Honduras

It´s been awhile so I am not sure where to start.. but I have finally made it to Honduras (obviously). We got here at the end of July and went almost immediately to "field based training" in a tiny rural town in the department of Comayagua. For the 7 weeks of field based training we learned technical aspects of our projects.. like building latrines and organic farming practices, etc. as well as intense language classes. You cannot become a volunteer unless you pass a language proficiency test at the end of training. I had mine last week and I PASSED ye-ah.

We were supposed to be sworn in and in our sites by now, but the ex-president who was ousted in the coup (hence the whole Dominican Republic detour) re-entered the country last week. The government instated country wide all day all night curfews for 3 days because of the mass riots that ensued in Tegucigalpa. Even though we are living really close to Tegus right now we are pretty removed from the protests and violence that´s going on. So, the new plan is to be sworn in by the Ambassador on Wednesday and depart for sites on Thursday.

I am really excited about my site.. I am not sure if I can put the name on the internet because the Peace Corps has pretty strict policies about what we are allowed to post and what we are not. So I am not going to to avoid getting in trouble, but in reality it doesnt matter because it´s not on many maps anyways.

BUT it is in the department of Franciso Morazon (central-ish, Tegus is in the same department) close to the department of Olancho. It has 500 people and no electricity, but I think my host family has a solar panel, so at least I will be able to charge my phone and ipod. It is a stone´s throw from my Protected Area, which is SICK so I can probably easily access the park. A lot of other people are located really far from their parks. I will live with this host family for 2 months and then will have the chance to move out on my own, provided I can find a house that meets Peace Corps safety standards. There is another volunteer named Ashley who will live in a site about a 20 minute walk from me. She´s awesome and a Youth Volunteer so hopfully we can collaborate on projects like Environmental Ed etc. Other than Ashley the next closest volunteer is a 2-3 hour bus ride away, provided the buses are running. We are basically not supposed to leave our sites for the first three months.. it is against policy to spend the night away for 3 months, so it will be sad to say goodbye to everyone on Thursday. What that also means is that I will not really be able to celebrate 1.Halloween, 2.Thanksgiving, 3.Christmas, 4.New Years. Not quite the party girl anymore, haha. Drinking in my site is basically prohibited, so healthy here I come!!!

I have posted pics on my Picasa account, but in my stupidity I accidentally downsized them WAY too small on my computer. So, I don´t have the real pics with me to fix it at the moment, but I will work on it soon. Here is the link to the Picasa web photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kpresleygrateful/PeaceCorps1#

And, I also forgot how to embed pics in the blog.. if anyone reads this who knows how, would you mind telling me??

I am going to try to post on this a lot more regularly now that crazy training is almost over. I don´t have internet access in my site, but there is a bigger town about an hour or two bus ride north that definitely will have the internet. Hopefully (depending on the buses) I will be able to go there once every week or two to check emails and buy comfort foods like peanut butter or something.

Yea, the food here is pretty good, but a little monotonous. Coffee and beans and fried platanos for breakfast, beans tortillas queso maybe avacado for lunch, and basically the same for dinner. But, I dig beans so it´s alright. I am thinking about becoming a vegetarian because I helped my host sister in Comayagua take a chicken from running around in the backyard to in our soup for lunch. Kill, clean, burn, cook, etc. It was disgusting, and they eat EVERYTHING in the chicken except for the head and intestines. I was determined that I would eat the nasty stuff because if I am going to eat meat I feel like I should be able to eat it all.. kind of holistically or something. It was intense, but cool. So, I kind of feel that if I cannot kill it and eat all of it, I don´t have the right to eat any of it. Don´t worry, I´m not returning to my hippy days, just really was impressed by the process. I can´t IMAGINE what I would have to do to get a steak...

I miss you guys TONS and have occasional bouts of homesickness. But, the other volunteers make it less acute because there is always someone with whom to be able to decompress or to vent. I´m sure that will all change drastically when I get to my site solo, so keep me posted on what´s going on at home!!
lots of love

Oh, and P.S. my name here is Carmen. Kathleen´s really hard to say in Spanish, and I kind of just like Carmen. A few of my other friends have adopted new names.. Josh is Josue¨, I think Jacob is thinking of Diego, occasionally Dimitry is Victorino, it´s funny, but Carmen is definitely the best. Duh.