Dear H19

Dear H19,

Hi, welcome to Honduras (almost)! We are excited to have you (and by that I mean we are excited to no longer be the new kids on the block)!

I imagine that some of you are probably freaking out about what to pack, like I was. There is a great post from one of the H16 volunteers on what to pack and not to pack, and I have a few things to add of my own.

-You all are in a different position than we were. As you know the housing policies have changed and you all will be living with host families for the entire two years. I’m sure it will be as rewarding as it will be challenging. In my case, when we packed to come to Honduras, I put back half of my clothes and instead brought things like knitting supplies, tea, spices, and household items that we would want over the next two years. You all won’t have to decide there because your host family will likely provide everything you need in terms of household items. Don’t bring them (unless you, like me, have a special magical can-opener that you never go anywhere without). You can buy almost anything you would want housewares wise here, but likely your host family will already have it.

-Jeff says about clothes: I brought too much. Without a washing machine, if you wait more than 5 days to do laundry you are going to be spending hours doing it, so you will get to do it more often. I brought enough clothes to go two weeks without changing, and there was no need. Two pairs jeans, one pair khaki, 1 ‘traveling’ (lightweight quickdry), one pair nicer shorts, two sports shorts(doubles as pajamas). Handful of tshirts, 5 or so button up shirts, sports coat, 1 tie. Done. Don’t be afraid to not bring enough, ropa American stores are plentiful and cheap- Sam bought two pairs of jeans for less than $8 here in site.

-Hobby stuff: If you are a knitter, then please for the love of God, bring your own yarn. They only have terrible scratchy awful acrylic stuff here. Not even the good acrylic, just the terrible pill-y kind. If you don’t know what I am talking about, feel free to disregard this section. If you have another hobby, you will have a lot of free time to do whatever you do, bring your stuff you need for it.

-Sports: Some people in our group brought things like hacky-sacks, soccer balls, etc. Jeff brought a soccer ball (futbol), and a rugby ball, which has proved to be a lot of fun not just between fellow trainees (more than 10% of our group had played rugby), but also in the community. The kids here still haven’t mastered that whole passing backwards part of rugby.

-Games: Small games are highly recommended! Lots of people brought card games like Set or the card version of Scrabble—we brought Bananagrams in both English and Spanish. Lots of fun with the host families and gives you something to do during lunch or other waiting times.

-Headlamp: Bring one of these! You will be happy you did when the power goes out. I recommend one that takes AA batteries, not funny button batteries. You can find AA and AAA batteries here, though batteries are expensive, so bring a bunch or have someone send you some. In our site, the power has been out about 20% of our time here. One week we only had power half the time.

-A clipboard! I know that sounds ridiculous, but you will seriously use this all the time. I wish I had one.

-Ladies: bring some flats. I did a silly thing in having only practical shoes (tennis shoes, Birkenstocks, flipflops, hiking boots), and apparently the thing here is to wear flats, and they are expensive to get good ones that don’t fall apart. Flip-flops are not ok for work (and hence, no ok for training), but “decorative sandals,” which are flipflops with crap on them, are ok. Honduran business wear is jeans or skirt, nice shirt/blouse, so consider that when you are packing.

-Jeans: It is totally acceptable here to wear jeans all day every day. Skinny jeans are really in, but capris are nice too when it is hot. I only brought one pair with me, and have since bought 2 more so that I don’t have to wash them so often. Go read Kristi’s post and listen to what she says about cotton/poly blends! We have plenty of cotton stuff, but the polyester helps. I have some sturdy oxford shirts from LLBean that are holding up well, but other than that the 100% cotton wears a lot faster.

-If you have a non-smart phone, or you have an older phone that works but you just don’t use anymore, get it unlocked and bring it. You need a GSM phone, one that takes a SIM card, and need to go to the company you bought it from (ATT/T-Mobile, ect.) and have them unlock it. The cheap phones here are cheap, but will cost you around 11 days of trainee income--save that for beer money.

-Bring a computer and an external hard drive. You will use your computer for work, and you will want the external hard drive to back things up. Honduras is hard on electronics, make sure you back things like documents and pictures up regularly. A larger external lets you store more movies, music, and pictures. We have a terabyte external, and it only has 100gb left. Peace Corps probably told you not to bring a computer. Do. You can always choose not to use it, but you will find them prohibitively expensive once you get here.

-GET INSURANCE. We are spending $200ish a year, and have our electronics and stuff covered. It’s pricey, but completely worth it, especially since just replacing your clothes would probably cost more that what you are going to make in a year. If our laptop or something is stolen, we wouldn’t be able to afford to replace it otherwise.

Along those lines, don’t bring anything irreplaceable. You will likely go through service with no problems, but every year people get robbed. If you have a family heirloom or something else one of a kind, the likelihood of it getting lost, stolen or damaged here is high.

If you have any questions, post a comment or email us.

Goodluck! Training will likely be long and at times boring, but stick with it!

lloviendo

Yuscaran is beautiful.  It's a nice colonial town situated on the side of a mountain.  I think its horribly hot, and the hondurens are constantly complaining about the heat, but it's no where near as hot as where Jeff is (I think I will wait to visit him).  Still, the sun is tremendous, and it's really hard to concentrate in classes in the afternoon.  My host family is great--my mom works at Hondutel, my dad is retired, I have a 27 year old brother with Down Syndrome who is very high functioning, a host sister who is 14 and lots of fun (she's teaching me songs in spanish), and a host brother who lives in Teguz and studies medicine at the Universidad Catolica (he's 19).  They are a fun family because they are physically affectionate in a way that is normally uncommon for families here, possibly because they have a kid with down syndrome. 

Today was interesting--it was shadow day where each of the aspirantes got assigned to a business for a few hours.  The rest of the week have to work on developing business plans for them.  My first two businesses were closed due to a lack of power (this is fairly common, it was out for 8 hours yesterday).  I ended up at a ferreteria or hardware shop, but pretty much this one just sells motor oil and bicycle parts, and is a partition of the lady's house. 

This weekend I hung out with my family.  They own the hotel next door which they are renovating, another hotelito on the other side of the house, a casita in the country, and a farm with cows, coffee, bananas, and mangoes.  One of these days my father is going to take me to milk the cows--I already learned how to make leche cuajada, a kind of queso fresco.

It rained this afternoon which is super rare in this season, but I loved every second of it.  My host sister Paola took pictures of me jumping in the puddles.

Hello family, friends, and those of other PCTs. A few of the other aspirantes have reported that parents or friends have found our blog. Bienvenidos!
It is our third Saturday here, day 16 in Honduras. This weekend we have both Saturday and Sunday off, but most of us went to school this morning anyway for yoga with the wife of the Assistant Country Director and soccer. It was a nice relaxing three hours.
This past week was busy with a lot of stuff. I had 17 hours of language classes and the balance of the time in school on general safety/health awareness classes or project specific technical training. Thursday Salud went to visit the Centro de Salud in Santa Lucia. A centro de salud is a public health clinic, and the doctor there gave us a lecture on the Honduran health system in Spanish. I have a lot of work to do on my Spanish, but I can notice a big difference from when I arrived after only two weeks of classes.
Friday, we spent the afternoon gardening! A part of the family health initiative is family gardens. We cleared some land, started compost, dug beds, and planted both seeds and transplanted seeding tomatoes and yucca. I really enjoyed it, even if I almost sliced the pad of my thumb off while peeling a limón that I picked. (Not a bad cut, but I shouldn’t use a dull knife)
We are starting to get into learning real things, which is nice. (Sam is still having lectures in MBA language, like the 7 books of rural banks, or the 7 points of cashflow) Salud had the two field trips, and a presentation by a current PCV doing work on childhood malnutrition. That was extra interesting because it was fully in Spanish.
The food has been good. Beans, eggs, fried plantains and rice have been the most constant foods, with lots of carrots, chile dulce (bell peppers), potatoes, chicken and ground beef common elements. We also get a sweet coffee with breakfast every morning, I’ve definatly had more coffee in the two weeks I’ve been here than in the past two years.
I have a phone, and have figured most of it out. It is way cheaper for me to call you (0.5 Lempiras a minute, or less than 2.5 cents USD) so if you would like a call, email me and I’ll get that within a week or so and call you, or you can txt me and I’ll call you back. I got one message from Greg through the internet portal, which came after it sent me a message saying the session was terminated so I don’t know how well that works.
Photos on Facebook.

Jeff

Week dos

Since Jeff can apparently neither spell nor use correct grammar in English, I will be writing today´s update.  We are living in Zarabanda, Francisco Morazan, Honduras for the next week and a half, until we go to our FBT (field-based-training) sites.  I would tell you where they are, but I´ve forgotten (Jeff says he´s going to Valle San Antonio in La Paz).  We now both have phones on Hondruas´largest phone network, TIGO, and the numbers are up on Facebook.  It is free for us to receive txts and calls, so feel free to call us with Skype or whatever.  We both called home last night, but we can´t afford to do that too often on PCT pay (57 lempiras per day).  This week we were broken up into different language levels, and we also started our project-based classes. Jeff and I were part of a safety and security exercise this week as well where we got ¨car-jacked¨.  If you see pics on facebook, don´t be alarmed.  Jeff placed into the Novice high level and I placed into Intermediate low.  We both have to make it to at least Intermediate mid to be placed in the field, but would like to be higher than that for ease of communication.  We do pretty well, especially when together or with others because what one doesn´t know, the other might.  Yesterday we went to Santa Lucia, the closest town to our house.  It´s about a 45minute to an hour walk, mostly uphill.  It´s gorgeous and quaint with a cute little church and a nice overlook of the mountains.  It has a spanish wikipedia entry if anyone wants to look it up.  I´ll make it quick since our host sister is waiting for us, but so far our experience is much like when we studied abroad (minus the sitting in a cafe drinking beer all evening).  Since we get up before 6 we go to bed early.  It´s also a lot more dangerous to be out at night on a bus or whatever.  Anyway, that is all.  Sarah, you are leaving soon, yes?  Have an awesome time!  Everything will be great, I´m sure.

Sorry if this was a boring post, I didn´t plan ahead.  Maybe pics next time?