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