FINAL FOUR!!!....and I´m in Honduras

Of course, the first time since 1984 that Gtown makes it into the Final Four and I happen to be in the most isolated town on the planet. Figures. Someone please take a shot at Tombs for me.

It´s the end of Week 2 in Cantarranas, site of our field-based training, a town with an evangelical church on every block and no internet. I´m in Tegucigalpa for the day with a fellow trainee and her fam, so I wanted to send a quick blog update to let everyone know I´m still alive and well. My family is very nice, there are four kids my age and a little grandson who is totally unintelligible but adorable nonetheless. There are no kittens, but there are plenty of flea-ridden dogs everywhere, so that makes up for it I suppose. No dogs in my house fortunately-- my house is superclean and the food is superdelicious and filled with carb-infused goodness... there are no fruits to buy in town, so I´ll hopefully get a few while I´m here. I´m in Cantarranas until April 25. Please keep the letters coming, or send me a letter for that matter.... I haven´t gotten mail and I´d love to get one.

That´s all for now.

Erin go bragh

Happy St. Patty´s Day!!! and HOYA SAXA!!!! (let´s hope they´ll beat BC)

I´m leaving Santa Lucía tomorrow for field-based training with the business project. We´ll be staying six weeks in a town closeby called Cantarranas.... apparently very similar to Santa Lucía except it´s smaller, there´s less to do and there´s no internet. I probably won´t write in this blog for awhile as a result. I promise to upload pictures very soon.
Here are a few musings on Santa Lucía and my life in Honduras thus far:

-Education here is so different. My host brothers would bring home tareas every night consisting of one of the following: cut out things from magazines (like big and small, or people in the community, or words like "Abuelita" and "Paco") and paste them in your notebook; copy the letter W a million times; write these terms down and look them up in the dictionary; translate 60 English vocab words such as window, hers, them, date stamp, breakfast cereal. wtf?!

-There is an elderly man that makes tortillas in our family´s fogón (outdoor fireplace), I pass by him every evening on the way to my room, I´ve had entire conversations with him and I still don´t know who he is. Sometimes the family gives him money for various reasons... maybe for the tortillas?? Who is this man???

-At the volunteer´s house I visited in La Paz, they have cable including several US channels, but since many of these channels are pirated they change from week to week. One day it could be ESPN2, another day NBC broadcast out of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Entertaining!

-Our next-door neighbor has peacocks. Have you ever heard a peacock?? They´re the loudest little bastards on the planet.

-I went to get my ingredients for Irish bread yesterday, and bought 6 packs of raisins. I later noticed that little winged insects were crawling around in the raisin packets. We put the raisins in a bowl, cleaned them up and used them anyway. The bread was delicious!

Cantarranas here I come!

Three weeks in

I really thought I´d be updating this much more frequently, but since most of my time is spent on training stuff here I don´t use the internet very often. I´m thinking this will change once I get to my site in May... in the meantime here are a few highlights of my days here in Santa Lucía:

--it´s really pretty here. The town is set high in the mountains from Teguc, so there are plenty of vantage points from which to see the entire capital city. People seem to be used to us gringos hanging around: in addition to the 51 Peace Corps trainees that come twice a year, there are continuous groups of Japanese folks that come on a Japan-style Peace Corps program. Plus there´s a language center here that plenty of gringos attend to learn Spanish. Plus there are plent yof tourists on the weekends. Needless to say, this is not really Honduras de verdad, but I love it anyway.

--I´m eating alot. The food consists of plenty of beans, tortillas, rice, bread, coffee, fruit and lots of buttery things, all of which are pretty delicious. I eat all the time, yet I counteract this with my bouts of diarrhea, so in all I think this evens things out.

--My family rocks. The little kids especially like to do lots of jumping and dancing. Jumping and dancing around bubbles. Jumping and dancing around the kittens. Jumping and dancing to the telenovela theme music. I never get anything done at home, but I don´t really mind.

--With a few exceptions (like the food, the climate, the banana trees, the coffee plantations), Honduras is nothing like Costa Rica. It´s really beautiful where we are right now, yet I feel I haven´t yet seen the real country yet. Tomorrow and Friday I´ll be visiting a volunteer in La Paz (about an hour from Teguc), so I´ll hopefully get to see real life as a Volunteer.

--Last night the kittens both fell asleep on my lap. Awesome.

I´ll write more soon!