It's official I'm going to....

The following was typed yesterday, Aug. 30th...and yes, my official site assignment is Comayagua, Comayagua...yay for me!!! And congrats to the rest of the H17 Team!!

I will officially know my site assignment tomorrow afternoon. Although I am 99% sure it will be Comayagua. I had my tech interview last week and they gave me a ton of info on my counterparts and job assignment. I’ll be working with an Escuela Normal (primary teacher development). The students will have just graduated colegio (middle school, 7^th-9^th). I’ll be paired up with the English methodology professor. This will keep me very busy Monday thru Friday. I was told the school is located outside of the city so I will rely on the school’s transportation which may mean I’ll have to stay on campus all day. I’ll also be paired up with a Christian NGO that works with children mostly after school and on the weekend. From what I understand they want to improve their teaching practices for their tutoring sessions. I will most likely dedicate my Saturdays for this project.

Comayagua is a beautiful city filled with history and cultura. It was the first capital of Honduras and is undergoing a transformation to restore much of its colonialism. It is considered a large city with roughly 60,000. I am very excited because it sounds like it will be a city with a small town feel. There is a US military base just outside of the city that has undoubtably created a different perspective of the Americano. I am also expecting to run into a lot of gringos in town. This will definitely add an interesting twist to my Peace Corps experience.

As for technical training, we’ve done all kinds of activities and learned about possible projects. I really enjoyed a charla on HIV/AIDS. We had great facilitators and I personally cleared up a lot about this enfermedad (illness). Like usual, we put our skills to the test by holding our own charla with high schoolers. We were split into teams of four and had to recreate the charla. I think my team did an excellent job. As the native speaker I took care of clarifying the vocabulary and demonstrating the proper use of a condom. Yes, a room filled with high school boys listening to me describe how to properly use a condom in Spanish.

Last week, we learned about school gardens….as we created one. We started by first creating a compost pile. So there you had us youth development volunteers using our machete to cut dry grass and shoveling gallinaso (chicken poop). I must say that our group made a great looking abonera (compost pile). The following day we had to clear a ton of ground to plant our garden. Sadly our section of land was filled with random tiles, toilet parts, rocks, among other random things. I ended up exhausted, dirty, sweaty, and with two huge bug (maybe spider) bites. The swelled up to the size of a half dollar and looked nasty on my feet.

I did my best to develop a new project but had to go thru our program trainer. Only one organization got back to us, Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos. I have been wanting to visit since I volunteered at NPH Domincan Republic and would love to meet the group in Honduras. I know that it’s one of the oldest sites and I want to compare to the relatively new site in the DR. I am very excited about going to visit and possibly hosting a workshop. For now I will continue to tutor sixth graders in math at the only school that continued having classes despite the huelga (strike). BTW, most schools did resume today. We are hoping they will continue to be in session through the start of our service. Keep your fingers crossed!!

This past weekend my host mom and I set off on a little adventure to Teguz. We took the bus but ended up getting picked up by my host sister. She drove us to the Mulitplaza shopping mall. On our way there I got to see different parts of the city including sketchy looking streets filled with vendors and an overflowing river that has caused a lot of flooding. The city is really spread out and from my experience so far looks the same no matter where you are. The mall was amazing…many fufurufu (chic) stores, a few coffee shops, and a ton of American fast food chains. I didn’t buy much because I’m living on my allowance (58 Lempiras = $3.00 a day). I totally got ripped off when I purchased trail mix that I swear had a price tag of 67 Lempiras a pound and I ended up paying 189 Lempiras ($10.00) a pound….errk! It rained the rest of the weekend so we didn’t do much else. The streets are deserted in Talanga when it rains which makes it especially scary in the evening.