10 days until I find out where I will be living for the next 2 years!!

Seeing how Honduras was the original Banana Republic, how could I not post a picture of me posing with a beautiful bunch. This is in Siguatapeque at a farm where we learned about sustainable farming. This farm was amazing because everything they did was integrated and nothing went to waste. They catch the rain water, purify some for drinking and use the rest for watering crops and feeding animals. They use the waste of the animals to enrich the soil for the crops (beans, vegetables, herbs and such). There were some sophisticated latrines and they showed us some planting techniques like rotating crops and using contour lines for irrigation. They demonstrated some pretty savvy farming techniques which will serve as a good base for us to take with us to our individuals sites and possibly apply.

This one is for you, Emilie´s mom! This is Emilie and I hanging out after training one day being silly. Her hair is super cute, but her bangs were getting quite long as you can see. She recently paid 10 Lempiras, or the equivalent of 50 cents to get her hair cut. The result…. as seen in the next picture, definitely worth 50 cents. Some say it looks like a wig, she thought maybe Ringo Starr or possibly the beginning stages of a mullet. Any way you slice it, it has created hours of entertainment for us at her expense, but she is such a good sport about it, after all, it is just hair, it will grow back. Some days my sides hurt from laughing with Emilie so much.











Only ten more days until we find out where we are going to be living for the next two years. Like most other things here, I am eerily calm about this. I figure wherever they send me I will be happy, find good work and get along with the people. I am hoping to be placed somewhere central in the country to be able to get to pretty much anywhere semi-easily. Stay tuned, the next time I blog it will be to reveal the name of my new home then you can Google it to see what it´s like. Thanks for following my story, I love sharing it with you.

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)!!

Here´s what I´ve been up to

Alejandra and I made lasagna the other night, here is the fruit of our labor. It was pretty good, Javier had two portions, but he may have just been being polite. It was fun to show them something I know how to make after watching them make some great Honduran food for the past couple of weeks.




Mi familia, Javier, Patricia and Alejandra. I can´t tell you how much I really feel a part of their family. I hope to come back to visit them often while I´m here. They told me that I their home is my home during my entire service in their country.
This is a group of trainees that live by me and we walk home together. Starting from the left, Shannon, Emily, Daniel, Micheal, Kevin and Amanda.










When I visited a volunteer in Choluteca the town was in feria, which means a bunch of events take place, for instance rodeos. This "stadium" was built in a day just for this purpose. The hombres rode horses instead of bulls and it was pretty cool to watch.














Choluteca is pretty flat for the most part, but here´s a neat picture of a mountain nearby














Carmen (the volunteer I visited) and Casey a fellow trainee that visiting Carmen with me.















I think I should submit this one to national geographic if I do say so myself. I love this one.