Phus

So the last blog was when Marianne came to Honduras in January I´m pretty sure. So since then I went to Colombia for Liam and Maria´s wedding, which I´m fairly certain the entire world thought was amazing! It was pretty fun to not have to pass through the International Arrival line at the Honduran airport when I came back. Being a Peace Corps volunteer, I have Honduran residency for two years, so I got to look on as all the gringo missionary groups or whatever else there was had to wait in unbelievably long lines and struggle with Spanish as they were entering the country. Also since being back, I´ve turned 23! This is now the second birthday I´ve celebrated in Central America, I turned 21 in El Salvador. Although turning 21 was infinitely more fun, ... read more

So for the last month or so it has been unusually cold in San Lucas…unusually cold meaning maybe around 45 degrees F or so. But hey, when you need to take bucket showers, that’s plenty cold! The thing about the cold here though is that the wind whips and the air is cold, but it is always the most beautiful sunny day. Had Syracuse had nearly the same kind of winter weather, I guarantee you Le Moyne College applications would increase exponentially! Thankfully, however, it’s starting to warm back up again. This past rainy season was also unusual in that it was fairly dry. Everybody keeps on saying how last years rainy season was horrible, daily torrential downpours for hours on end from around May - October. When it rains, the roads literally disintegrate. So anytime ... read more

Man, where to begin? So training for Peace Corps in September and I got assigned to live in San Lucas in the department of El Paraiso in Honduras. The country has 18 different departments, and mine is in southeastern Honduras, close to the Nicaraguan border. San Lucas is a little smaller than the average for a Youth Development site, it has about 2,000 residents in the heart of the pueblo, but there are a lot of surrounding villages, so in total there about 6,000 people in the municipality. The surrounding villages and fairly far away, most about an hours walk. I´m still living with a host family because there isn´t any available housing, but this host family is actually really great. I´ve always had good luck with my host families...except with the doña in the D.R., ... read more

So I've got just about 2 weeks under my belt here in Talanga, south of Tegucigalpa but in the same department of Francisco Morazan. Classes are still going well, we switch language teachers every 2 weeks so now my class will have a new style to learn from a new teacher which has its pros and cons, but so far so good! With the trash project, my group has started working with a Scout group here in Talanga. It's a boy/girl scout group with kids from around 8 years old to around 16 or so. They do a really great job of getting motivated and wanting to do projects so it's good to have an already organized group of kids wanting to help out. There's a HUGE tree in the town that is absolutely beautiful (i ... read more

So I arrived in Honduras! I started off in Colonial Santa Rita which is a little outskirt of Zarabanda which is outside Tegucigalpa. The weather was so unbelievably cooler than in D.R. and so much more foresty than I would have thought. There were pine trees and mountains basically all around us. I was living with a really great family for a couple of days but now I´m in Talanga. I´m in the same Department of Francisco Morazan that I was in, but maybe about 30 minutes away from Zarabanda. It´s hotter here and a little bit more rural, but still not that bad temperature wise. SO now we´ve all started Field Based Training. The three groups have split up so instead of being a group of 50, we´re a group of 16 Youth Development volunteers ... read more

Still here in Miami...now until Monday, but now we've got White House approval. but in the meantime, here are some D.R. pictures!... read more

SO i'm here at the airport in D.R. flying to miami again. the plan was to go from miami to Honduras TODAY but my flight from santo domingo to miami was delayed, so i'll be spending another night in miami and then on to Honduras tomorrow. We've officially been approved to go to Honduras by the State Department, so pending a civil war, it is for sure that I'm going. i'll be doing another homestay for a while and do my training. I won't officially start Peace Corps until September 26th, any time before that I'm a trainee. D.R. was good, but I think we're all just ready to get going in Honduras. Hope things are good with everybody else at home! ps - pictures will be coming soon! ... read more

So things are still going well with el cuerpo de paz! I´ve started spanish classes which has been a little difficult since Dominican spanish is WAY different than spanish I´m used to learning. It´s basically like being thrown into the deep end of the pool, but I´m doing okay. I´m a few levels above where I need to be in order to become a Peace Corps Volunteer, so as long as I stay on top of everything I should be good to go. The bad thing is I´m learning Domincan phrases like ¨tigere¨ and ¨te fuñiste¨which won´t do me any good in Honduras, but it´s never a bad thing to learn about another culture. I get destroyed in dominoes on a nightly basis by the men in the community, including 12 year old kids, but I´m ... read more

Hey everybody, so here's the deal. I'm still waiting to hear the official word on Honduras, but for right now I'm in the Dominican Republic until the 22nd of July. I'm living in a host family in Santo Domingo for the first three weeks of training which consists of language/cultural/technical training. After three weeks we're supposed to go to Honduras BUT everything seems to be up in the air right now. Things are going well although it certainly is hot, but for sure that is something to get used to. Hope things are going well with everybody and I'll check in again soon!... read more

I was trying to figure out how to tell people the news, and I realized I still had this blog lying around so why not still use it? So I move to Honduras July 1st with Peace Corps! I'm not sure where in Honduras I'll be living, I'll find that out after the first two months of in-country Peace Corps training. I'll be working with Youth Development doing work with at-risk youth; I would love to be in an urban setting, but it's not up to me. Here's some more info about Peace Corps in Honduras and about Youth Development: http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=learn.wherepc.centralamerica.Honduras http://peacecorpswiki.org/Honduras http://peacecorpswiki.org/Youth_Outreach This is a two year deal here, so although I do get some vacation time, I won't be back in the U.S. full-time again until September 2011. Hope everybody else is doing great ... read more