February 24th, 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 15th 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. 15th
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).
