So in the case that anyone is wondering, now that we are in our village/town, I can tell you what we will be doing here as ¨volunteers¨: Everything here eventually should become sustainable, meaning the people of our town will be able to do all of this for themselves after we leave in 2 years...this is the ¨technical¨meaning of our service: Sustainable Development....I wont elaborate on how this doesnt always work.
1. In February, there are plans to start building a library, which Simon and I will be doing much of the planning for. This will include making clubs for kids, starting a traveling library for the kids at the top of the mountain who cant come down for school, etc.
2. Fundraising for town projects and for the library
3. Starting a baseball team for youth and we then have tournament in Teguciagalpa in March with all the other teams.
4. I will be working in the colegio (highschool) at the top of the mountain with a drumline/marching band.
5. Teaching English to the heads of our community, so they can teach it after we leave (two of them are teachers)
6. Working with our sitemate, Sydney, on his buisiness project: forming a doughnut co-op. Eventually we would like to have the town selling to larger cities like San Pedro Sula, which is close to us. Right now, we´re still teaching people how to say the word ¨doughnut¨so we´ll see, but they love the idea, and as of now we use the word: donas. Its close.
All this being said, this is what we did yesterday:
1. Woke up at 7am.
2. Washed clothes in the pila for 3 hours
3. Hung the clothes to dry
4. Went to the market to buy food for lunch and dinner(we´ve been eating beans for 10 meals straight)
5. 2pm-boiled our beans and ate lunch
6. read for a few hours
7. had a stare down with the neighbors for awhile.
8. Fell asleep for a few hours
9. Talked to our other neighbor about dogs, for lack of anything to say.
10. Had a 1 hour meeting about donas.
11. Yelled at neighbor kids
12. Ate dinner and read
13. Went to sleep
All in all, the time just goes too fast here. Im not sure that we will ever get work done.
Also, some general observations about our town and house:
1. All the men wear cowboy hats except for Simon.
2. When someone says, ¨be there at 2pm, it really means 2:45.
3. Though our house in new, we still have to use a buckshower because our water comes from the mountain and is freezing and has low water pressure.
4. The sun is really strong
5. Of all places, our house is next to the Chicken lady in town. There are seriously 100 of them at 5 am outside the bedroom window.
More later.
Ok, time for lunch.
love, Crystal
Thursday, December 15, 2005
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5 comments:
You're "home"! :) Do you need a cat to chase the chickens?? I'll donate one, he's currently trying to destroy my Christmas tree.
That's awesome about the marching band, and the baseball team too. Maybe we can wrangle someone around here to donate jerseys for the kids once you get things up and running. And LMAO about the cowboy hats!!
We've got lots of snow here, and I've been planning for graduation tomorrow. Wheee! I'll save a beer for you both at the grad party tomorrow night. ;)
Hope you're both doing well and enjoying your new home. I think of your guys a lot! Take care!
Oh no! My host family has chickens and pigs and I think they´ve decided that the best time to brawl is at 3 am when I am trying to have peaceful Aralen dreams under my mosquito net.
Don´t worry, my days are almost like yours, except I get to have the pleasure of mondongo soup in my diet!
Is it bad to think of the U.S. as the land of "milk and honey"? I am already looking forward to reconnect!
Crystal,
I ETed.
PC was just not for me. Maybe it was just Paraguay, I dunno. I went the whole way through training, but told them I had decided not to swear in.
I got back in the States yesterday (Wed Dec 15) and plan to readjust through the new year. I'm thinking of international disaster relief work, maybe work with refugees or internally displaced persons (put that Holocaust and genocide studies degree to work!). Something more tangible, more immediate, more short term, more movement.
Oh man. I should write you an email or letter or something. Did you ever get the letter I sent you?
Love,
Michael
Crystal, this is what I did the other day:
1. Woke up a took a shower.
2. Got yelled at by roomate for being in shower to0 long.
3. Put on suit and nice dress shoes.
4. Got my suit and dress shoes all muddy brushing the 7 inches of snow off my car.
5. Swore some
6. Went to public defender's office in Stillwater to get the list of jailed inviduals I will be trying release upon society today.
7. Sucessfully release 11 of 13 jailed inviduals upon society.
8. Eat at Wendy's - biggie seized big bacon classic, mmmm.
9. Went home and turned on TV.
10. Spend 15 minutes frothing at the mouth because of O'reilly's ridiculous right wing propganda while Kajer laughs at me.
11. Drink a beer to calm down
12. Tell chicken lady next door that if she doesn't keep her chickens quiet tommorow morning I am calling my friend who works at Gold'n Plump
13. Watch Friends rerun, its a good one.
13. Go to bed
welcome to the peace corps...
where time is never quite right
tom
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