Swearing-In Ceremony

On Thursday, September 22, 2011, my fellow H-19 group members and I were sworn in as the newest Peace Corps Volunteers in Honduras!  Our day began early with meeting our primary counterparts at the Peace Corps office at 8am.  My counterpart is from the organization ChildFund, which I am now part of.  We work with youth and their parents by giving training sessions on many topics, such as self-esteem and sexual education.  On Thursday we spent the morning as a large group with our counterparts, doing activities to get to know each other and to help them understand why we are here as Volunteers.  Around 2:30 we went to the US Embassy because our ceremony began at 3.  During the ceremony, our Peace Corps Country Director Spoke, along with our Ambassador and a few other people.  We had to choose one person from our group to give a speech, so Constance wrote and gave a speech about our time during training and our hopes for the next two years.  Then our whole group got up on stage and performed Peace Train by Cat Stevens.  One of the guys in my group, Chris, is musically talented and played the guitar while we all sang together.  It was really incredible, and everyone in PC staff said it is the first time any group has done any kind of performance for the ceremony.  Hopefully I can post the video of our song!  The following day a group photograph with an article was published in the paper, which made us all proud!

The morning after swearing-in, a bus came to pick us all up with our luggage so we could go meet our counterparts and head to our new sites.  Constance, Chris, and I are all in the region of Santa Barbara so we were all riding in a truck together with our counterparts.  Six people squished in a truck for 5 hours is actually better than taking a public bus across the country with luggage that is worth two years of your life.  On the way to our region, we pass the only lake in all of Honduras, so we got to stop and take some pictures!  It is only about 30 or 45 minutes from my town, and only 15 minutes from Chris' so we are hoping we can visit it sometime.  The entire drive was beautiful, and so is my new home.  Mountains in every direction, but the temperature is hot!  Its perfect.

Sarah, Emily, me, Kayla, and Maggie hanging out at the Peace Corps office before the ceremony.

The 15 new volunteers with the counterparts, the Peace Corps Country Director, and the US Ambassador.

Deandra, me, Michelle

Jim, Michelle, and Sarah in the car on the way to the ceremony.

H-19

The whole group waiting for the ceremony to  begin.

End of Week 7 Activities

My host sister’s third birthday is on August 26, so we had a birthday party for her on Wednesday.  This is the first birthday party I have attended in Honduras and it seemed pretty traditional.  We had a piñata and cake, along with other food.  Marcela was very excited all day for the piñata but when it came time to actually knock it down with the stick, she was afraid of it.  It was a nice afternoon of family fun, and the rain waited until the end of the party!

We are continuing our self-directed projects and had Wednesday and Thursday afternoon to go to our schools and work with the students.  Michelle, Emily, and I planned our lessons for the two days, focusing on literacy, the alphabet and sight words.  On Wednesday 6 students showed up at 2pm for the class and only 2 of them were actually students on our list for the class.  We gave the school director copies of our schedule to pass out to the students as a reminder, so we are not sure why so few showed up that day.  We had a better turn out on Thursday with 24 students, although less than half were actually from our attendance list.  One of the activities we did with the children was make “I see ____.” mini books, like “I see 2 globes.”  But of course it is in Spanish and they have to illustrate their books.  One little boy drew three people in his book and labeled them as me, Michelle, and Emily!  It was very cute.

On Thursday after classes, my group wanted to have a little bonfire and roast marshmallows.  A PC staff member was able to bring us firewood and we (basically just Jim) built a fire.  Chocolate is very hard to come by in Honduras so we did not have real s’mores, but roasted marshmallows and crackers were still delicious!  It was a nice break to hang out with each other after a long week of classes.

Marcela with her pinata.

Me and my host nephews.

Singing happy birthday to Marcela while Andres tries to eat the cake before it is cut.

He seems to like chocolate as much as I do.

Ronaldo and Jim building the bonfire.

The group waiting to roast marshmallows.

Michelle with a s'more!

Sarah and Julie roasting marshmallows.

Yesenia, Maggie, and Kayla

Natalie with a bag of water.

Me and Deandra roasting marshmallows.

It finally got dark, like a real bonfire.