KB in Honduras: The End of Training

The last few weeks have been a blur! We have had some interesting technical class such as gardening and environmental education. During these sessions, we learned all about composting and using old materials in useful ways. We made our own paper and we made flower pots out of old tires to decorate the elementary school. I have some pictures, one of which is me jumping on a pile of manure to pack it into the compost- I was lucky to get that job.

One Friday during our morning Spanish class we also had a cultural party with traditional Honduran food. The little house with balloons is our little Peace Corps Office that we have right here in town for every day purposes since we can’t travel the hour to the main Headquarters every day. We also had two days of training on HIV/AIDS so that we can go into high schools in the future and educate the young students. The first day was spent receiving the exact charla that we will give in the future, and for whatever reason we did not have to sit in a classroom all day. Our entire group went to Parque Hondutel and we packed our lunches so that during lunch break we could have a picnic outside! I guess being Youth Development Volunteers means we are all similar in that we love to have fun and be silly, because we enjoyed the playground equipment in the park! After lunch we were assigned partners and had to make all of our own materials in order to give the charla the next day to a real high school class. (While making the materials, a little colt wandered up to the doorway of the building in the park. He was so skinny and timid, like most animals in Honduras. It is normal to see dogs, cows, horses, and chickens wandering all over the street at all hours of the day.) Everyone was going to the same technical high school and Michelle and I were assigned to a metal-working class. We gave this 4 hour charla on HIV/AIDS to a class of 18 high school boys. It actually went very well but if I have to give this charla by myself, I will definitely need more time to prepare.

September 10^th is National Children’s Day and September 15^th is Independence Day, so my group members and I discovered that the whole week is a party in Honduras. Michelle, Emily, and I went to the elementary school where we did our self-directed projects to be a part of the celebrations with those children. It consisted of a lot of piñatas, food, and speeches by the PTA. Peace Corps gave us the day off from classes for Independence Day and everyone went into town to watch the parades and festivities. The morning parade lasted about three and a half hours and then there were hours of speeches and music but we did not really hang around for that. There was also a night parade that would have been cool to see because it included flaming batons, but it started to thunderstorm so I went home. Now it is the beginning of my last week of training and we have our official swearing-in ceremony on Thursday!