It´s good to see the family

So my family came down to Honduras to visit, well kind of. My mom, sister, and 2 brothers came down to El Progreso (North Central Honduras) with the same group I used to volunteer with during spring breaks in college. I took a week to go up to Progreso and help out and serve as a translator for the group, and yes of course to catch up with the available family memebers I had not seen in 8 months (hard to believe it´s 9 months in Honduras now). Nothing like translating for a group to let you know how far your Spanish skills have come and at the same time how far you have to go to really "be one with" the language. The week was over before I knew it and I wasted too much time trying to figure out how to pack all the great things my family and friends brought me when really the best thing they brought was themselves (Corny I know but true all the same). I almost killed myself on the walk back to my site as well. I should have swallowed my pride and called ahead to ask someone to meet me with a burro (donkey). As it was the 45 minute walk took me 2 hours and I collapsed on the hammock when I finally got there. Well I´m rambling now so long story short you HIM guys are great.

I learned a valuable lesson about transportation in Honduras in route to Progreso. When I got to Tegucigalpa (the capital of Honduras) to change buses I jumped into a taxi to get to the other bus station as I had done before to travel to other places. The cab driver told me he knew of a better bus company and took me across town to find out there was no bus leaving at that time. So we went back to my original choice which I found out is only a block away from where I got off the first bus. I will remeber to ask where the station is before I crawl into a taxi with a driver looking to make a buck. It hurts the pocket to have to pay for a cross town trip for no reason.

Just before I took off for Progreso something really cool happened. I got the first package of letters and photos from a Spanish class at South Fayette Middle School in Pennsylvania. Peace Corps paired us up as part of the World Wide Schools exchange program. The Peace Corps has 3 main goals:

1. Provide technical assistance
2. Promote a better understanding of Americans
3. Promote a better understanding of host country nationals (Hondurans in my case)

I think this exchange could do a great job of working on goals 2 and 3. Although I´m struggling with my attempts at goal number one currently, if this cultural exchange works out it could help make things more worthwhile while I continue work on number 1.


We did not meet the deadline to submit the documents for the water project so I´ve started to look into other projects in the downtime while we assess the options. I got some old seeds from a fellow volunteer and attempted to start up a garden project with my host brother. Unfortunately our (really his) hard work in preparing the garden turned out to be for nothing because not a single plant sprouted except for the malezas (weeds). I´m not sure whether it was the soil, chickens finding a way around the makeshift fence, or the fact that the seeds were packaged in 2006 that derailed this attempt, but I´m glad it wasn´t a community wide failure. I´ve requested some new seeds from a Peace Corps contact and hope to start working with the Profesora to set up a school garden and then branch out into family gardens, incorporating nutrition charlas (talks).

As a end note it looks like electricty will really be coming to the community. The people have starting digging holes for the posts. It is a ton of work to dig a hole a meter and a half deep, so I can´t imagine them doing it unless it was for real.