Real Work

Hey Folks,

So we have been here in site now for two weeks, and on the work side of things we have been quite busy figuring out the pile of work and figuring out a schedule and how we are going to divide up the work since it seems the projects are done sort of together in between our two counterpart organization. We have visited several water systems and talked to a couple of juntas de agua. It appears that Kalin and I are going to do our first topographic study of a small town, I think I am going to help her the first couple of days and then start my own topo study right next to the national park up and down a creek. On the non work side of things - we have met a missionary couple that lives really close to us and are real nice and let us use there wireless internet. We really like our family here they are super considerate. I get to play soccer with my host brother nearly every day with some other high school kids in our neighborhood. Today we are going to look for houses to rent closer than our current location. Well i am going go now Kalin may add some text later.

Paz,

Beto

PCV's

We are officially Peace Corps Volunteers!!! We swore in Friday in the U.S. Embassy, and Saturday we left at 4:00 am to go our site for two years!! After dropping off a fellow volunteer along the way, we arrived at about 11:00am to our house. We are living with a christian family that has 2 parents, 3 girls, and 1 boy. The girls are 14, 11, and 3. The boy is 17. So we haven't got to see much of the town yet, but we walked around a little bit yesterday. We found a hotel that has free wireless internet and more americanized food, we found a canning store that has canned goods, popsicles and homemade wine, we found a couple grocery stores that have black pepper and cream cheese! (I thought I wasn't going to be able to find these in Honduras), we found our office where we're going to be working, and a museum, and a central park which is being remodeled. We still haven't gone to the market or the hot springs, but I'm sure we'll do that sooner than later. Our sisters are really sweet, and the dad loves to watch football so bert is super happy, and the son plays football, so I bet Bert will go play with him today. We also have two dogs here, Coco and Monet. The house is newish so its still partly under construction. The floors and walls are concrete. I think the dad said they would be putting tile on soon. We have a new bathroom in our room which is awesome. SOO it looks like we are going to have a great time here. Oh yeah we got pictures with the US ambassador and there was an article in the newspaper about us peace corps volunteers!

De Vuelto

So now we are back in Zarabanda, our original location. I sadly left my house in Pespire, I didn’t want to leave my sisters there that I had got so close to. As we traveled back, the temperature dropped about 30 degrees, and I went from sweating to freezing. When we arrived at our house, we found our fellow trainee awaiting us. His family was out of town, so we got to have a sleepover. Yay! The next day we went to the national park, “La Tigra”. We got the bus at 7ish and it was very very full. We were doubled up in the aisle. We rode about an hour standing up and got off the bus at the top of a long long set of stairs. We proceeded to walk through a tiny town and up a mountain for a couple hours. We walked past the first American Embassy building and all the historic houses that were there. We finally made it to the entrance of the park, already tired, but at least it had been cloudy and cool. We took a trail to a waterfall and passed a lot of cool mossy looking trees. We saw a toucan and I heard the prettiest bird call I’ve ever heard in my life. I never found the bird it belonged to, but it sounded it like eeeehhoooooeoeoeoe. Jk it sounded like a really high beautiful flute or something like that. We found the waterfall and it was really high but wasn’t as impressive as some of the SC waterfalls we had visited this year. I guess it didn’t have a lot of water. Beto, of course, showered in it. So we turned around and walked back very tired to the bus and had to stand an hour again, but it was definitely worth it. This week should go by pretty fast. Today we got all the Peace Corps rules, I did handstands and bridges, we found out our next family is really nice and wanted us to stay with them without getting paid and our work places are right next to each other!

-Kalin

Fin de Semana de Futbol

Randy, Justin y Yo had the chance to play for La Tejera in this weekends games.
We are able to participate in the Victory against some other Barrio 2-1. It was bien fun.
Hasta luego

Beto

PESPIRE

It's been a long time since our last blog! Since the last one, we've been in Pespire sweating up a storm. We both passed the Spanish level that Peace Corps requires, so that's awesome! We've made a stove and a pila for a lady who has a tortilla business. A pila is a big basin of water since water only comes one hour a day. The stove is made out of horse poop and is more efficient than normal stoves and has a chimney, so its better for respiration problems. We've also designed a water system, thats probably not gonna be built for financial reasons. We found out our site today! I don't think i'm supposed to post it, so if you really want to know, let me know! Our site is close to 2 hot springs and is close to the highest mountain in Honduras (a cloud forest!!) It gets cool during our winter time and sounds pretty awesome!! So we're only here in Pespire one more week, and then we have one week in Zarabanda and then we swear in for our 2 years! Our time is going by fast! Highlights of our time here:
We became residents of Honduras for 3 years!
We went to the Mango fiesta and danced the whole night!
I can't think of more...
Oh yeah - A little boy here gave me the nickname "QueLindaJesus" I don't know why but its so cute.
Every now and then my host sister lets me put her baby to sleep in the hammock and he falls asleep really fast with me cause he loves me.
Our friend got kicked out of peace corps for publishing a news paper article without knowing about it.