real information about my life etc. Most of that has to be with me being plain lazy while some of it has to do with not wanting to rock the boat while I was still officially a PCV until the 15^th of this month. For those reasons I was mostly just passing on news articles about the situation in Honduras and the situation in Honduras is fairly bad however I do want to say that in many of the more rural areas the violence is not nearly as high. Most of the violence, gangs, and drug trafficking seem to take place in the larger cities (specifically San Pedro Sula and Tegus) as well as the North Coast. So while I think the media has done a fairly good job of reporting on the situation down there, they have spread the message that the entire country is basically a war zone and you are safe nowhere. I have to say from personal experience that I felt very safe in my site as did almost every other volunteer I know, the real issue for us was the travel (which is really dangerous). So if you have been following along with the Honduras situation, please do not think that the entire country is corrupt and scum that is pretty much just the people in charge who have the power. The vast majority of people who I met and interacted with are by far some of the friendliest, most helpful, and happiest people I have ever met.

            In other news, I am officially a RPCV now so my time with the PC in officially over. As for what exactly is next for me the plan as of now is to look for a job near/in Chicago at a public elementary school with low income that has a high population of Spanish speakers/English Language Learners. I LOVED my time in the PC and would love to continue with my service however my logic goes as follows as to why I am not going to reapply at the current time:

A)    In order to reapply I had to wait until I was done with my time in Honduras aka Feb. 15^th and then I needed to fill out a form complete with my medical clearance. I figure that by the time that I am done with the medical stuff and get everything send in it will be around the start of March.

B)    Once I get everything sent in they have to then go through it and make sure everything is okay, since the PC is a governmental organization I am assuming that by the time that they get all of that done it will be around mid-March.  

C)    Once I am all set and ready to go they need to find me a new country to go to. Since I would obviously want to go to another Spanish speaking country it would most likely be around another 6 months before I find out where I am going and actually get to go there. So I am now looking around Septemberish.

D)    Once I am in my new country I would need to go through another 3 months of training, so now we are talking December, maybe even 2013.

E)     After training I would get another new site and would have to spend another 3 months or so getting to know the town, the people, and earning their trust. So around March of 2013.

F)     At this point I could finally really start to get down to helping people out again, now I know that I would be helping people out throughout but most of training is really about yourself and learning the culture/language.

So, around March of 2013 I can really get down to helping people out again in this world and that is if everything goes exactly according to plan and as quickly as humanly possible (not likely), my logic therefore tells me that I have a certain set of skills at this point in my life which can help a population of people right now, and I don’t even have to go to a foreign country to do it. At least that is the plan at this point. Of course, there are some other options but that is plan A. In the future I do hope to get involved in a program called Peace Corps Response, which is basically PC but it is shorter length terms and more specific jobs. So the thought for me is after I get some more real life experience in the field of special education I can take that to a developing country and provide some real help.

            As for what is going to happen to the blog at this point I am not quite sure, I believe that I am going to try to continue it because I still have a list of things that I want to write about concerning my time in Honduras, international development, and maybe I will even throw in some RPFs. Another thought is that I might try to continue writing on the blog but just change it to a blog about the experience of a first year teacher which I think would be interesting, however we will see. So that is a little update about my life, please do not hate me for not posting for such a long time. I promise I will be much better in the future (I think haha).