I wrote a three page, convoluted post about phones here, and realized I could do better. The basics are that there are two major providers here, incoming calls are free, everyone is prepaid, the majority of internet access here is via USB cell modem (usually not 3G), and they have various promotions that can make it cheaper to do things. Like most promotions, if you don’t pay attention they wind up being more expensive. Now for a bit more detail about the Honduran cell phone system.
Tigo is the largest cell company in Honduras, followed by Claro, which is in the process of absorbing the third, Digicel. Sam and I use Tigo, which has strong coverage in our town. One of the major differences between the US and Honduran phone systems is that the caller pays all the costs of a call or text. That means when you call or text me, it is free for me! This makes calls look more expensive, but the whole cost is just shifted to the caller. This is great because I’ve got Facebook set up to text me when certain things happen, and they don’t cost me anything to receive. You do need to be careful though, there are many services that charge you when they send you a text and can be difficult to cancel.
The other main difference here is that (almost) everyone here has a prepaid phone, rather than getting a bill every month. You put credit on your phone, called saldo and then you use that saldo to make calls and send texts. When you run out of saldo, you need to buy more. You go to your local pulperia, buy a card with a scratch off hidden number that you send in a text, your saldo is automatically updated and you can make calls again! It is a really simple and easy system, no need to worry about going over your minutes for the month, you pay as you go.
However. If you want the best deal, you have the play the promotions game. It isn’t very difficult; it is just a bit confusing. The biggest one here is “Triple Days”, where you get triple the value of your saldo when you load your phone that day, but you don’t get regular saldo, you get in-network credit. Say I buy L10 of saldo on my triple day (which happens to be Thursday because my number ends in a 6). I get L10 of saldo, and the L20 worth of talk time that is used when I call other Tigo phones. To compound matters, this bonus time expires every week unless you get more while your regular saldo doesn’t expire. Sam forgot her day once and had over 4 hours of bonus time expire. This bonus time is why we have Tigo, because all the other PCVs have Tigo and no one wants to call outside the network, so everyone has Tigo to call the other PCVs.
The other two promotions that I use are Tigo Amigo and the International packet. Sam and I have Tigo Amigo, which is a friend plan. For L250, Sam can call me unlimited for a year, the catch being that only the first 10 minutes are free, after that it takes from our saldo. So if we want to talk for a long time, we hang up at 9 minutes and she calls me back. It is annoying, but WAY cheaper. The international packet I use lets me call the US for L0.5 a minute, or about 2.5 US cents. That is way cheaper than the 18 cents a minute Skype wants, or the about 4L a minute to call without the packet. The catch here is I buy 60 minutes of talk time for L30, but when that time runs out, they automatically switch over to the regular rate of L4 a minute.
It also seems that most people get their internet via the cell networks. Here in La Unión, it is the ONLY option for internet. We have a Claro modem, but the Claro network here only runs on GPRS (so slow Gmail doesn’t work) while the Tigo network runs on EDGE (what you have in the US if you are not on 3G). The internet plans do have an option for a postpaid, but it has been tricky for PCVs to get, due to a lack of Honduran credit and other things, but it is cheaper that way. Next time I am in Teguz I am going to attempt to get a Tigo modem on a postpaid plan, which oddly enough are priced in US dollars, not lempiras. They want all sorts of information, and I hope my Spanish will be up to the task of arguing business so they give me the modem with the plan I want.
Well, those are the basics (and then some) of the cell phones here. Hopefully that makes sense, it took me about a month of living here to be able to make sense of it all.
17 June 2011
14 June 2011
Another day, another book
So it is now late at night (almost 2200) and Sam is laying in bed under the mosquito net reading, and I am writing a blog post after finishing the most recent book I was reading. It was Where Men Win Glory, by Jon Krakauer and a seemed a bit more preachy/view point pushing than his other books I remember, but it was an alright read, but definitely different than the other book I’ve read this week, Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger. I managed to never read Catcher in the Rye during high school, and having read it now I’m glad I didn’t. Holden Caulfield is a self absorbed little prick, and I didn’t need any encouragement (and I doubt any teenage boy) needs any encouragement in thinking they are great judges of everything. Boy was old Holden crumby!
Anyway, we went to visit our friend Brett in Campamento last Thursday, spent the night and had a great time. Brett also has a blog, you can read it here: http://brettbeckner.blogspot.com/ Campamento is still in Olancho, but about 2.5 hours away to the southwest, assuming we get a direct bus or the connecting bus comes along quickly. It is a much larger town then La Unión, with about 25,000 people living there. We met up with Brett early after taking the 0500 bus. We saw a tremendous view on the way out as the sun was coming up, but wasn’t let over the ridge of the mountains. The sky was a soft red/orange in watercolors, the hills were just dark shapes, but a line of trees along the ridge stood in dark relief against the soft red of the sky. That sunrise made me understand why someone invented watercolors.
We arrived in Campamento in time to join Brett for breakfast at his house, and it was awesome. Thanks Brett’s mom! We ran around most of the day with a medical brigade from Atlanta, then met some of Brett’s work counterparts, one of whom seems like she might be helpful for Sam’s work here in La Unión. We closed the night with street food (hot dogs and baleadas), and then talked over wine with one of the brigade members until after 0100 in the morning. That is by far the latest we have been up in country, and were fortunate that we were staying in the church with the brigade. They had set up two mattresses for us on the floor in a room, and we were very happy there. The next day we did a bit of shopping, used the bank, and unsuccessfully looked for a flea collar. Brett also showed us his sweet new pad that he is going to move into, and I’m jealous of the comforts that city folk get, like second story apartments. We then went with a RPVC that isn’t very returned, but working for the municipality of Campamento, to an experimental coffee farm 10 minutes down the road. It was interesting to learn about coffee and its production.
Since we’ve been back, we’ve been looking for a place of our own and have a few leads, but nothing really compelling yet. Over the weekend we traveled to Esquipulas del Norte with one of Sam’s counterparts for her work, it is a neighbouring town about an hour north of us, and still in Olancho. It was real pretty out that way. I had another radio show today about malaria. I had a 30 minute show last Monday about diarrhea which I guess wasn’t too bad because they asked me back for malaria. To be honest, I didn’t do most of the talking today, I was only told about the show today 3 hours before broadcast, so I asked a coworker from the centro, a health promoter that normally does these things, to lead. Poco a poco, yo estoy aprendiendo español. (Little by little, I am learning Spanish.)
So much for writing shorter posts, I start writing and get on a roll. It’s now 2230, and time for bed, but I will leave you with a picture I took of a picture that Brett took while with the brigade outside Campamento.
-Jeff
Anyway, we went to visit our friend Brett in Campamento last Thursday, spent the night and had a great time. Brett also has a blog, you can read it here: http://brettbeckner.blogspot.com/ Campamento is still in Olancho, but about 2.5 hours away to the southwest, assuming we get a direct bus or the connecting bus comes along quickly. It is a much larger town then La Unión, with about 25,000 people living there. We met up with Brett early after taking the 0500 bus. We saw a tremendous view on the way out as the sun was coming up, but wasn’t let over the ridge of the mountains. The sky was a soft red/orange in watercolors, the hills were just dark shapes, but a line of trees along the ridge stood in dark relief against the soft red of the sky. That sunrise made me understand why someone invented watercolors.
We arrived in Campamento in time to join Brett for breakfast at his house, and it was awesome. Thanks Brett’s mom! We ran around most of the day with a medical brigade from Atlanta, then met some of Brett’s work counterparts, one of whom seems like she might be helpful for Sam’s work here in La Unión. We closed the night with street food (hot dogs and baleadas), and then talked over wine with one of the brigade members until after 0100 in the morning. That is by far the latest we have been up in country, and were fortunate that we were staying in the church with the brigade. They had set up two mattresses for us on the floor in a room, and we were very happy there. The next day we did a bit of shopping, used the bank, and unsuccessfully looked for a flea collar. Brett also showed us his sweet new pad that he is going to move into, and I’m jealous of the comforts that city folk get, like second story apartments. We then went with a RPVC that isn’t very returned, but working for the municipality of Campamento, to an experimental coffee farm 10 minutes down the road. It was interesting to learn about coffee and its production.
Since we’ve been back, we’ve been looking for a place of our own and have a few leads, but nothing really compelling yet. Over the weekend we traveled to Esquipulas del Norte with one of Sam’s counterparts for her work, it is a neighbouring town about an hour north of us, and still in Olancho. It was real pretty out that way. I had another radio show today about malaria. I had a 30 minute show last Monday about diarrhea which I guess wasn’t too bad because they asked me back for malaria. To be honest, I didn’t do most of the talking today, I was only told about the show today 3 hours before broadcast, so I asked a coworker from the centro, a health promoter that normally does these things, to lead. Poco a poco, yo estoy aprendiendo español. (Little by little, I am learning Spanish.)
So much for writing shorter posts, I start writing and get on a roll. It’s now 2230, and time for bed, but I will leave you with a picture I took of a picture that Brett took while with the brigade outside Campamento.
-Jeff
08 June 2011
Brigades and Pancakes
So, it is Wednesday morning, 1030 and 81F here in La Unión. It has been like this the past two weeks or so, low to mid 80s during the day, low to mid 70s at night, very pleasant and nicer weather than I’ve been hearing about back in DC. I am enjoying town, becoming comfortable here. The medical brigade that came last week was helpful in that process.
When I say medical brigade, I don’t mean anything military, it is just a group of (usually) gringos that comes for a few days to do medical work. Ours had 2 Honduran doctors, a Honduran dentist, and a US pediatric nurse practitioner, and a half dozen assorted others to see humans, and a vet team for animals. Sam worked with the vet team and wrote about it in her blog post. I stayed in the church where the human medical team set up, and spent most of my time translating medication instructions. Patients came in and went to “triage”, or registration, where they got a form that served as their chart and had their name, blood pressure and chief complaint written on it. Then they waited for one of the doctors to become available, and after the doctor saw them, if they were prescribed any medications they came to the pharmacy, which is where I was for three days. Cindy, the team leader, worked the pharmacy with two others to fill the scripts, and then I gave the medications to the patients and explained what they were for and when to use it. It was certainly the most intensive, and important to get correct, uses of my Spanish yet. It was very helpful though, in that I was using basically the same language over and over, and the repetition was great. I was able to handle most everything, and only had to go get help to understand a question a few times, and most of those it appeared that the patient had a mental issue, and it wasn’t me not able to understand, they really didn’t make sense. I think I did really well with my Spanish for only being in country 3.5 months!
I also explained the cell phone system here to them, and set them up with a phone so they could call home. This particular brigade tries to come to Honduras every year, so they are going to be able to use the phone on their next trip. We also introduced them to baleadas, which they had somehow not had yet. They had gone to a grocery store in La Ceiba before coming to La Unión and had several US style meals. They invited Sam and I to eat with them, and we really enjoyed the food. Pancakes with syrup, spaghetti with a meat sauce that wasn’t baloney, pan-fried chicken breast (no bones!) and toast with butter were some highlights. Don’t get me wrong, I like Honduran food, but a taste of home and the variety was delightful.
The brigade was in La Unión and saw patients on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. These were full days of work from 0800-1800, which is not the standard day here. Let me briefly cover the rest of the week. Wednesday, the brigade left but we hung out with them most of the morning. We stopped by the centro de salud, where they were finishing installing a new dentist chair in the front room. I guess we had misunderstood the previous week as it seems we are going to get a full time dentist here, who is very needed. (The dentist with the brigade didn’t do fillings, if teeth were rotted they got pulled. In three days the dentist pulled around 120 teeth, mostly from children.) In the afternoon, we went to a meeting of escuela para padres y madres, which is kind of like a PTA, and gave a brief charlita about VIH/SIDA (HIV/AIDS) to 25 parents. Sam did a great job facilitating and I filled in with the technical health information.
Thursday, I went to the centro in the morning. There are two health promoters that only work in the morning on a malaria and dengue campaign, and I went with them to a house that had a pit in their backyard that has the dankest most mosquito ridden water I have ever seen. We took some samples of the water to show the doctor and use in charlas, and then put abate (larvacide) in the water to eliminate it as a mosquito source. After that, we sat around the centro and talked about things. Water cooler chat stuff, great Spanish practice but not really work. Sam had finally met one of her counterparts, and we went to the next door municipality of Yocon to meet some people. After lunch and a meeting, we were back home after 2 hours and done for the day.
Friday, I went to the centro again in the morning and made a plan for the next week. Then in the afternoon Dario, the fulltime health promoter, drove me out to the municipal cremetorio, or landfill/trash burning field/pit that is about a mile outside town. There is no collection though, so many people just burn their trash outside their house in town. After that, we climbed a hill at one end of town to get a view down on town, and that was my work Friday. Sam and I then went to Rosario (another town about 10km away) with Letty, my counterpart at the centro, to visit her family there for a bit, and after we got home Sam and I had dinner and watched Hancock and Charlie St Cloud. This was a busy and full day! (You can click on any of the pictures for larger sizes of them.)
Picture of the trash pit, yes it is smoldering.
View of La Unión from halfway up a mountain.
Saturday, we did laundry, read (I started and finished We Are All The Same, by Jim Wooten), had lunch out (fried chicken), and found Sam two pairs of jeans.
So there was a week in the life of me as a Peace Corps Honduras Volunteer. It was a busy one! A lot of current volunteers have told us not to get frustrated if we don’t do any work for the first month or so, but it turned out we don’t have to worry about that! In addition to all that, this Monday I was on the radio to talk about diarrhea for 30 minutes, gave a brief charlita to the waiting room at the centro about the same on Tuesday, and think I will be on the radio again this afternoon to talk about malaria.
I’ve had busy days and I’ve had slow days, and my money is on busy days being more common. That is good, because there are not a lot of things to occupy free time here in La Unión outside of soccer. We will be reading a lot, and you can look at our Books page to see how much and what we are reading.
I suppose that two pages of text is plenty for one post, I’ll try to post shorter and more often.
-Jeff
Tl;dr: A medical team came to town, we helped them translate. The rest of the week was not as busy, but still full. I had a 30 minute radio show about diarrhea. I’m going to try and post shorter and more often.
When I say medical brigade, I don’t mean anything military, it is just a group of (usually) gringos that comes for a few days to do medical work. Ours had 2 Honduran doctors, a Honduran dentist, and a US pediatric nurse practitioner, and a half dozen assorted others to see humans, and a vet team for animals. Sam worked with the vet team and wrote about it in her blog post. I stayed in the church where the human medical team set up, and spent most of my time translating medication instructions. Patients came in and went to “triage”, or registration, where they got a form that served as their chart and had their name, blood pressure and chief complaint written on it. Then they waited for one of the doctors to become available, and after the doctor saw them, if they were prescribed any medications they came to the pharmacy, which is where I was for three days. Cindy, the team leader, worked the pharmacy with two others to fill the scripts, and then I gave the medications to the patients and explained what they were for and when to use it. It was certainly the most intensive, and important to get correct, uses of my Spanish yet. It was very helpful though, in that I was using basically the same language over and over, and the repetition was great. I was able to handle most everything, and only had to go get help to understand a question a few times, and most of those it appeared that the patient had a mental issue, and it wasn’t me not able to understand, they really didn’t make sense. I think I did really well with my Spanish for only being in country 3.5 months!
I also explained the cell phone system here to them, and set them up with a phone so they could call home. This particular brigade tries to come to Honduras every year, so they are going to be able to use the phone on their next trip. We also introduced them to baleadas, which they had somehow not had yet. They had gone to a grocery store in La Ceiba before coming to La Unión and had several US style meals. They invited Sam and I to eat with them, and we really enjoyed the food. Pancakes with syrup, spaghetti with a meat sauce that wasn’t baloney, pan-fried chicken breast (no bones!) and toast with butter were some highlights. Don’t get me wrong, I like Honduran food, but a taste of home and the variety was delightful.
The brigade was in La Unión and saw patients on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. These were full days of work from 0800-1800, which is not the standard day here. Let me briefly cover the rest of the week. Wednesday, the brigade left but we hung out with them most of the morning. We stopped by the centro de salud, where they were finishing installing a new dentist chair in the front room. I guess we had misunderstood the previous week as it seems we are going to get a full time dentist here, who is very needed. (The dentist with the brigade didn’t do fillings, if teeth were rotted they got pulled. In three days the dentist pulled around 120 teeth, mostly from children.) In the afternoon, we went to a meeting of escuela para padres y madres, which is kind of like a PTA, and gave a brief charlita about VIH/SIDA (HIV/AIDS) to 25 parents. Sam did a great job facilitating and I filled in with the technical health information.
Thursday, I went to the centro in the morning. There are two health promoters that only work in the morning on a malaria and dengue campaign, and I went with them to a house that had a pit in their backyard that has the dankest most mosquito ridden water I have ever seen. We took some samples of the water to show the doctor and use in charlas, and then put abate (larvacide) in the water to eliminate it as a mosquito source. After that, we sat around the centro and talked about things. Water cooler chat stuff, great Spanish practice but not really work. Sam had finally met one of her counterparts, and we went to the next door municipality of Yocon to meet some people. After lunch and a meeting, we were back home after 2 hours and done for the day.
Friday, I went to the centro again in the morning and made a plan for the next week. Then in the afternoon Dario, the fulltime health promoter, drove me out to the municipal cremetorio, or landfill/trash burning field/pit that is about a mile outside town. There is no collection though, so many people just burn their trash outside their house in town. After that, we climbed a hill at one end of town to get a view down on town, and that was my work Friday. Sam and I then went to Rosario (another town about 10km away) with Letty, my counterpart at the centro, to visit her family there for a bit, and after we got home Sam and I had dinner and watched Hancock and Charlie St Cloud. This was a busy and full day! (You can click on any of the pictures for larger sizes of them.)
Picture of the trash pit, yes it is smoldering.
View of La Unión from halfway up a mountain.Saturday, we did laundry, read (I started and finished We Are All The Same, by Jim Wooten), had lunch out (fried chicken), and found Sam two pairs of jeans.
So there was a week in the life of me as a Peace Corps Honduras Volunteer. It was a busy one! A lot of current volunteers have told us not to get frustrated if we don’t do any work for the first month or so, but it turned out we don’t have to worry about that! In addition to all that, this Monday I was on the radio to talk about diarrhea for 30 minutes, gave a brief charlita to the waiting room at the centro about the same on Tuesday, and think I will be on the radio again this afternoon to talk about malaria.
I’ve had busy days and I’ve had slow days, and my money is on busy days being more common. That is good, because there are not a lot of things to occupy free time here in La Unión outside of soccer. We will be reading a lot, and you can look at our Books page to see how much and what we are reading.
I suppose that two pages of text is plenty for one post, I’ll try to post shorter and more often.
-Jeff
Tl;dr: A medical team came to town, we helped them translate. The rest of the week was not as busy, but still full. I had a 30 minute radio show about diarrhea. I’m going to try and post shorter and more often.
05 June 2011
The real work begins
This week turned out to be an extremely productive one for us. About our second day here when we were going around with Jeff's counterpart Leti and meeting people in the community, she took us to meet her pastor, Mauricio. Pretty much the first thing he said after "Mucho Gusto" was, are you going to help with the brigade? And we were like, "What brigade?" So that's how we found out that there was going to be a group of gringos here for a medical brigade starting on the 28th. So, we hung around this weekend, in the hopes of doing some real work.
The brigade arrived on Saturday night late, so we didn't meet them until Sunday morning. We were walking up the street and they just kinda looked at us and said "You guys must speak English!" and, of course, we did. It was all downhill from there. It turns out that the brigade of a dentist, 2 doctors, 2 nurse practitioners, several other health-related professionals and a veterinary team was here having a clinic for people in Pastor Mauricio's church. We quickly discovered that 3 bilingual people in their group of 20 wasn't going to be enough and offered our services.
I went out with the veterinary team to the campo to help vaccinate dogs, cats, horses and pigs against rabies and treat their intestinal worms. The first day I went with them I was the only bilingual speaker (we had a guy from the community with us helping, but he only speaks spanish). I got to know some parts of the town I hadn't seen before, and some of the little towns around here. The other two days we went up into aldeas of our neighboring municipality of Yocon to small towns where Pastor Mauricio knows the preachers.
Sorry I don't have any pictures of the work with animals. It seemed like a bad idea to take pictures when I was covered in manure and pig. Maybe the team will email me some (*hint hint, wink wink*). I had a really fun time, and learned all about vaccinating animals, including how to hold down pigs. It turns out (i just learned) that I incorrectly told them the anti-worm medication was for fleas, but all the same it won't hurt the animals and will get rid of their intestinal parasites. Oh well. It was a great experience for us to practice spanish and to get to know the members of our community.
As an added bonus we made some super awesome friends who did their best to leave us with everything they could. It was like Christmas all over again! We are very lucky to have met them, and the timing couldn't have been better. I don't think we'll ever be able to come up with a big enough way to say thanks for treating us like family. It means a lot. (Many volunteers are lucky enough to be close to people who are about to end their service and get a lot of hand-me-down things to furnish a house with. Peace Corps gives us L5000 for moving out, but that's about enough to buy a decent bed and a table. Unfortunately, we are 3 hours from the closest volunteer, and not anywhere close to anyone who could pass stuff our way--so it makes even more difference to us!). Jeff will post sometime about his experience training as a bilingual pharmacist some other time :)
Cheers,
Sam
The brigade arrived on Saturday night late, so we didn't meet them until Sunday morning. We were walking up the street and they just kinda looked at us and said "You guys must speak English!" and, of course, we did. It was all downhill from there. It turns out that the brigade of a dentist, 2 doctors, 2 nurse practitioners, several other health-related professionals and a veterinary team was here having a clinic for people in Pastor Mauricio's church. We quickly discovered that 3 bilingual people in their group of 20 wasn't going to be enough and offered our services.
I went out with the veterinary team to the campo to help vaccinate dogs, cats, horses and pigs against rabies and treat their intestinal worms. The first day I went with them I was the only bilingual speaker (we had a guy from the community with us helping, but he only speaks spanish). I got to know some parts of the town I hadn't seen before, and some of the little towns around here. The other two days we went up into aldeas of our neighboring municipality of Yocon to small towns where Pastor Mauricio knows the preachers.
 |
| Team leader holding a 22-day-old baby |
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| Piñatas that were brought for the local children |
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| Reading about Jesus in English and Spanish before piñatas |
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| Panorama of the church set up as a clinic |
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| Cool view from the edge of town |
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| Boys with piñatas |
As an added bonus we made some super awesome friends who did their best to leave us with everything they could. It was like Christmas all over again! We are very lucky to have met them, and the timing couldn't have been better. I don't think we'll ever be able to come up with a big enough way to say thanks for treating us like family. It means a lot. (Many volunteers are lucky enough to be close to people who are about to end their service and get a lot of hand-me-down things to furnish a house with. Peace Corps gives us L5000 for moving out, but that's about enough to buy a decent bed and a table. Unfortunately, we are 3 hours from the closest volunteer, and not anywhere close to anyone who could pass stuff our way--so it makes even more difference to us!). Jeff will post sometime about his experience training as a bilingual pharmacist some other time :)
Cheers,
Sam
27 May 2011
Week 2
Well, it’s nearing the end of our second week here at site, and I still only know one of my official counterparts. Unfortunately, it’s the most informal one that doesn’t actually have paid staff. They have an office in someone’s house that is never opened. So, still waiting for work. I’ve been hanging out with Jeff a lot at the Centro de Salud and trying to help him get things started with his work there, but I don’t want to do that too much—I don’t want them to create expectations of having me around all the time.
Our host mom is the assistant principal at the Colegio (high school), and it looks like we'll be able to start doing work there pretty soon, but as many of you know teaching is NOT what I like to do. Vamos a ver.
The woman who came to pick me up on counterpart day isn’t actually one of my counterparts. She works for the ICF (institucion de Conservacion Forestal), which all of my counterpart agencies work with directly and indirectly. She’s the one who introduced me to the counterpart I do know, and is working on the other in her spare time.
Our host mom is the assistant principal at the Colegio (high school), and it looks like we'll be able to start doing work there pretty soon, but as many of you know teaching is NOT what I like to do. Vamos a ver.
We are trying not to spend all day in our house, but since we don’t really have work it’s kind of hard. We got some disheartening news this week—Peace Corps Honduras has decided to close the sites in eastern Olancho (that’s our department). This means that six people will be relocated, several of them are friends of ours from the volunteer visit. We are still waiting to hear what this means for us. As much as we like this site, we’d rather move now than be relocated in 8 months. Also, one of the things I liked most about this particular site was the network of volunteers that exists in Olancho, and now half of that is gone--including our friends from Santa Maria de Real.
21 May 2011
In Site
Day 3 in Site
So we are now in La Unión, Olancho, our home for the next two years. Today we met the staff at the colegio (high school), watched the school soccer team play against another school, and attended a fashion show/fiesta – all at the colegio. I had planned to meet people at the Centro de Salud but the jeffe Dr (boss man) wasn’t in today and my counterpart RN was way busy picking up the slack. I shall try again tomorrow. A big success we had today was meeting a local small business owner who studied in the States and volunteered his truck if we ever need it! Knowing people with vehicles seems to be an important thing here where we are a 3+ hour bus ride from the nearest full grocery store.
On the plan for tomorrow is to meet the mayor and the local police, and sometime this week travel the 3+ hours to Juticalpa to use an ATM, since the agente in La Unión left. I’m not sure exactly what was said about why they left, but I heard something about mismanagement and 100,000 lempiras, which is a huge chunk of change here!
We have a tiny room, the smallest room that Sam and I have ever shared, but the rest of the house is pretty big. It will be a challenge to keep our things organized in our room, especially since we have no place to store or hang our clothes. Suitcase living for two months, alright! Our host mom is really nice and helping to introduce us to people around town. She is well known and well respected as the Vice Principal at the colegio.
La Unión seems like a bigger town, it is definitely bigger than Villa San Antonio and Yuscarón, but much further from a big city. Our modem works here, but it only runs on GPRS. Gmail refuses to load on it, so I’m not quite sure how or if I will be able to use email here, but Facebook loads, albeit slowly. Send me messages through FB and I should be checking that daily. Still don’t have a very good feel for the town, having only been here since noon on Saturday, but I have seen three different cows being harassed by dogs in the street. Additionally, yesterday we were at a restaurant watching the Olimpia-Motagua soccer game, which happened to be the championship game of the season, when Motagua scored. A guy standing near the door stepped outside, pointed his pistola in the air, and emptied the clip. Olancho has a reputation as the “Wild West” of Honduras, and I am beginning to see why.
Vamos a ver que va a pasar.
Addition: It is now Saturday, a week after we arrived. Our Claro modem on GPRS refuses to load any google thing requiring a login, and I don’t know why. But we are now using a borrowed Tigo modem which gets EDGE here and lets me login to Blogger.
So we are now in La Unión, Olancho, our home for the next two years. Today we met the staff at the colegio (high school), watched the school soccer team play against another school, and attended a fashion show/fiesta – all at the colegio. I had planned to meet people at the Centro de Salud but the jeffe Dr (boss man) wasn’t in today and my counterpart RN was way busy picking up the slack. I shall try again tomorrow. A big success we had today was meeting a local small business owner who studied in the States and volunteered his truck if we ever need it! Knowing people with vehicles seems to be an important thing here where we are a 3+ hour bus ride from the nearest full grocery store.
On the plan for tomorrow is to meet the mayor and the local police, and sometime this week travel the 3+ hours to Juticalpa to use an ATM, since the agente in La Unión left. I’m not sure exactly what was said about why they left, but I heard something about mismanagement and 100,000 lempiras, which is a huge chunk of change here!
We have a tiny room, the smallest room that Sam and I have ever shared, but the rest of the house is pretty big. It will be a challenge to keep our things organized in our room, especially since we have no place to store or hang our clothes. Suitcase living for two months, alright! Our host mom is really nice and helping to introduce us to people around town. She is well known and well respected as the Vice Principal at the colegio.
La Unión seems like a bigger town, it is definitely bigger than Villa San Antonio and Yuscarón, but much further from a big city. Our modem works here, but it only runs on GPRS. Gmail refuses to load on it, so I’m not quite sure how or if I will be able to use email here, but Facebook loads, albeit slowly. Send me messages through FB and I should be checking that daily. Still don’t have a very good feel for the town, having only been here since noon on Saturday, but I have seen three different cows being harassed by dogs in the street. Additionally, yesterday we were at a restaurant watching the Olimpia-Motagua soccer game, which happened to be the championship game of the season, when Motagua scored. A guy standing near the door stepped outside, pointed his pistola in the air, and emptied the clip. Olancho has a reputation as the “Wild West” of Honduras, and I am beginning to see why.
Vamos a ver que va a pasar.
Addition: It is now Saturday, a week after we arrived. Our Claro modem on GPRS refuses to load any google thing requiring a login, and I don’t know why. But we are now using a borrowed Tigo modem which gets EDGE here and lets me login to Blogger.
12 April 2011
Time Spent in San Antonio
Sorry it's been awhile, I've been busy! Villa San Antonio is rather hot, but I've adjusted. I never thought I would want to put on long pants in the upper 70s, but that feels rather chilly now.
The health group is getting settled here. Comayagua is only a 25 minute bus ride away, and we've taken to going there on the weekends to have some change of scenery. Last saturday a group of us took the 1000 bus (at 1030) and spent the better part of the day in Comayagua. We ran into another group of aspirantes and some of us went to La Colonia, which is a decently stocked American style grocery store, got some lunch and had a picnic in the parque central in Comayagua. I had a baguette and ham and grape juice, and it was delicious. We sat in the shade watching the world go by with the occasional creeper walking to about 10 feet away, stare at us for a few minutes, then shuffle on. Not that different from any major city around the world, life goes on.
Sunday, I went on a trip with my family to a river in Otoro de Jesus in the department of Intibuca. It was about an hour by car. We left just before 8am and drove first to Siguatepeque where my host uncle and his family lives. (Siguatepeque is notable as the halfway point between Teguz and San Pedro Sula, a major transit route in Honduras, and most of the buses stop there for a break.) I met the whole family. They have two boys that are 9 and 11, I think. We played a bit of basketball in their yard, which was a nice break from soccer all the time. After a bit we all piled into two cars and drove to the river.
The river was gorgeous. Clear water, shade trees alongside it, a picnic area, it was delightful. They had built a wall in the river out of large river stones and used a bit of concrete across the top to make a walking path as well has help them stay in place. The water was able to flow through the rocks under the concrete, but it was enough of a dam to make a deeper pool than was there before. Beside the river amoung the trees was a picnic site. Concrete slab with cover, wooden bench and grill. We did carne asada on the grill, and had rice, beans, chismol and tortillas. Nomnomnom.
Unfortunately, the sun is strong here in Honduras. I currently have shoulders that are lobster red and are hurt just by wearing a shirt. It sucks. A lot. I had a difficult time sleeping last night. It will get better! Eventually.
Training is continuing, at times very slowly. My Spanish continues to improve, poco a poco. I am now ranked at Intermediate Low, and need to reach Intermediate Mid to be able to swear in in May. I know I can make that, but my goal is Intermediate High. I know I can do it, I just need to spend time studying the past preterit and past indicative, or whatever the two past tenses are called. Today in training we covered the reporting tool that we will use to record and report our activities. It didn´t take nearly enough time, so we covered ¨games to play with kids without much equipment¨ It turned into our class playing soccer for an hour, which was fun. The rest of the week we are going to learn the Ya Te Diste Cuenta initiative, which is a teenage sex education class, and on Saturday I get to go back to Yuscaran to visit Sam again.
Busy busy busy! Updates should be more frequent when I am with Sam, as she has the computer.
Regards
Jeff
The health group is getting settled here. Comayagua is only a 25 minute bus ride away, and we've taken to going there on the weekends to have some change of scenery. Last saturday a group of us took the 1000 bus (at 1030) and spent the better part of the day in Comayagua. We ran into another group of aspirantes and some of us went to La Colonia, which is a decently stocked American style grocery store, got some lunch and had a picnic in the parque central in Comayagua. I had a baguette and ham and grape juice, and it was delicious. We sat in the shade watching the world go by with the occasional creeper walking to about 10 feet away, stare at us for a few minutes, then shuffle on. Not that different from any major city around the world, life goes on.
Sunday, I went on a trip with my family to a river in Otoro de Jesus in the department of Intibuca. It was about an hour by car. We left just before 8am and drove first to Siguatepeque where my host uncle and his family lives. (Siguatepeque is notable as the halfway point between Teguz and San Pedro Sula, a major transit route in Honduras, and most of the buses stop there for a break.) I met the whole family. They have two boys that are 9 and 11, I think. We played a bit of basketball in their yard, which was a nice break from soccer all the time. After a bit we all piled into two cars and drove to the river.
The river was gorgeous. Clear water, shade trees alongside it, a picnic area, it was delightful. They had built a wall in the river out of large river stones and used a bit of concrete across the top to make a walking path as well has help them stay in place. The water was able to flow through the rocks under the concrete, but it was enough of a dam to make a deeper pool than was there before. Beside the river amoung the trees was a picnic site. Concrete slab with cover, wooden bench and grill. We did carne asada on the grill, and had rice, beans, chismol and tortillas. Nomnomnom.
Unfortunately, the sun is strong here in Honduras. I currently have shoulders that are lobster red and are hurt just by wearing a shirt. It sucks. A lot. I had a difficult time sleeping last night. It will get better! Eventually.
Training is continuing, at times very slowly. My Spanish continues to improve, poco a poco. I am now ranked at Intermediate Low, and need to reach Intermediate Mid to be able to swear in in May. I know I can make that, but my goal is Intermediate High. I know I can do it, I just need to spend time studying the past preterit and past indicative, or whatever the two past tenses are called. Today in training we covered the reporting tool that we will use to record and report our activities. It didn´t take nearly enough time, so we covered ¨games to play with kids without much equipment¨ It turned into our class playing soccer for an hour, which was fun. The rest of the week we are going to learn the Ya Te Diste Cuenta initiative, which is a teenage sex education class, and on Saturday I get to go back to Yuscaran to visit Sam again.
Busy busy busy! Updates should be more frequent when I am with Sam, as she has the computer.
Regards
Jeff
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