Carne Asada, Honduran style!

My new home for the next 6 weeks is Cantarranas, a rather small pueblo a couple of hours from Tegucigalpa. Here I will do FBT (field-based training). What does that mean you might ask, well it means that our three groups have split up by project and me and my fellow Municipal Developers will get more in depth training on what we may actually be doing in our respective sights. Por ejemplo, oops, I mean for example, today we split up into 4 groups and walked around Cantarranas noting what we encountered, pulperias (little stores), churches, schools and other landmarks and businesses. Our entire group came together and created a map of our findings, a community map of Cantarranas. Here’s a picture of us putting it all together, quite a resourceful little crew we have here.

The only thing that would make this picture more Peace Corpsy would be if I was wearing my Tevas sandals right? Oh and maybe if I were planting some trees, but I think it does justice to what people think of when they picture a Peace Corps volunteer. Here it is, honest to God proof that I’m here in the mountains of Honduras fumbling through what might be the most pivotal journey of my life. You are all witnesses.

My new family for the next 6 weeks is very kind, my host mother is, once again, named Patricia and she has two children, Patricio who is 14 and Zasquia who is 18. I’m a big fan of carne asada, so when Patricia asked me if I liked it I was excited about dinner, though once the preparations began I wasn’t sure exactly what was happening. Pictured here are the boyfriend of Zasquia, Wally I think is his name, and his friend along with Patricia (and yes, she is holding a blow dryer) and Jose, Patricia’s grandson. So they started the fire with some wood and other chips of some sort, got it nice and piping hot and started in with the hair dryer, which I now understand worked as agent to blow air onto the coals, making them extremely hot. They added sugar onto the coals and laid the meat on the grill after the flames went down. Mmmm, mmm, muy delicioso (come on, all of you know what that means)!!