Rockin like a Hurricane

Thats right, Hurricane Beta almost blew my host families roof off this morning. Its really windy. Tomorrow we´re supposed to get slammed with the rain.

Also tomorrow, we leave for field based training in a city of 50,000 (and a grocery store) called Siguatepeque, about 3 hours from santa lucia, but still in the mountains.

Also worth mentioning: 1. The city we are being placed in as volunteers (which we wont know the name till the end of Nov.) wants us to help build a library, and then get the programming going. I might get to use my PR degree here after all. And for Simon, they want him to teach teachers how to teach history and geography! So thats cool too.

2. Simon has athletes foot (along with everyone else here from the moist weather) , but thats not the mentionable part. The mentionable part is that a Land Rover drove to Tegus just to pick up his foot cream and have it personally delivered to him. It was supposed to come directly to our house, but came to school instead. I just thought the urgency of the situation was worth a laugh. Oh, and then he forget his medicine at the training center anyways.

3. Simon is excited to buy some peanut butter next week at the grocery store.

4. We met this cool marred couple who are volunteers, and Tom killed a scorpion that feel out of the rafters and onto my charla paper. Thanks buddy.

That´s all for now. Take care and I hope everyone´s doing better at home. We miss you all.

good day. Crystal and Simon

Random Site Visit/ Cell Phones

Hey, how`ya doing? This is S, writing at cha from our volunteer visit site, Moroceli. Moreceli is located in a more southern department of the country, and it is hot out! This morning we got up, had fresh coffee, played with our volunteer friends' pet bunnies and went on a nice long hike...in the heat (about 90 degrees) with no breeze or cloud cover. We will soon be investing in some Honduran sun block-an umbrella. The sun was relentless and J & I love going for hikes just fine, but this one really tired us out. It seems to me that most of the town in the south are very hot and dusty, very brown looking-like the desert maybe? (Pictured:Sahara Desert-much like Moreceli) I'm sure they are much better in the rainly season, and hopefully a little more color comes to each village. We are hanging out here this weekend with the most hospitable Steven and Teresa, the purpose of which is to check out some actual pcvs in their site, as C and I are still in trainee status until mid December. Its pretty cool here (thats not in reference to the weather?, the people are friendly and the town´s size of 5000 feels like a comfortable size. Today we went for a hike, and i fell into a river. Not a huge river, but, i slipped on some rocks while crossing a stream and got kinda wet. Aside from that, our hike was awesome, and i terribly regret not bringing my camera this weekend. Also, C and I have some pretty sweet news. Our program will more than likely be focused upon running a baseball team in Honduras. We don`t know the specifics or location as of yet, but from what we understand its some kind of traveling team league that has formal ties to Major League Baseball of the United States. Per usual, you will know when we know. C says hi, and we both would appreciate some phone calls people! If you need our number, drop us an email. We now have a cell phone. Honduras has 2 major cell phone companies-Tigo and Alo. We use Tigo....you buy 25, 50, 100 or 250 lempira cards and get like minute per lempira. Also texts are only 2 lemps a piece, and we can text to the states for that price! All incoming texts and phone call from the U.S. or anywhere are free for us, so we will be expecting your calls :). The phone isn't anything special looking, and having one of the nicer versions would be pointless for us, as it would just get ruined, wet, dusty or stolen. It works great and almost all departments of the country have decent service. It's not perfect though- the towers often go out after storms, and calls sometimes cut out. The higher in the mountains you are, it seems the worse the service is. It's pretty handy to carry a Tigo phone, though. And they're cheap. You can buy one in any major city over 15,000 people in Honduras for roughly 40 dollars. Tigo cards are readily available at ever pulperia (corner store). Well, we hope everyone is enjoying their autumn days! much love J

Tegucigalpa/ Traffic

Buenos dias everyone. This is Crystal and I am currently in the capital, Tegus buying fruit for my family on a training trip to learn how to talk again-but in Spanish this time.)



Here is a picture of what the city looks like from the air. Are you saying 'Wow, that city looks like it's just built right into the sides on mountains.." Well, you're right, it is! Of all the large cities Ive been to, here has the worst traffic by far. Tegucigalpa is one of the only cities I've ever been to in my life that isn't built on a grid (think of Minneapolis without stop signs, lights, street signs or anything for that matter). This makes for general chaos. There are no traffic rules in Tegus and every man (or woman or child or gringo) is for themselves: buses, cars, trucks (with 20 people in the back), pedestrians, motorcycles...you name it, I was almost hit by it today.




On a good note however, the internet cafe my friends and I are in currently, is air conditioned and guarded by the police with sawed off shot guns. There are also armed guards outside the McDonalds, which I found interesting. I am very proud of myself for asking directions and figuring when what buses leave for where. It sounds like a small feat, I know, but still...I also bought a fresh pineapple and some plantains today, mmm..pineapple. :)

It sounds like next week we will be going out into the field for a day to visit a volunteer in our project. We have to make our way to Tegus by bus and then to the correct station by taxi by ourselves and figure out how to get wherever we are going. Not too difficult, but not too easy either, in a city of a million with no road signs or maps or traffic laws-and with very poor Spanish. The language is coming along, but it's going to be a rough road for awhile. Im glad the training center let us off the leash today for a kind of ¨practice run¨.

Later today, I will be meeting back up with Simon and some people and we´re going to see Peace Corps Headquarters for the first time. Well, we´re off.

Lesson for Today: Pills, and popular culture

Hello everybody! Sorry we haven't been able to post. The network here isn't very strong. We found out that our field based training is going to be in a city called Siguatepeque, in the middle of the country. I guess it's the old training site. The computer and phone connection there are far better than up here in the mountains.

Today we're going to talk about pills. I already have a bacterial infection and J has bronchitis. We have both eluded trips to the hospital in Tegus (the in country nickname for the capital).

During the course of our day on Thursday, I received 2 shots being: Hepatitis A #I and Rabies I. I also had to take 12 pills for various concerns including: 3 pepto bismols (for my constantly upset stomach), 2 bactrims (for the bacterial infection in my intestines caused by who knows what), 2 Aralen (our anti malarial pills that cause severe night terrors and blurred vision), 1 L-Lysine pill (to keep my skin healthy because its so humid here), and 4 ibuprophen (for my sore muscles from having to climb a mountain to go to school at 7 am everyday.

ok, J's turn:

Other items of note...
Im continually amazed by the force of cultural imperialism (read: american culture) upon the globe at large and in places like our tiny mountain village of santa lucia in particular. Everyday so far, C and I have been amazed by the satilite tv of our host family. Whether its myth busters on discovery channel Espanol, green day videos on MTV, or movies such as titanic, Dante's peak, etc, it becomes very apparent that American culture permeates every area of the globe, even the developing world. To date, I have yet to watch anything that came from Honduras, or that didn't come from either the United States or Mexico. As you can imagine, this carries a great deal of impact upon how Hondurans perceive Americans, having no filter to understand the differences between tv Americans and real Americans, especially women. C receives cat-calls when she walks down the street because she is a "gringa".

Classes so far consist of four hours of language training a day, each day of which supersedes any Spanish class we had in the states, usually a three hour block of technical training, in our case, youth development, and the rest of day is composed of classes regarding medical issues, safety issues, and issues such as cultural adjustment. All in all, each day from 730 until 430 ends up being extremely long.

But that aside, this area of Honduras is truly beautiful, the people are friendly, (especially since C and i no hablo)and we are starting to get into the swing of things that is Honduras.

Everyone back in the states needs to take a hot shower in honor of us :) ( ours is cold at best)
once again, we will post whenever possible, so keep tabs on us!!

much love,
C and J