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