Volunteer Visit, Day 4

Explaining the rules of the dinamica Elephant, Rabbit, Giraffe.  In Spanish of course.

Considering it was a big class of high school teenagers, they participated well.

Stacie drinking water from a bag. 

In the restaurant Cebolla's

Chris and Stacie.

Our first baleadas!  Traditional Honduran meal.

A small, cramped street in Santa Barbara.

On Wednesday, we had to leave the house at 7am to walk to the colegio for Stacie’s Joven a Joven class.  In the class before, the students had done an activity to determine which career would best suit them.  In this session, we taught them how find the three main functions for any given career, along with the skills and personal characteristics needed to be successful.  We did a couple of dinamicas with these students, which was a lot more difficult since they were high school teenagers who did not want to be in class.  I had to lead one of the dinamicas since it was my idea, and it was hard to work through the students’ laughter and snide comments, but I managed.  That activity made me realize I will not be ready to do any projects in a high school for about a year, until my Spanish is a lot better than it is right now.

At 12, we planned to take the bus to Santa Barbara and spend the rest of the afternoon there and stay the night on Milo’s floor.  In between El Nispero and the town of Santa Barbara, we stopped at another volunteer’s site to meet her.  We only had an hour to spend with Caitlin because the bus from her site leaves at 2, but it was nice to meet one more PC volunteer.  When we got to Santa Barbara, we went right to Cebolla’s for lunch.  This restaurant is known for the best baleadas, which is a Honduras meal.  Usually in Honduras they eat small corn tortillas, but baleadas are made with large flour tortillas like we eat in the States.  A tortilla is stuffed with beans, mantequilla, queso, and avocado- very delicious and fattening.  After lunch we walked around the little city, looking in different stores and sitting in the central park.  It started to rain so we went back to Cebolla’s to sit and have coffee and study Spanish flashcards.  Stacie had to take the 5:00 bus back to her town, and Milo wasn’t going to be home until 6:30, so Chris and I sat in the restaurant doing homework and talking with the owners. 

We were planning to take the 7am bus back to Tegucigalpa the next morning, so we just had a relaxing early night in.  Unfortunately, my stomach had been hurting more and more all day, and I was up sick all that night.  The trip back was miserable the next day and I went to sleep right when I got home at noon.  When I woke up at 5:30 on Thursday evening, I was still so sick that my host-grandmother made me call the PC medical emergency number.  They took me to a hospital about 10 minutes away in the next town over, and I had to stay there overnight.  The doctors think it was food poisoning; whatever it is has left me weak and nauseous.  The hospital is a not-for-profit hospital and in the morning while I waited to be released, I talked with two young American girls who are going to volunteer there for the next 9 months.  They just arrived a week ago, so we exchanged emails and next weekend I am going to show them around the town and help them get oriented.  At least something positive came from my first Honduran hospital experience!

Volunteer Visit, Day 3

The next morning, we got up at 7 to go help a group of high school boys practice their theatre assignment.  The colegio has two different sessions offering different types of classes, so these boys attend the afternoon session.  We went up to the roof of a church next to one of their houses where they practice in the mornings.  It was an incredible view!  Chris and I had some ideas for fun activities to help their acting skills, so we did all of those.  One was a slow motion race, but some of the boys ruined it by just running.  Others actually enjoyed themselves.  Another activity was Dead Weight where two people interact in a situation (like two doctors performing surgery) but they cannot move their bodies, so two other people have to move their bodies for them.  We also did Translator where one person is foreign and has their translator communicate for them.  For example, when my group did this activity, Yesenia used blinking as her mode of communication and Kayla could understand blinking as well as speak English to us.  We also did the party game where the host of the party has to guess who his guests are, after we have chose fun characters for the guests to act out.  It was a fun morning and gave me hope for high school students.  Right after, we spent a little time with one of the boys and his sister’s family, playing guitar and drinking coffee.  Then we had to go to the colegio in order for Stacie to plan her next session of Joven a Joven with her counterpart.  While she planned, Chris and I observed a civics class.  It was so boring.  Not only was it a whole lot of Spanish that I don’t know, but for 40 minutes straight the teacher stood in front of the students and talked.  He never asked questions, never wrote on the board, and never gave them a chance to speak.  Good thing PC has a program to teacher methodology to teachers.

Mixing ingredients for chocolate brownies!

In the toaster oven they go!

We went home to eat lunch and then had to go teach TEAM (Teaching English and Methodology) from 2-4.  Chris is a music guy so he wanted to go watch the school band practice for the Independence Day parade (September 15), but I went to help Stacie.  I think TEAM will be the first program I feel comfortable doing because although you have to know Spanish to communicate with your class, you are teaching English so it is not as difficult.  After TEAM, we visited with a few different neighbors and went to go walking with some of Stacie’s friends on the same road towards the river.  We did not actually make it to the river this time, but it was a nice walk.  On the way back, we stopped in a few houses to meet and visit with more people, like the mayor and the colegio director.  Stacie has worked hard to create and maintain these close personal relationships, and it has paid off when she needs help with projects.  After these visits, we went to have dinner at the same comedor, and then went home to make materials for her Joven a Joven class the next day.  We stayed up pretty late because our conversations kept getting off topic.  One conversation about chocolate reminded Stacie that she had a brownie mix she had been waiting to make and she had just bought a toaster oven in the city the weekend before.  So for the first time in Honduras, I ate chocolate!  And for the first time ever, I cooked brownies in a toaster oven.  It actually worked well and kind of reminded me of an EZ Bake Oven.  

Every view is incredible.

Slow-motion race.

Dead Weight activity.

Stacie learning guitar.

Volunteer Visit, Day 2

We got up at 5:30 the next morning to catch the bus to El Nispero because Stacie was supposed to give a charla on dental hygiene at 7:30am.  The hour ride was not in a bus, it was in a tiny cramped van that at one point was carrying 24 people even though it only has seats for 15.  Quite impressive, and uncomfortable.  We dropped our bags off at Stacie’s house and immediately left to walk to the school in the aldea over the mountain.  An aldea is basically an extremely small town that is big enough for a school but too small to have anything else other than houses.  Stacie had already been using the Colgate program for dental hygiene with grades 1 through 4 at this school, so we went along and helped her on this day.  We gave her a new idea for a dinamica to do outside with the kids, in which they have to brush the bacteria off of a tooth.  We all stand in a circle pretending to be the bristles of a toothbrush, and one person stands in the middle of the circle acting as the tooth and wearing a giant coat or backpack that is the bacteria on the tooth.  We have to (gently) brush the bacteria off the tooth.  The kids loved it, but did not understand the concept of gentle brushing.

After leaving the school, Stacie took us to her favorite comedor for lunch.  Then we walked to the colegio (high school) to meet the director and a few teachers who Stacie works with on a regular basis.  The director was very welcoming and nice, and likes to talk a lot.  Actually, everyone in Honduras likes to talk a lot.  It was a good chance to ask questions and meet people because we were going to help Stacie at the high school the next day.  We then went home and changed into exercise clothes because we wanted to walk up the mountain and over to the river.  First, we stopped by the field at the elementary school in El Nispero to watch baseball practice.  Stacie helped the high school PE teacher organize a baseball team in the town, but unfortunately he did not want her help in actually coaching.  We have been told, and have now seen, that Honduran men do not typically think women are capable of doing much, especially involving sports.  That is too bad, because Stacie played softball for years and would be a great help to the team.  I also approached one boy who was batting and asked if I could give him some advice.  He said yes, so I tried to show him the proper way to bat, but it was evident that he would not listen to a girl.  They also would not let me or Stacie play, so we decided to just go on our walk.  The river was a few miles over the mountain, past the burning trash.  I was glad we made it that far because it was beautiful!  There were horses grazing along the side of the river and it was so calm.  It was later in the day so I did not feel hot enough to swim, but sometimes Stacie and her other friends swim there.  I accidentally ruined Stacie’s desire to ever swim there again by commenting that it looked like a place alligators would like to live.  I have no idea if there are actually gators in those particular waters, but Stacie spent the rest of the time scanning the water for gators. 

After we got back from our walk, we had to buy some groceries because we were going to make chicken tacos with some of Stacie’s friends.  We were supposed to eat at 7pm but did not get to the house until 8:45 because so many people wanted to stop and talk with Stacie on the way.  It was really fun seeing how integrated she was in her community!  And the chicken tacos were delicious. 

Walking over the mountain to an aldea of Stacie's town.

Hondurans love to stop and chit chat.

Helping teach the Colgate program.

One of the classes with their finished bears.

A dinamica where all of the students have to clean the bacteria off of the tooth.

This is a road.

The campo (field) at the elementary school.

Burning trash.

Dogs fighting over which piece of burning trash they get to eat.

The river!

Me and Stacie by the river with the mountains in the background :)

Stacie, me, and Chris

I wanted a picture with the wild horses...

Trying to slowly get closer....

Stacie staring into the river trying to find alligators.  Oops, I accidentally put that thought into her head.

Drinking coca-cola from a bag!

Volunteer Visit, Day 1

The 15 Youth Development trainees were sent off to visit a current volunteer last Sunday.  A fellow trainee, Chris, and I were actually going to visit the same volunteer, Stacie, in El Nispero in the region of Santa Barbara.  We had been told that we could take either the 7am or the 10:30am bus from Tegucigalpa to Santa Barbara.  Against our better judgment, we decided to take the later bus.  Well, we arrived early to the bus station to find out the schedule is different on Sunday and we missed the 8:30am bus and would have to wait until 2pm.  The problem with that is the Peace Corps has told us this entire time that it is not safe to travel after 3pm.  The head of PC Safety and Security gave us permission anyway and told us to take a taxi to the mall where we could wait safely and eat lunch because the bus station was not in a particularly nice neighborhood. 

We made the 2:00 bus and enjoyed the very scenic 4 hour ride to Santa Barbara.  Stacie met us in the little city and we ran into our next problem.  The last bus to her little town which is an hour away left at 5:00.  Luckily a PC Municipal Development volunteer lives right in the town and we were able to sleep on his floor that night.  It was actually a lot of fun getting to meet him and hearing about all of their different experiences.  But next time, we will definitely take the earliest bus.

Starting up the first mountain.

Beautiful mountains the entire way.

The only lake in Honduras!

Pictures never do it justice.

Me and Chris in the center park in the town of Santa Barbara!

Sleeping on the floor.  That's what happens when you miss the bus and have to crash at another volunteer's house.