December here I come!!!

Oh yeah 2 months down, only 22 left to go J, So I have sort of started to work now, I mean I guess it all depends on your point of view when you ask or define work…I have recently turned in a proposal for a reforestation project with Trees for the Future, which I am hoping to undertake sometime next year with my community and the school. Also we are in process to ask for a middle school to be brought to our community. I am not really sure if we are going to accomplish the latter, but it never hurts to try. I have also been to meetings in the other surrounding communities and have told them I will support them in the projects they are doing where I can, however in reality I have very few resources as Peace Corps Volunteer. In reality my job is less focused on the actual work I do as a volunteer and more on the cultural exchange I have with the people in the community. This doesn’t mean I am just going to walk around talking about differences and drinking coffee with people, but I will be doing this a lot.

I played soccer again last weekend; I got to wait for about 3 hours of discussion and confusion before we finally played. Of course we lost, the team I played for in very poorly organized, it was fun either which way, and I could barely walk the next day, but that was probably more because I had to walk 40 minutes to and from the soccer game, and in a hurry after the game up the hill from the neighboring village to get to a meeting I had called. In the end I got to the meeting, absolutely wasted, but it went well and we completed the stuff I needed us to do to turn in the application for the reforestation project.

This weekend I think I am going to move into my own little shack/house. We did some work to put glass windows and metal bars on the windows, and also to install a sink inside the house. I am only waiting on going and getting the furniture that is waiting for me in a neighboring village. I got really lucky that past volunteers left me a whole bunch of stuff, the only furniture I have had to buy is a bed, and since the past volunteers in my area were couple the bed frame I was left is queen, so I bought a nice queen size bed for 2300 lempiras (125 dollars). I really like my host family and will come and eat with them all the time even when I move out, but it is a step that I need to take and now my friends are going to be able to come and visit me and have a place to stay!

The coffee season is on the verge, they are already picking, but just a few beans a day, pretty soon it will be mayhem and people will be picking left right and center. I am going to go out one of these days and see what it is like to pick coffee for a day; it should be an interesting experience.

I had a great thanksgiving with some friends in a town called Las Vegas (unfortunately there was no gambling). We had turkey, and stuffing, and mashed potato, and sweet potato, and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie…in fact the food was all very typical of a thanksgiving in the states. I am going to spend Christmas here in my community, supposedly they don’t do all that much, but I am going to stay anyway and then venture off to celebrate the New Year with some of my fellow PCVs.

Bueno, that’s all I got for now…I am probably leaving out a lot, but it’s hard to include everything…all I know is that I haven’t fallen off the mule yet!!! More to come on that… J

Tristan

And then it got cold

So when you think of Central America what is one of the first things that comes to mind, for me it was nice warm weather…and guess what I got, freezing cold weather with lots of rain and lots of mud. I almost didn’t bring my beanie, I almost didn’t bring my winter gloves, whoa I am so glad that I brought them both now! It is hard to work in such cold weather, personally I just want to stay in bed all day, but I can only do that every other day unfortunately J

In about 3 weeks I am going to finally be moving into my own house, I am paying 8 months of rent in advance so they fix the house up a bit and give it some real windows as opposed to wooden ones. Also they are going to make me a sink. The house is really small, its basically 1 room separated into 2 small rooms, and then the bathroom which is also minute. It is not so bad though, I wouldn’t have cared so much about the wooden windows if there was electricity here, but seeing as there is not I like to let light into the house as much as possible and the wooden windows just aren’t good for that.

I went to a Halloween party last weekend and dressed up like a churro bag (which is the potato chip bag that you see everywhere on the streets). The get together was probably the best thing I have done for myself since I got to site…life was getting stressful, lonely and boring here, but I got to spend time, talk and hear about other peoples experiences and it helped me to realize I am not the only one living and experiencing this change in life. It was all really enlightening and stress relieving for me, in fact I think they should make a little getaway like that MANDATORY for all volunteers about a month into site. That way they don’t get too stressed out/depressed and decided to terminate their Peace Corps service early, which is quite frankly not uncommon. Now that I am back in site I feel rejuvenated and really ready to start working again.

Right now I am working on a variety of different projects, the schools are letting out, however I might try to open up a community center/library type place 3 days a week in the school to give kids a chance to have access to books and a safe environment to play/draw/write/read, or whatever. I still need to talk about this with the school director however to see if she is on board. Also I am probably going to be working with Trees for the future and try and bring from trees or seeds into site to build a nursery and seed beds so we can plant trees in the area/take part in reforestation here in the protected area that is Mount Santa Barbara. Apart from these things I am working with different groups and going to different meetings from time to time to offer support and pretty soon I am going to start working on an environmental education plan for next year.

I miss everyone at home, however I have a really GREAT friend base here in Honduras of other volunteers and people in my community that make me feel good and are always willing to talk and help. I am not really sure what I am going to do for thanksgiving, however I think I would be very very lucky if I got to eat a nice cooked pumpkin pie with turkey, stuffing and a nice cranberry sauce. That’s all I got for now, keep in touch…

Tristan