Peace Corps pulled us out of Honduras, for my group, about 9 months earlier than we had planned: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/18/honduras-peace-corp-withdrawal_n_1212544.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

I'll keep this blog as a food journal from now on :)

A couple friends are throwing a Super Bowl party today, and while I'm not a fan of football, I am a fan of parties and meeting new people. One of the requests is to bring an appetizer, and I saw this as an opportunity to finally make something! I haven't cooked or baked since being in my house in Honduras, so I decided to try something new for me - in the form of Irish Carbomb Cupcakes. I guess I should have waited until St. Patrick's Day, but I have other plans for that weekend and this recipe looked too delicious to pass up. This was my first time attempting to make my own cupcake frosting and filling, and they turned out pretty good! I will warn though, there are 3 types of alcohol in this recipe, so kiddos - go light ;)

Irish Carbomb Cupcakes

Recipe from See Brooke Cook

Makes 24 Cupcakes

Ingredients:Cupcakes:

1 cup Guinness (or other stout beer)

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 cups all purpose flour

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

2 large eggs

2/3 cup sour cream

Ganache Filling:

8 oz bittersweet chocolate chips or coarsely chopped chocolate

2/3 cup half and half or heavy cream

2 Tbsp butter, room temperature

2 tsp Irish whiskey (optional)

Baileys Icing:

3 to 4 cups confections sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

6-8 Tbsp Baileys, I used 8 ;-)

Directions:Cupcakes:

Preheat your oven to 350°, line cupcake pans and set aside. In a large saucepan over medium heat bring the beer and butter to a simmer. Add the cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. In the bowl of a stand mixer, or in a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sour cream until combined. Slowly add the stout-chocolate mixture to the egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add the flour mixture and beat slowly until just combined. Divide the batter in the prepared cupcake pan, filling them 2/3 to 3/4 of the way full. In the preheated oven bake the cupcakes for about 17 minutes (or until tester inserted into center comes out clean). Cool cupcakes completely on a wire rack. Meanwhile, make the ganache.

Ganache:

Put chocolate in medium heat safe bowl and set aside. Over medium-low heat in a small saucepan, heat the cream/half-and-half until simmering then pour it over the chocolate. Let it sit for one minute and then stir until smooth. (If the chocolate has not completely melted you can place in the microwave for 20 seconds, but watch carefully so you don’t burn it). Add the butter and whiskey (if using) and stir until combined.

Let the ganache cool until thick but still soft enough to work with (you can refrigerate the mixture to speed up, but you will need to stir it every 10 minutes or so). Meanwhile cut the centers out of the completely cooled cupcakes, about 2/3 of the way deep. When all cupcakes are ready, fill them with the ganache. You can do so with a spoon and your finger, or by using a piping bag with a wide tip.

Icing:

To prepare the icing, beat the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer (or with a hand mixer) until light and fluffy (about 5 minutes). While on medium speed add the powdered sugar a few tablespoons at a time. When the frosting looks thick enough to spread, slowly add the Baileys beat until combined. If the icing has thinned too much add a couple more tablespoons of powdered sugar. Frost ganache filled cupcakes and enjoy!

I stilll can’t figure out what I want in life. I want it all. I want to do nonprofit/NGO work but still earn enough money to buy nice things for others. Is that possible? Would one feel guilty if he/she … Continue reading →

Once again it’s been awhile…what can I say, I’m a procrastinator by nature and with a blog there’s no deadline! We’ve of course been very busy as usual. Deyra’s English is steadily improving but she still can’t really have a conversation. She still generally talks to me in Spanish but seems to talk to everyone else in English. She is making more of an effort now, perhaps because of the little incident we had right before New Year’s Eve.

Deyra had asked if she could eat with some friends from Nicaragua. I said fine and asked her to call me during the day and tell me when and where she needed to be picked up since she did not know beforehand (she was already in Reedley volunteering during the day). She never called and I finally called her at 4:00 or so. Deyra still reported to know nothing and was very vague. She asked me if “las chicas” could spend the night because they couldn’t stay in the dorms and I told her that she needed to give more notice if she wanted someone to spend the night (we’re working on not asking for things at the very last minute). To make a long story shorter, Deyra never called me, I got mad and called her around 6:00, a host mom explained that some girls from another SEED program were coming and when/where Deyra needed to be picked up.

Needless to say, I was a little upset about Deyra’s lack of communication. We had spoken in Spanish the entire time so she really had no excuses. Both Kevin and I talked to her about it the next day and explained that she needs to tell us what is going on (like that people were coming from out of town, I thought that it was just local kids and that she wanted them to spend the night) ahead of time. I also talked to her about spending all of her time in her room and never speaking English. Deyra told me that she spent all of her time in Nicaragua in her room (in a one room house with at least five other people?) and that she didn’t know that it was weird.

Our little talk seemed to have worked because Deyra spent the rest of Christmas vacation hanging out with us in the living room. She even went to our friends Jon and Sarah’s house with us for New Year’s Eve and stayed up late talking to people. Deyra now asks us to take her places well in advance of the night before like she used to and comes with us when we go out.

Deyra on New Year's Eve

One of the other host parents had all of the first year students over at the beginning of January and they all made gingerbread houses. Deyra really enjoyed this and had her house on display for weeks. Every time a candy would fall off, she would stick it back on until we finally told her it had to go before it started decomposing.

I was gone a couple of weekends ago and she asked Kevin is she could have a friend over. Of course, three friends came but they had a good time. Kevin was a very good dad and taught them to play Yahtzee, made them fresh squeezed orange juice, and watched a movie with them. He said that they had a photo shoot complete with the cats and a stuffed bear!

Deyra with two of the girls that came over

Deyra is taking a couple of animal science classes and came home the other day talking about what a good day she had. She told me that she got to draw blood from a cow’s tale and that it was something she had never done before. She seems to be enjoying her classes for the most part. She’s taking aerobics and volleyball for PE and is having a little trouble with those, especially volleyball. Deyra almost dropped it, but decided to hang in there. She’s never had to take a real PE class before and says that they are hard and she is tired afterwards.

Next up: Deyra gets a computer!

Foundation Senor San Jose

Orphanage in Honduras Video by Fortunato Velasquez, Peace Corps Volunteer From: FoggyPark Views: 2 0 ratings Time: 14:36 More in Sports

Dear readers, as usual during February, I will be away in Honduras most of the month with my usual volunteer projects, the International Health Service of Minnesota medical brigade in villages around La Esperanza, visits to the blind school in Tegucigalpa and the Teleton rehab center in Choluteca, assistance to my scholarship students, a pat on the back for my village health promoters, and others, so please stand by for a report in March. A few items to mention before I leave.

Last night, on the way to meeting a friend for dinner, I happened across a big party featuring formally-dressed guests, valet parking, and purple strobe lights taking place in the north hall of our neighborhood’s venerable Eastern Market. Fortunately, it was an unseasonably warm evening with clear skies, facilitating functioning of the outdoor cooking in tents set up in the alley behind the market. So what was the occasion? A party celebrating the newly formed Purple Strategies bipartisan lobbying firm, one that caters to issues and their supporters across party lines, hence the purple blending of red and blue. Certainly such issues exist and many citizens are frankly tired of the extremes of partisanship now hobbling the political process. It will be interesting to see what issues this organization undertakes.

Riding by downtown DC, I saw the Occupy tents in Freedom Plaza, looking orderly, but placed very close together and filling up all the space, leaving no room for anyone else to enjoy the park. Supposedly, the National Park Service, which is in charge of the area, prohibits sleeping there. However, that’s been said for quite a while now, but the prohibition has not been enforced so far. A judge has apparently ruled against some of the Park Service’s attempts to prohibit sleeping.

In another blow against Honduras, Indiana University has cancelled a 10-year exchange program with the Honduran National Autonomous University over security concerns.

An article entitled “Stateless” in The Economist (Dec. 31, 2011), points out that Dominican-born individuals of Haitian ancestry are not considered Dominican nor does Haiti claim them, hence are considered stateless. They cannot get birth certificates or passports and, as consequence, often cannot enroll in school, get married or have a driver’s license, or travel outside the country.

Here is a recent statement from Amnesty International, where I swerve as volunteer coordinator for the Caribbean for AI-USA:

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

PUBLIC STATEMENT 27 January 2012

AI Index: AMR 19/002/2012

Brazilian Government must defend the rights of Yoani Sánchez, Cuban blogger and all other dissidents, journalists and human rights activists

The news that Brazil has issued a visa for Yoani Sánchez, the Cuban blogger

and human rights activist, to visit the country for a film festival is an important

step in recognising her right to freedom of movement. The Cuban authorities

must now grant her permission to travel to Brazil to attend the screening of a

documentary by Brazilian documentary-maker Dado Galvão in Jequié, Bahia

State, on 10 February. The film features the story of Yoani Sánchez and other

bloggers.

Amnesty International is calling on the Brazilian government to intervene with

the Cuban authorities so that Yoani Sanchez is given permission to travel freely

to and from Cuba. On 20 January 2012 Amnesty International wrote to Brazil’s

Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota, calling on the Brazilian government to

intervene in this case and to discuss human rights violations in Cuba. (see

letter http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR19/001/2012/pt)

President Dilma Rousseff will be visiting Cuba on 31 January 2012. Amnesty International urges her to raise Yoeni Sánchez’ case with the Cuban authorities as well as the issue of freedom of expression, association, assembly andmovement which is of serious concern. The case of Yoani Sánchez and her

visit to Brazil gives the Brazilian authorities an opportunity to engage on those

issues with the Cuban government.

The Cuban authorities continue to severely restrict the freedom of expression,

assembly, and association of political dissidents, journalists and human rights

activists. Dissidents, journalists and human rights activists are subject to

arbitrary house arrest and other restrictions to prevent them from carrying out

legitimate and peaceful activities. In addition, the Cuban government is using

the denial of exit permits as a punitive measure against government critics and

dissidents.

Amnesty International trusts that President Rousseff will use her upcoming

visit to Cuba to reinforce Brazil’s increasing global influence in the promotion

and protection of human rights.

I am currently typing away on an iPhone. New philosohied and thoughts onto a phone. Interesting. It’s 2 o’clock in the morning and I still can’t sleep. I don’t know what it is about the future that is so scary to many–including me. I think it may stem from the wealth of opportunities that seem [...]

It’s been two weeks back in the US. Where have those fourteen days gone? I feel like I’m in some sort of time warp,paradigm shift or anything else like a sense of altered reality. I definitely know I’m in LIMBo. – lonely,isolated, misunderstood, bored. At theall volunteer conference in Tegucigalpa,we were told by the psychologists to expect certain feelings and that acronymwas the one that really stands out. However, I’m getting ahead of myself. For the longest time I’ve been writing my blog recap style and there’sno reason to change now.

We last left off with lagringa spending Christmas Eve and Christmas with friends in Guaimaca. It was a beautiful holiday full of theHonduran traditions and food I love. Aspecial Christmas Eve church service with a program put on by the children, rosquillas en miel, pierna, nacatamalesand staying up ‘til midnight to setoff fireworks.

Shortly after Christmas my parents, this time my mom andstepdad, arrived in Hondurasfor a vacation that’d been planned for months. Instead of it being an opportunity to see what my daily Honduran lifewas like and get to visit my host families it became the opportunity to seewhat my daily Honduran life had been like and going to visit my host familiesfor the last time to say our good byes. While most volunteers who stayed in Hondurasover the holidays were on Standfast and not allowed to travel, I’d been grantedpermission from our Country Director because my parents had rented a car and wewould not be on the oh-so-dangerous public transportation. My parents trip ended up being great timingdue to all that was happening because we were able to get my dog, Frijoles, tothe vet and cleared for entry to the US and they were able to bring back anextra suitcase full of my stuff – which makes my grand total for pieces ofluggage coming back to the US three, while I only arrived in Honduras withtwo. Weird, since I left 95% of myclothes there.

The first few days of January were the cliché emotionalroller coaster as I started really packing up my house (my home), sayinggoodbye to friends in Guaimaca and faced the reality of the end. January 8th was my despedida both with my favorite hostfamily and my best friends in Guaimaca. At one point there were about twenty people in my small home. It was stressful trying to manage the twogroups who didn’t know each other, while individuals from each wanted to buyfurniture from me and have other things gifted to them as recuerdos. I didn’t handlethe situation well at all and my best friend from Guaimaca ended up not gettingsome of the things I had promised her beforehand. Later that evening when I was sitting in myhouse with nothing left but a small foam mattress she texted and said she wasupset with me because of that and also that I’d neglected to give anything toher daughter. It hit me so hard – Itried to call her to talk about it and explain myself, but she didn’tanswer. However, things were resolvedand I think it just came down to her trying to deal with her feelings of myleaving by trying to start a fight.

January 12, 2012was the last day I woke up in my home of Guaimaca. My favorite taxi driver had offered to takeme to the neighboring municipality where Peace Corps was picking us up in abus. I spent the morning dreading hisarrival to my house and doing my last minute errands in Guaiamaca. The waterworks started when I went to saygoodbye to the one little girl I’d spent the most time helping personally –giving donations to her and her family. I’d spent very little time with her in comparison to other people, butshe was very attached to me. As soon asshe saw me she burst into tears and it broke my heart. I had also spent the night before writing agoodbye note to mi pueblo. There are three local news stations and one radio,which was run by a neighbor, so I left my notes to be read on air thatafternoon or evening. It was the bestway I could think of to express my gratitude to the people of mi pueblo for welcoming me home fornearly two years and treating me like one of their own, while also sayinggoodbye to those I’d missed in person. Finally, the hour arrived and I walked my beautiful dusty streets onelast time, passing the chickens pecking away, hearing the niños kicking a soccer ball around and breathing the ever presentsmoke wafting heavenward from the fogonesheating café and tortillas. Waiting atmy back door was my best friend with her little girl. Two of my favorite people, not only in Honduras,but the world. They watched as I packedmy last minute things – laptop, cords, chargers, phones and camera. My vision was already blurry with tears andheart so full of pain – I felt the impact as my friend punched the wall inanger and despair crying, “Que cabrona!” It was the hardest day of my life. The taxi arrived and I sought out my cat,temporarily left behind with her young kittens, burying my face deep in hersoft black fur and sobbing the pain out and trying to wash some of the sadnessfrom my soul. I gave my landlady lastminute instructions on the cat’s habits and how to feed her, praying that Iwill actually have her back here with me in the USsoon as planned. I hugged the kids whoselaughter and greetings had been the soundtrack to my life. I thanked my landlady for everything and heraunt who lived near as well. Then I tookthe ride out of Guaimaca. The clear blueskies, wispy white clouds and sun shining even in the middle of January. I soaked up the views of mountains, valleys,pines and creeks as we neared the next stop. The whole morning will forever be etched in my memory.

Almost as soon as all the pain hit, it was eased seeingother volunteers in Talanga, where the majority of people from our region werebeing taken into Tegucigalpa metup. Seeing twelve or so people goingthrough the exact same thing helped immensely. We went to the very luxurious Hotel Maya and spent four days there goingthrough an excruciatingly painful COS (close of service) conference. Meetings all day from 8-5, in English with punctual Americansand no permission to leave the hotel. Weird. They were fun filled days,trying to pay attention in the important meetings, collecting last minutesamples of bodily fluids for medical testing, enjoying the amenities of thehotel and surviving on little to no sleep as we squeezed all we could out oflast minute time with friends soon to be scattered all over the US.

We finally flew out of Hondurason Monday, January 16, 2012. It was another really hard day as all threeof the US boundflights out of Tegucigalpa carriedPCVs back to the unknown. On the bus tothe airport I heard from a PC staff member that after the incident when thevolunteer got shot on the bus PC Washington had wanted to evacuate us from thecountry within THREE DAYS. She told methat our amazing Country Director stood up to PC/W and told them to not makesuch rash decisions and convinced them to let us volunteers stay in Hondurasuntil a later date. I was so shockedthat PC/W had thought the situation was that serious because it wasn’t and felteven more appreciation for our Country Director whom I already had so muchadmiration for. She’s an amazing lady! Finally at the airport there were yet moregoodbyes with the PC Honduras staff who had helped us through so much. The last goodbye that was hard for me wassending “Bessie” along on her flight. Her short three months in Guaimaca made it so much more bearable for meand I knew I was going to (and already do) miss her tons. At least it’s easy to visit people aquí en los EEUU.

I spent my last few minutes in the airport using all my saldo and calling friends and familybefore boarding the plane. Tons moretears shed and a heart warming moment as a random American monk noticed andcame over and handed me a wad of napkins. Random acts of kindness are always fun. Then we were whisked away to Miamifor a night of layover fun.

Continue on to part 2 to see what it’s been like back here stateside.

I have been home for 8 days now.  It has been a whirlwind of fast-moving activity; and I’m only half-way started.  One mostly concrete date, however, has been set in motion.  At a meeting with the alcalde this past Saturday our benefactor from Virginia Hospital Center brought the final design plans for the new orphanage and [...]

So it has been a long time since I wrote anything here and a lot has happened.  Hopefully little by little I can update.

“Here were these poor people, living on the edge of a mountain with a million-dollar view,’’ she said. “But they needed the basics, food, shelter. It was such a moving experience.’’ The Peace Corps’ decision to leave, she said, was … Continue reading →

one month later, i am here in america. i looooooove america. and i'm not talking about north america, central america, or south america because si, todos somos americanos. i'm talking about mcdonald's, freedom of press, impeccable infrastructure, the land of the free. and as wonderful as it is to be here, the past month has been a whirlwind of departures and arrivals. i've said more goodbyes in the past month than i ever wanted to. it was inevitable, i was always going to leave copán, honduras, and my life i had built there, but for some reason this was a bit harder. technically, i am still a peace corps volunteer -- the united states government is paying us $32 a day. the reality is that i will not be returning to honduras as a peace corps volunteer and i will be starting a life here. here being america.

the hardest part of this transition is explaining to people that yes, i left honduras for heightened security issues, and yes, i would do it all over again. i loved it. and when i didn't feel safe i figured out how to change my situation and feel safe. there is a way to do it right. but still people look at me as if i was living in a war zone. my defense spills out of my mouth before i am able to phrase it correctly. for this, i loved the message i recently received from a fellow volunteer in cambodia. a friend of my sister, she has been through an amazing experience herself. she said, "Despite the headlines and the reports of violence, I know that a small community in Honduras has forever been positively changed by your warmth, charisma, hard work, and determination. Don't ever lose sight of that." these are the words i want everyone to know. not the change i made, but that no matter what is going on, human connection is inevitable and the only thing that matters. violence, sure it becomes a scary monster you'd rather run from, but friendship is what keeps your feet planted.

so this is to all my friends, catrachos and gringos, i met along the way. as insufficient as words can be, thank you for everything. in you and your friendship i will always return to honduras.

Kitty Cone Head, Chuleta the cat's second spay surgery...

My cat had her second spay surgery...she was a cat I brought home from my Peace Corps service in Honduras and I had taken her to a really sketchy fake Honduran vet who stuck her up with some crazy drug anesthesia and laid out a bunch of newspapers on this counter in his creepy back room of his farm store and sliced her uterus out, but apparently forgot the ovaries (idiot), so my cat had been going through heat even though she couldn't get preggers. From: 88ameless Views: 0 0 ratings Time: 02:24 More in Pets & Animals

I can’t tell if Honduras has been in the news more recently, or if I am just paying more attention because its close to my heart. At any rate, here are some various things I have found in the news. … Continue reading →

My last blog post was on Christmas Day, which seems like a lifetime ago. There are a couple of reasons why I haven’t posted in so long. First of all, my free month of internet service on my modem expired on Christmas day, and I didn’t feel like paying for more time. Secondly, I don’t think I was ready to think about going home and everything that comes along with it. But, here I am, back in snowy CT and writing one last blog post…for now.

After Christmas, I tried to keep my “day camp” going. I woke early in order to get outside at 8:30 and wait for the kids to show up. They didn’t show up. I decided to give up on the idea because I only had a few weeks left anyway. However, that just meant that my only “work” responsibilities for my last 3 weeks in site were baseball practice on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for an hour and a half. Looking back on it, I’m not sure that giving myself so much free time was the greatest idea, but it did give me a chance to relax, reflect, and enjoy being in Sulaco before I left.

During the week after Christmas, my host family did “rondas” which is a tradition that they started 7 or 8 years ago. My host grandmother has a bunch of relatives in town, and they all took turns hosting dinner parties in the days between Christmas and New Years. The parties all had their own flavor, some had organized games and others were more laid back. At one there was alcohol served, and at another we milled our own sugar cane juice. Overall, they were great. It was nice to spend time with a family during the holiday season.helping get the juice out of the sugar cane

Also after Christmas, the volunteer that was at my site before me (and is also named Sarah) came back to Sulaco for a visit. It was cool to meet her because I had heard a lot about her and had been constantly asked if I was her sister (I never understood why someone would think that there would be two sisters with the same name haha). Sarah and I spent a day hiking in La Abardilla, an aldea of Sulaco up in the mountains. It was a long, uphill hike, but the views were beautiful. She also took me to see the natural springs in San Antonio, another aldea of Sulaco. I had been wanting to go since I got there, and had planned on going with Fernando the baseball coach because he had never been. I’m so glad I got to see it before I left. It was a huge cave with clean, clear water and hot water falling down from the top of the cave. Super cool!view from the hike

natural springs

New Year’s was pretty lame. I hung out with my host family at a family party. Just like at Christmas, at midnight everyone hugs each other to welcome in the new year. There was a dance party that night, but my host mom and dad didn’t give their daughters permission to go. I really wanted to go, but didn’t want to walk there alone at 2 a.m. So instead I went to bed….lame.

In my last couple weeks, I tried to enjoy all of my time. I made the most out of every baseball practice, spent time outside trying to soak up some sunshine, and made it to the river a few times with some of the girls from the colegio. I had to meet with my counterparts to tell them the news, and they were genuinely disappointed that I had to leave. My counterparts at the escuela and colegio weren’t the best to work with, and I wasn’t really that close with them. It was bittersweet to finally know how much I was appreciated right before I had to leave. It was hard to tell everyone the news. I developed a little speech to explain why I was leaving that I would tell to people. I told as many people as I could because the last thing that I wanted them to think was that I was choosing to leave or abandoning them. I tried to always reinforce the fact that I was being forced to leave, that I didn’t want to go, and that I would come back if I could. Unfortunately, a lot of the kids didn’t understand and kept asking, “So when are you coming back?” I did my best to explain the situation and tell them that I was most likely not coming back to work with Peace Corps, but promising that I’d come back to visit someday.

On my last full day in Sulaco, I spent 4 hours at the river with the kids from the baseball team. We jumped off the rocks, had swimming races, ate snacks, and just hung out. There’s a saying that they have in Sulaco that once you drink the water from the river you have to come back. I think it’s true.

Before coming home, all 150 or so volunteers had to attend a conference at a hotel in Tegucigalpa. It was a strange few days with lots of ups and downs. We had an explanation from our regional director about how they came to their decision, language interviews, career workshops, “feelings talks” with some psychologists, and lots of other sessions aimed at helping us transition back to our lives at home.

During the conference, my fellow PCVs and I kept asking each other “How are you doing?” and “How are you feeling?” There was so much going on and so many different emotions to handle all at once.· Anger: The first night of the conference, the regional director gave a long presentation about how they came to their decision to send us home. Before and during this presentation, you could have cut the tension with a knife. For me, I felt angry because the information that he gave us showed that they had an idea that something like this was going to happen before they sent my group down there in July. I was angry that they would send us to Honduras knowing that our time there would most likely be cut short.· Happiness: During our 11 weeks of training, my training group (H-19) had gotten so close and I was finally able to see all of them again. Although we stayed in touch on the internet and through phone calls, there’s nothing better than seeing them in person, especially because they are the only people who could possibly understand and relate to what you’re going through. And…even though we were only there for 6 months, all 15 of us made it the whole time, which is pretty impressive for PC Honduras.· Sadness: This one’s obvious. Having to leave friends, host families, kids, communities, PC staff and counterparts that I worked with was one of the saddest things I’ve ever experienced.· Excitement: So, I had to throw another positive one in here…I would be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to be coming home where I’d get to see my family and friends, flush my toilet paper down the toilet, and not eat tortillas with every meal.· Disappointment: I don’t know if disappointment is the right word for it, but I also had a feeling that I didn’t actually make a difference or do very much. Due to the fact that I was in my site for such a short time, I feel unfulfilled and disappointed by the impact that I made and amount of work I got to do.· Loss: I think overall the biggest feeling is loss. Mostly feeling like I’ve lost the opportunity to continue as a volunteer in Honduras and help my community. I also feel a sense of loss over the fact that I am no longer very close geographically with my H-19 friends, who have meant so much to me over the past 6 months. I know they are just a facebook chat, text, skype call, or phone call away, but I feel like I’ve lost a little bit of that safety net that was so strong while I was in Honduras.· Confusion: Throughout the conference, there were a lot of people who seemed to be confused. Being suddenly told that we had to go home meant different things for different people. Some people, like me, are planning on re-enrolling in the Peace Corps to do 27 months in another country. Others are suddenly thrown into job searches or grad school applications. The largest percentage of people seemed to just be confused about what steps to take next in their lives.H-19!

So, after the conference we said our goodbyes and headed home. Chelsea and Lesley picked me up at the airport in Hartford and it was snowing (which I was not excited about). I got in a little after midnight, so we stayed in a hotel by the airport. The next day, we had lunch with my mom and I headed home and spent the day with her. Wednesday I went with Chelsea and Lesley down to Baltimore for a few days. It was nice to be on vacation for a little while, but overwhelming at the same time. We spent the day in Washington D.C. on Thursday and checked out some of the memorials. I hadn’t been there in a long time and I really enjoyed it. We headed back to CT on Saturday.The new MLK memorial in D.C. the words on the side say "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope."

Now, I’m back home and I’ve had a lot of time to think about what is going on and what has happened. This whole transition thing is not so easy, which I knew would be the case. Being back home is weird. I grew and changed a lot during my 6 months in Honduras. While I was there I was more confident, relaxed, open, patient, and happy. I’m starting to feel that slipping away little by little since I got off the plane in Hartford. Right now, my goal is to not let everything go back to the way it was back in July before I left…not let myself go back to the way I was before I left. I’ve had an experience that has the potential to impact the rest of my life and who I am as a person. I will not let it disappear.

So, this is it for the blog for now. “Sarah en Sulaco” is WAY more exciting than “Sarah en Guilford, CT”—trust me. But, as of now I am planning on re-enrolling in the Peace Corps, which means that at some point (most likely in the fall or next winter) I will leave for another 27-month adventure (which will hopefully last 27 months this time.) This blog is probably not finished, it is “to be continued.” Someday “Sarah en Sulaco” will turn into “Sarah en some-other-awesome-beautiful- amazing-town.” Thank you to everyone who took the time to read my blog. Whether you’re a close friend, family member, complete stranger, or someone I went to high school with and randomly clicked the facebook link…Gracias.

Hasta luego,Sarah

from the wall at the MLK memorial

Yes, it’s true. I am back in the US, for good (for now). Despite the free hugs and open doors of my village, Honduras is still the “world’s most deadly country.” http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_HONDURAS_PEACE_CORPS?SITE=WIJAN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT After a family dinner in Shenzhen, China, I borrowed my cousin’s computer to check my email. I was on vacation from Honduras to [...]

Sorry for the lack of blogs recently.  As you all could probably guess, we have been very busy!  In short, this is what we have been up to since the New Year: Soaking up our last few days in Trinidad – including several delicious home cooked meals with Lourdes; a farewell lunch with some our [...]

Hello folks, I will be leaving soon for my annual trip to Honduras, but will try to post another letter beforehand,

Just heard that Honduras has raised its fees for tourists, which does not seem like such a wise move, given the country’s unfortunate fame as a dangerous place with the highest murder rate in the hemisphere. Instead of just an exit fee of $37, now there is an entrance fee of $23 and an exit fee of $54, so they get us coming and going.

Our DC local Spanish-language press has an article about the departure of Peace Corps from Honduras. I have wondered since if PC might not have overreacted in the Honduras matter. Of course, since a volunteer was shot, even though she is now recovering, that is very serious and PC would not want to chance any such further incidents. But it's also true that PC service has never been entirely safe, although the murder, suicide, and rape stats are fairly comparable to those on US college campuses, which, unless murder is involved, rarely come to media attention and colleges like to keep it that way. I couldn't help thinking that after almost 50 years, throughout CA's civil wars, through hurricanes and Zelaya's ouster and return, through other incidents of gunshot wounds, rapes, and robberies, PCVs have remained in Honduras. At what point do you pull the plug and take preventive action? Certainly, no one wants a PCV to be killed or seriously injured. But I couldn't help wondering if the fact that the Honduras country director involved in this decision had never been a volunteer or PC employee before might have played a role? It's regrettable that the country has become more violent and that volunteers may be in greater danger, but it's also a tragedy that volunteers are leaving Honduras and may soon leave neighboring countries.

In an op ed in the LA Times, (Jan. 16, 2012), a current Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala, commenting on all the recent negative publicity about the dangers faced by volunteers in Central America, assures his mother and readers, that “Guatemala is not Afghanistan. Not even close.” For the full article, go to http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-metzker-peace-corps-in-central-america-20120116,0,5317022.story.

For more on the Peace Corps departure from Honduras in The Miami Herald see article below.

On a more positive note, an article (“Hong Kong in Honduras”) appearing in the December 10, 2011 issue of The Economist discusses President Porfirio Lobo’s plan to establish semi-autonomous “charter cities” with their own security and rules, along the lines advocated by New York university economics professor Paul Romer. The first such city may be developed in the area of Trujillo, on the northern Caribbean coast.

Members of our local Amnesty International group got this good news about the the letters we have bee sending to Patrick, our Nigerian prisoner:

We have spoken to Patrick's brother. He told us that at the end of last year, Patrick received over 1,000 cards and letters from Amnesty International activists, which he was pleased about. The solidarity cards and letters have made huge positive impact on his situation in prison. He feels proud among his fellow inmates. He's regarded as "the big man" in the yard. The cards and letters he receives from Amnesty members globally have led to him being given special treatment by the prison warders. He's not maltreated and his condition in the prison has improved positively since the start of his campaign. Patrick's brother told us that the solidarity cards made him feel human again and he feels special knowing that there are people all over the world showing concern for his life and safety.

My son Jonathan, now in his 30s and living in Honolulu, has gone back to college full-time. He was adopted from Colombia at age 1 and I have told him that if he learns passable Spanish, we’ll take a trip back his birth country together. We last were there in 1985 when he was 11. Now he tells me that his Spanish teacher in his first semester of Spanish is from Japan, which doesn't sound too promising. I hope she has the right accent, because members of the Japanese Peace Corps I knew in Honduras had a heck of time pronouncing Spanish. Well, at least he will get the grammar. I'm sorry my kids resisted learning Spanish when they were young, when it would have been so much easier. My daughters are also in college part-time, adding to previous coursework, but not studying Spanish.

The Boston Globe reports that Joe Kennedy III, a 31-year-old prosecutor and son of former Rep. Joe Kennedy, might run for the Democratic nomination of the redrawn Barney Frank district seat. Kennedy, a Harvard Law School graduate, was in the DR as a Peace Corps volunteer. If he runs and wins, he would be the fifth former volunteer in Congress. He would also be the first in the fourth generation of Kennedys to thrust himself into electoral politics. And he is the only one of the Kennedy/Shriver clan to have joined the Peace Corps.

Forgot to mention last time that The Washington Post, on its editorial page on New Year’s Day, reminded readers that a local resident, Alan Gross, was starting his 3rd year in prison for having brought electronic equipment into Cuba, equipment cleared by Cuban customs, which charged him duty on the items, For that, he was sentenced to 15 years. Of course, he was arrested precisely to be used as a bargaining chip for the release of the Cuban Five, four of whom are still in prison in the US and one is out on a three-year parole, but not allowed to leave the country during that time.

Meanwhile, a dissident hunger striker has died in Cuba. Arrested in November after a peaceful protest in the eastern town of Contramaestre, he was 31-year-old Wilman Villar Mendoza, a human rights activist whose wife belonged to the Ladies in White. He was given a four-year sentence for refusal to obey an officer, resistance, and assault, and began a hunger strike in prison, where, it was alleged, he was treated as a common criminal, thrown naked into a humid punishment cell, deprived of food and water, and refused medical assistance until he was near death. He died on January 18, 2012 in a hospital surrounded by military guards and his widow was reportedly denied access to his body. Local dissidents’ homes were also surrounded. Amnesty International has protested Mendoza’s arrest and death. On January 20, three Cubans designated as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty were released.

As a Catholic, I’m not particularly gloating, in fact, am uneasy, about the

Episcopal parishes that are moving wholesale to Catholicism. They are allowed to have married priests, but we “born” Catholics are not. It’s high time, in my opinion, that married priests be allowed across-the-board and also women priests. Pedophilia would be less common and the priest shortage would be alleviated, not to mention that it would be a fairer system, more in line with present-day realities.

Not satisfied with the mandate to teach creationism in public schools, some evangelicals are now pushing for the teaching of climate change denial. Come on folks, do we have to perpetuate ignorance from one generation to the next? What’s the point of having scientific inquiry?

As the political campaign season continues, I am struck by how easily manipulated voters and the public are, by rumors, sound bites, and appeals to emotion. It’s not only dictators who manipulate the common man.

Peace Corps pullout a new blow to Honduras

By FREDDY CUEVAS and ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON

The Miami Herald, Jan. 18, 2012

All 158 Peace Corps volunteers in Honduras left the country on Monday, weeks after the United States announced that it would pull them out for safety reasons.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- The U.S. government's decision to pull out all its Peace Corps volunteers from Honduras for safety reasons is yet another blow to a nation still battered by a coup and recently labeled the world's most deadly country. Neither U.S. nor Honduran officials have said what specifically prompted them to withdraw the 158 Peace Corps volunteers, which the U.S. State Department said was one of the largest missions in the world last year.

It is the first time Peace Corps missions have been withdrawn from Central America since civil wars swept the region in the 1970s and 1980s. The Corps closed operations in Nicaragua from 1979 to 1991 and in El Salvador from 1980 to 1993 for safety and security reasons, but has since returned to both countries. But the wave of violence and drug cartel-related crime hitting the Central American country had affected volunteers working on HIV prevention, water sanitation and youth projects, President Porfirio Lobo acknowledged.

On Wednesday, Lobo met with senior U.S. officials to speak about security. The U.S. agreed to send a team of experts to help the Honduras government with "citizen security issues," said a State Department news statement. The U.S. Embassy in Honduras did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Monday's pullout also comes less than two months after U.S. Rep. Howard Berman, a California Democrat, asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to reconsider sending police and military aid to Honduras as a response to human rights abuses. "It's a welcome step toward the United States recognizing that they have a disastrous situation in Honduras," said Dana Frank, a University of California Santa Cruz history professor who has researched and traveled in Honduras.

The decision to pull out the entire delegation came after a Peace Corps volunteer was shot in the leg during an armed robbery on Dec. 3 aboard a bus in the violence-torn city of San Pedro Sula.

Hugo Velasquez, a spokesman for the country's National Police, said 27-year-old Lauren Robert was wounded along with two other people. One of the three alleged robbers was killed by a bus passenger, Velasquez said. The daily La Prensa said Robert is from Texas. Most areas of San Pedro Sula, like other specially violent parts of Honduras, had been declared "banned or highly discouraged for volunteers," according to the June 2011 edition of the Corps' "Welcome Book." Also banned were "all beaches at night" and a large part of the country's Atlantic coast.

Also, on Jan. 24, 2011, a Peace Corps volunteer was robbed and raped near the village of Duyure in southern Honduras. Three men were found guilty of rape and robbery in that case, according to an employee of the regional court in the southern city of Choluteca who was not authorized to be quoted by name. Sentencing is scheduled for February; the three men face up to 26 years in prison. The volunteer was apparently assaulted while hiking in a remote area.

The U.S. also announced it had suspended some training for new volunteers in El Salvador and Guatemala, though they kept open the possibility of sending new teams of volunteers once a review of security conditions is finished. El Salvador has 113 volunteers, and there are 215 in Guatemala, where the head of the Peace Corps pledged the program would continue. The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala said in a statement the suspension only applied to the January Peace Corps class. Further reviews will determine future training in that nation.

The three countries make up the so-called northern triangle of Central America, a region plagued by drug trafficking and gang violence. El Salvador has the second highest homicide rate with 66 killings per 100,000 inhabitants, the U.N. has said. Numerous non-governmental aid groups work in the region and the Peace Corps decision has raised concerns that they could also be affected.

"This is not a good moment for Honduran NGOs," said Oscar Anibal Puerto, director of the Honduran Institute for Rural Development, which works on school construction and water projects, often with Spanish financing and sometimes in informal cooperation with Peace Corps volunteers. He said financing from Spain has begun to dry up because of that country's debt crisis, and while the Peace Corps withdrawal "has not significantly affected us," he said he worried it could set an example for other donor countries to pull out.

But Puerto said he could understand the U.S. decision. "Their concerns are justified, until the security situation in Honduras improves," he said. "Human values have been lost. Crime is the order of the day."

Honduras joins Kazakhstan and Niger as countries that have recently had their volunteers pulled out. The Kazakhstan decision followed reports of sexual assaults against volunteers. In Niger, volunteers were evacuated after the kidnapping and murder of two French citizens claimed by an al-Qaida affiliate.

A U.N. report, released in October 2011, said Honduras had the highest homicide rate in the world with 6,200 killings, or 82.1 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2010. "Violence affects all Hondurans. It wouldn't be surprising if Peace Corps members, too," said Jose Rolando Bu, president of a group that represents non-governmental agencies.

Sarah Smith, a 25-year-old health volunteer who lived in the town of Taulabe, said she was once robbed and knew a friend got her computer stolen at gunpoint. "Just about everyone had something happened to them at some level," she said Wednesday.

Smith said she also received an email regarding the pullout and, although the bus attack was not cited as the reason, "it was in the back of our minds," said Smith, back in Cincinnati after a nearly two-year mission.

Between June 2010 and June 2011, nine U.S. citizens were killed in Honduras, most in San Pedro Sula or northern coastal areas.

The Peace Corps had sent volunteers to Honduras since 1962, and around 1982 it was the largest mission in the world, according to the U.S. State Department. The U.S. sent more people to help after Hurricane Mitch in 1998. It was not clear what effect the volunteers' departure would have on the Corps' efforts; no other aid agency immediately announced any pullout based on security concerns.

Peace Corps volunteer Claire Krebs, an engineer from Houston, Texas, described her work in the mid-sized city of Choluteca on the Peace Corps Journals blog site. Krebs wrote that she surveyed, planned and designed water systems for rural Honduran villages, which involved visits to rural areas in the country's somewhat more tranquil southern region, where there were few apparent security problems.

Berman said in the Nov. 28, 2011, letter to Clinton that he worried that some murders in Honduras appeared to be politically motivated because high-profile victims included people related to or investigating abuses by police and security forces, or to the June 28, 2009, ouster of President Manuel Zelaya. The coup lead to the temporary diplomatic isolation of Honduras.

On Tuesday, a Honduran lawyer who had reported torture and human rights violations by police officers was killed by gunmen, authorities said.

Three men stormed into the office of Ricardo Rosales, 42, shot him dead and escaped, said Hector Turcios, the police chief of Tela, a city 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of the capital. Rosales had told local press that officers had tortured jail inmates in his city.

I have decided to stop writing this blog, to let it rest in peace in the bowels of the Internet as a historical documentation of my experiences as a Peace Corps Business Development Volunteer in Honduras. Thank you for reading and commenting all these months. Please feel free to contact me in the future regarding these posts at: alex.osteen.pchn@gmail.com . If you are interested in getting involved with the Peace Corps, I say do it!

Also, in case you're a movie buff, check out my new blogging endeavor, my movie critiques:

http://thepicturegrande.blogspot.com/

I realize that it's been a really long time since I last updated, and I'm sorry about the long wait. I wish I could say it was because I've been busy working and enjoying my life in Honduras, but unfortunately, that isn't the case.

We received word on December 20th that Peace Corps Washington had decided to close down our post. The official reason was because of "safety and security concerns for volunteers" and we were told we would be sent home sometime in the next few weeks. I was back in the U.S. for Christmas at the time, which definitely put a little bit of a damper on the holidays.

I was able to go back as I had originally intended, but now only to pack up my things and say goodbye to everyone. I spent about a week wrapping up my life in Santa Bárbara, emptying out my little house, eating at my favorite baleada restaurants for the last time, and spending time with people I knew I wouldn't be seeing for a while.

All of the Honduras volunteers were then sent to a conference in Tegucigalpa to hear the official reasoning behind the decision and to wrap up our service. Although I am heartbroken to have to leave my life behind, I understand that Peace Corps felt there was too much of a risk to our safety to keep us where we were.

What does this mean for my future? They have offered us the chance to re-enroll in another country. Specifically, for me, they have a position in a Water and Sanitation project in South America leaving in September. I'm not sure what I'm going to do at this point, because re-enrolling would mean signing up for another 2 years and 3 months in the new location.

This also means I'm putting the blog on hold. If I end up serving again, I can't wait to share more stories with all of you. If not, I'll try to share them with you in person (now that I'm back for good). Thanks for all of your interest and support- it meant a lot to me to know that people back home were interested in what I was doing. I'll leave you with a couple more photos of Santa Bárbara:

I've been back in the US for almost a week now. For a while before coming back here everyone was talking about reverse culture shock and how tough it was going to be. I've experienced it before and I guess that the idea of it is a bit weird at first thought: after being abroad for x amount of time, you start to experience culture shock from returning to your home culture.

I haven't done all that much this past week. With all the despedidas (going away parties) the last few weeks in Juticalpa and 4 days in our closing conference in Tegucigalpa I was exhausted once I got back here. However, some of the biggest changes so far are:

The cold. It's freezing here and I walk/bike almost anywhere I'm going. I'm more used to it now than the first few days but when people get excited that the temperature is going to reach 45 degrees F today then there's a problem. In Juticalpa, I was complaining if it got down to 65 degrees F at night time. A little bit of snow fell here the other day and the streets and sidewalks are pretty icy. Not being a rock star anymore. Peace Corps staff always joked with us during training that we would be rock stars in our sites. We would be El Gringo that everyone wanted to meet. Well, it was true. I knew people almost everywhere I went in Juticalpa, and if I didn't then some stranger would probably start talking to me. People here don't normally look, let alone talk, to strangers in the street. Language. I'm not sure what I miss more, Spanish or Spanglish. Although, I will keep practicing Spanish (probably not as much Spanglish). Philly. Philly is much different than Juticalpa. Both are really great and I'm always happy to be back in Philly. This past week I've been able to walk and bike around, drink various types of dark beer, eat all sorts of food and all this has been done without seeing people with machine guns driving around. There's also less dust here.

There are a bunch of other things that upon arriving here I realized are so much different, but overall I think the reverse culture shock isn't too strong this time. Maybe once I start getting out a bit more and seeing more friends it will hit me more, who knows.

When we were accepted to PC, we got tons of packets and papers and information. There was one excerpt that I kept where a RPCV (Returned PCV) described reverse culture shock. I'd say there's no better way to describe it and I think it's the way I felt the first time I experienced it. Check it out...

---------------------------------------------- The problem is this notion of home. The word suggests a place and a life all set up and waiting for us; all we have to do is move in. But home isn't merely a place we inhabit; it's a lifestyle we construct (wherever we go), a pattern of routines, habits, and behaviors associated with certain people, places, and objects all confined to a limited area or neighborhood. We can certainly construct a home back in our own culture, just as we did abroad, but there won't be one waiting for us when we arrive...

In other words, no one goes home; rather, we return to our native country and, in due course, we create a new home. This condition of homelessness is perhaps the central characteristic of the experience of reentry, and the confusion, anxiety, and disappointment it arouses in us are the abiding emotions of this difficult period.

To put it another way, the trouble with reentry is that you suddenly find yourself in transition when what you expected was to simply pick up where you left off (though, of course, neither the place where you left off nor the person who went overseas exists anymore). Even when they're expected, transitions are troublesome; when they're not, they can be genuinely debilitating.

Your self-esteem isn't helped, meanwhile, by the fact that no one seems especially interested in what you've been doing for the last two years. You have just gone through what may be the seminal experience of your life (certainly of your life to-date), and experience that has transformed your view of the world and your own country- and changed you profoundly in the process- and yes your family and intimates somehow aren't bowled over. You have so much to explain, but alas, their capacity to absorb is not nearly matched by your need to recapitulate; they're filled up before you're even half empty. The typical returned Volunteer is a catharsis waiting (not so patiently) to happen.

This dynamic only adds to the returned Volunteer's growing crisis of identity. With no present role, your sense of self- and of self-wroth- is embodied in the sum of all the experiences you've had in the Peace Corps; you are what you have been through in the last two years. But if nobody wants to hear this, then how can they know how you've changed and who you've become? And if they don't know who you are, how can they value or even like you?

Another frustrating dimension of readjustment is the sudden return to anonymity. While Volunteers often complain about living in a fish-bowl overseas, their every move the subject of intense scrutiny and still more intense speculation, they nevertheless enjoy being the center of attention and interest; it makes them feel special, even important. Speaking the local language for example, makes celebrities-even heroes-out of Volunteers, as does being the first American ever to teach at the King Hassan II Elementary School or to ride the local bus from Song Kwah to Phu Banh. Now, no one looks up when we enter a room or squeals with delight when we start speaking Swahili. Our every move has more or less the same novelty value as everyone else's every move. We aren't special anymore-and we miss it.

Something else we miss, acutely, is the intensity of the Peace Corps experience. Even when it was difficult-indeed, especially when it was difficult-the experience of living and working among an alien people had an almost palpable richness about it. We could practically feel ourselves growing and maturing, being stretched beyond what we thought were our limits and forced to come up with more patience or tolerance or persistence than we thought we had in us. We knew we were being transformed. And this was immensely stimulating and sustaining. Back home, life is easy and predictable; our character no longer gets a regular workout.

These losses-of home, self-confidence, and independence-are at the core of readjustment and all but guarantee that most returned Volunteers are not going to pick up where they left off. What's worse, the typical Volunteer suffers these losses alone and largely in silence. For two years, throughout all the excitement and frustration of culture shock, pre-service training, settling-in, and beyond, we were supported by other Volunteers going through the same experience we were. Now, suddenly and precipitously, we're on our own. We have our family and friends about us, and they are sympathetic, but they don't really understand.

I've been back in the US for almost a week now. For a while before coming back here everyone was talking about reverse culture shock and how tough it was going to be. I've experienced it before and I guess that the idea of it is a bit weird at first thought: after being abroad for x amount of time, you start to experience culture shock from returning to your home culture.

I haven't done all that much this past week. With all the despedidas (going away parties) the last few weeks in Juticalpa and 4 days in our closing conference in Tegucigalpa I was exhausted once I got back here. However, some of the biggest changes so far are:

The cold. It's freezing here and I walk/bike almost anywhere I'm going. I'm more used to it now than the first few days but when people get excited that the temperature is going to reach 45 degrees F today then there's a problem. In Juticalpa, I was complaining if it got down to 65 degrees F at night time. A little bit of snow fell here the other day and the streets and sidewalks are pretty icy. Not being a rock star anymore. Peace Corps staff always joked with us during training that we would be rock stars in our sites. We would be El Gringo that everyone wanted to meet. Well, it was true. I knew people almost everywhere I went in Juticalpa, and if I didn't then some stranger would probably start talking to me. People here don't normally look, let alone talk, to strangers in the street. Language. I'm not sure what I miss more, Spanish or Spanglish. Although, I will keep practicing Spanish (probably not as much Spanglish). Philly. Philly is much different than Juticalpa. Both are really great and I'm always happy to be back in Philly. This past week I've been able to walk and bike around, drink various types of dark beer, eat all sorts of food and all this has been done without seeing people with machine guns driving around. There's also less dust here.

There are a bunch of other things that upon arriving here I realized are so much different, but overall I think the reverse culture shock isn't too strong this time. Maybe once I start getting out a bit more and seeing more friends it will hit me more, who knows.

When we were accepted to PC, we got tons of packets and papers and information. There was one excerpt that I kept where a RPCV (Returned PCV) described reverse culture shock. I'd say there's no better way to describe it and I think it's the way I felt the first time I experienced it. Check it out...

---------------------------------------------- The problem is this notion of home. The word suggests a place and a life all set up and waiting for us; all we have to do is move in. But home isn't merely a place we inhabit; it's a lifestyle we construct (wherever we go), a pattern of routines, habits, and behaviors associated with certain people, places, and objects all confined to a limited area or neighborhood. We can certainly construct a home back in our own culture, just as we did abroad, but there won't be one waiting for us when we arrive...

In other words, no one goes home; rather, we return to our native country and, in due course, we create a new home. This condition of homelessness is perhaps the central characteristic of the experience of reentry, and the confusion, anxiety, and disappointment it arouses in us are the abiding emotions of this difficult period.

To put it another way, the trouble with reentry is that you suddenly find yourself in transition when what you expected was to simply pick up where you left off (though, of course, neither the place where you left off nor the person who went overseas exists anymore). Even when they're expected, transitions are troublesome; when they're not, they can be genuinely debilitating.

Your self-esteem isn't helped, meanwhile, by the fact that no one seems especially interested in what you've been doing for the last two years. You have just gone through what may be the seminal experience of your life (certainly of your life to-date), and experience that has transformed your view of the world and your own country- and changed you profoundly in the process- and yes your family and intimates somehow aren't bowled over. You have so much to explain, but alas, their capacity to absorb is not nearly matched by your need to recapitulate; they're filled up before you're even half empty. The typical returned Volunteer is a catharsis waiting (not so patiently) to happen.

This dynamic only adds to the returned Volunteer's growing crisis of identity. With no present role, your sense of self- and of self-wroth- is embodied in the sum of all the experiences you've had in the Peace Corps; you are what you have been through in the last two years. But if nobody wants to hear this, then how can they know how you've changed and who you've become? And if they don't know who you are, how can they value or even like you?

Another frustrating dimension of readjustment is the sudden return to anonymity. While Volunteers often complain about living in a fish-bowl overseas, their every move the subject of intense scrutiny and still more intense speculation, they nevertheless enjoy being the center of attention and interest; it makes them feel special, even important. Speaking the local language for example, makes celebrities-even heroes-out of Volunteers, as does being the first American ever to teach at the King Hassan II Elementary School or to ride the local bus from Song Kwah to Phu Banh. Now, no one looks up when we enter a room or squeals with delight when we start speaking Swahili. Our every move has more or less the same novelty value as everyone else's every move. We aren't special anymore-and we miss it.

Something else we miss, acutely, is the intensity of the Peace Corps experience. Even when it was difficult-indeed, especially when it was difficult-the experience of living and working among an alien people had an almost palpable richness about it. We could practically feel ourselves growing and maturing, being stretched beyond what we thought were our limits and forced to come up with more patience or tolerance or persistence than we thought we had in us. We knew we were being transformed. And this was immensely stimulating and sustaining. Back home, life is easy and predictable; our character no longer gets a regular workout.

These losses-of home, self-confidence, and independence-are at the core of readjustment and all but guarantee that most returned Volunteers are not going to pick up where they left off. What's worse, the typical Volunteer suffers these losses alone and largely in silence. For two years, throughout all the excitement and frustration of culture shock, pre-service training, settling-in, and beyond, we were supported by other Volunteers going through the same experience we were. Now, suddenly and precipitously, we're on our own. We have our family and friends about us, and they are sympathetic, but they don't really understand.

Written January 22nd

It has taken me a while to be able to write about this, but it has come time to tell the story about leaving Honduras. I know some of you are curious, but then some have pieced it together, but I’m going to take some time to tell you what happened and how it took a toll on me. I have postponed it for so long because I know it is going to be a difficult thing for me to write about. My emotions are always so much stronger when I write and I have not been ready to really let the tears run, but I’m back home in Alaska, and I guess there will be no better a time than now. I‘m going to do this in two parts to take less of a toll on me, I hope you enjoy.

A month and two days ago, we were told we would be leaving Honduras. It has been a rough month, to say the least. That day, Tuesday December 20th, Amanda and I were sitting in Big Baleadas in Santa Rosa de Copan. We received a text message from the Peace Corps office, telling us our country director had just sent a very important e-mail and that we either need to read it right then, or call the office if we did not have access to internet. At that same moment, the internet for the baleada restaurant decided to stop working. Amanda and I unplugged our computers, grabbed our purses, and pretty much ran to another café that we knew had fast internet - Jireth. My computer automatically signed onto the internet at Jireths, so I was able to open the e-mail before Amanda - I read it allowed.

This e-mail told us about the unfortunate decision that was made to pause Peace Corps operations in Honduras and complete an evaluation of the safety and security of the country. At this time, we were also put on Standfast, meaning we were not allowed to leave our sites for any reason, and Peace Corps also informed us a little about some of our options for the future. We could take “interrupted service” and go home or decide to stay in Honduras, or we could return home and stay on “administrative hold,” and wait to see what happens to Peace Corps Honduras.

From this day on, we got weekly updates with answers to frequently asked logistical questions, and were informed about the 4-day conference we were going to be having in Tegucigalpa before being shipped back to the US on January 16th. This was a difficult three weeks - I spent Christmas and New Years in my site, but the idea that I was being sent home was always weighing me down - you can never truly enjoy something when your mind is spending so much energy thinking about something else.

Amanda got back from Christmas in the States on January 6th, which made my life easier - it is always easier to make it through hard times when you have someone to talk. Yes, I had plenty of people to talk to in Las Flores, but talking it over in Spanish with a Honduran just wasn’t the same. I had to spend a lot of time and energy explaining why I had to leave, and how the country really is dangerous even though Las Flores isn’t. It was a lot of energy that sometime I just didn’t want to use. I wanted to talk to a friend in English to complain about the rotten citation, complain about Peace Corps lack of communication, to be sad together about not leaving - and Amanda was the person I needed to do that with. We learned to understand each other, to support each other, to comfort each other during the many times we spent together in Las Flores.

Once I had my chatting buddy back, I was able to unload on her and relax a little bit. But, I still had six days intil we were leaving, and I needed to sell all my belongings, say my goodbyes, take my cat to her new owners - it was going to be a busy week. The one upside of keeping myself busy was my ability to not think about what was making me sad - I could focus on my to-do list.

Saturday, January 7th, was my going away party put on my the mayor’s office in Las Flores. We went to the hot springs, drank beer (my first time in front of any of them), ate cake, listened to music, and talked about how unfortunate it was that I had to leave. It was fun, and at about 10 p.m., my friends and I decided that we wanted to go dancing, so we moved down to the other pool in town - which always has music for dancing on Saturday nights! It was the perfect night. I said some goodbyes, got some pictures, and was having a fun night with my friends - and I was so excited to get some dancing in before leaving Honduras.

Me and Wil - the Mayor of Las Flores

Unfortunately my perfect going away party was short-lived. I danced twice, and then was saying hi to some other friends, when my best friend in site got a beer bottle smashed over his head by a co-worker’s jealous husband. Nobody understands what or why it happened because my friend is the most calm, friendly guy in Las Flores - he doesn’t have enemies - or so we all thought. But, when you give a jealous husband a bunch of booze, I guess there is just no telling what he will do - including breaking a bottle over a guys head who did absolutely nothing.

After this fiasco, my friends and I went up to my house - my night (and my best friends night) was pretty much ruined, but it only got worse.

An hour later, my friend started puking up blood. At first it was only a little bit, so we were thinking we would take him to the hospital in the morning when the buses started running, but when he started puking again, with a lot more blood, we decided - and he wanted - to go to the hospital. By this time it was almost 2 a.m. and none of us had cars. We started making calls, looking for someone who was awake and had access to a car, but we came up with nothing. Finally we got a hold of the mayor’s secretary, who was still awake and said if we got the OK from the mayor, he would drive us in the company truck. So, at about 2:30 a.m. another friend and I walked down to the mayor’s house, woke him up, and got the OK to use the truck. A half an hour later my friend was getting x-rays and was given extra strength Tylenol and some pills to get rid of his nausea. That was it!!!! His face wasn’t broken, so they sent him on his way. When he was back in Las Flores, he slept in my spare bedroom, so I could keep an eye on him. He puked one more time, then I gave him some nausea medicine, and Tylenol for the pain. He slept for the next two days - only getting up to take his pills and eat a little.

Everyday I had texts, calls, and people coming up to me to ask how he was doing. Nobody had seen him in days because after he was able to move around, he still didn’t want to because he didn’t want people to see his face, which was black and swollen. So, while he was recovering, I was making arrangements to sell my belongings: stove, oven, dishes, fridge, bed, bedding, closet, water filter, and fan.

I was going to be leaving Las Flores at 6 a.m. on January 12, so I spent the 9th and the 10th cleaning my house and packing all my stuff - deciding what I wanted to take with me, and what I could get rid of. It was a slow process, especially because I didn’t want to do it, so I got easily distracted. I was still finishing on the 11th - I put it off as long as I could. I kept trying to believe that if I just didn’t do it, I wouldn’t have to leave, but eventually I had to realize that wasn’t going to be the case.

My cat, Junior, could tell something was going on all day on the 11th. She stayed right next to me the whole time I was packing my suitcases and cleaning the house. But, at one point my friends came over to say hi, and they were hanging out outside while I finished mopping the floor. At this point, Junior decided to climb a tree, and when I finished mopping and went outside, and then I burst into tears. I don’t know what triggered it, I just leaned against the wall, looked at my friend, and started bawling! I ran inside to calm myself, grabbed my backpack, cat food, cat toys, and cat treats and went outside to get Junior. Unfortunately, she was still in the tree and couldn’t get down. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to come down, she was winning because she actually couldn’t get down! One of my friends ended up climbing up the tree and getting her down for me.

Wagner and Junior... Thank you friend!!!

Taking Junior to her new home was one of the hardest parts of leaving Las Flores. Obviously the people and friendships are more important than a pet, but I shed a lot more tears when I dropped Junior off. I also had to say goodbye to some very close friends at the same time, which could explain the excess tears, but it was hard to say the least.

The rest of the night went very well - it was the perfect last night. We went to the hot springs and just relaxed for a while, and then when we had turned pruney, we went back to my house because we had a plan for the rest of the night. I had saved everything that I decided didn’t make the cut for my two bags that I was allowed to take back to the states with me, and that weren’t worth giving to anyone in Las Flores. So we went back to my house, grabbed all my “garbage” and walked to the river. What better way to commemorate and celebrate my times in Las Flroes than with a bon fire? A lot of what got burned were all the manuals that we were given during training: policy manuals, medical policy manuals, old health project manuals, hand outs, old Spanish notebooks - it was a good way to end my time in Las Flores and with Peace Corps - in my opinion.

Goodbye Las Flores... and Peace Corps....You will be missed!

We went back to my house after everything was burnt, and then just hung out. I didn’t want to say goodbye, and neither did my friends, so we just stayed up. Eric was going to be coming to my house - originally at 6:30 but later that changed - at 8:00 a.m. So, I spent the early morning packing all my last minute items, moving my stuff outside, going on a mission for orange juice and taking out money from the bank agent in town, then we all just sat around until Eric made it. We were running on Honduran time, so he didn’t get there until almost 9 a.m., which was when we were supposed to be arriving in Santa Rosa to get on the bus Peace Corps had rented to take all 33 volunteers who lived in the west to the hotel in Tegucigalpa. But, the bus wasn’t actually leaving until 10 a.m. so we were doing fine. I finally had to say a quick goodbye after throwing my bags in the back of the truck, and then I drove away from Las Flores, with the realization that I had no idea when I was ever going to be there again! I kept pretty quite for the 40 minute drive to Santa Rosa. I was trying to come to terms with the fact that I had just left! I felt bad that I didn’t talk much with Eric’s friend who drove us, but I’m guessing he probably understood.

Once in Santa Rosa, I had one more goodbye to make, then got on the bus. We were put up in a fancy bus with seats that reclined, and we even had a bathroom. However, the fancy bus stored all the luggage underneath, meaning the passengers were riding higher than on a normal chicken bus. I had gotten used to chicken bus rides, but unfortunately my stomach was not acclimated to the set up of this particular bus, so I was car sick the whole ride - 7 hours! I couldn’t eat, luckily they provided us with bottled water, but the bus was air conditioned, so we were not allowed to open the windows, and Peace Corps would not let the bus make any stops. We called the Peace Corps worker who was following our bus asking if we could please pull over because there were people who needed relieve their bowls, which was not supposed to be done in the bathroom on the bus (there was even a note on the door) and that someone was car sick - but he would not approve a rest stop! Seven hours on a bus without stopping - are you serious!!! Apparently they were!

I had to open the window of the bus a couple times, but I ended up making it to Tegucigalpa without vomiting. Amanda and I had mastered our Honduran bus riding, so we were the first two off that bus, with our bags, and in the elevator going up to the lobby. The bus had pulled around back to the service entrance where there was only one elevator, so it took 45 minutes for everyone on the bus to make it upstairs. I was happy I used my Honduran-ness to get off that bus, but I’m sorry to those of you that I stepped in front of - I was still afraid vomiting might have been a in the picture - and I hadn’t used the bathroom in more than eight hours, so I was in a hurry to get off that bus!

Once at the hotel…..well, that will be for Part 2!

Well I'm back in the United States. The post before this one, as I look back on it, was supremely down and depressing. I tried to bring it up and express my recovery from the difficult times but don't know if I achieved it. I think I can do a better job this time.Although I start out with the sad news that Peace Corps Honduras has been shut down for the time being and I, along with the majority

There’s been no time to write.  No time to process any of this.  I’ve just been compartmentalizing everything, promising myself I’d unpack it all and give each part it’s due later—when I get to the mountains. Well, here I am.  Buck’s, or local coffee shop, is so quiet in the dead of winter.  Besides the … Read more

With My Own Two Hands: Peace Corps Honduras

A brief summary of my experience in Honduras, 2010-2012 From: PeaceCorpsHN Views: 0 0 ratings Time: 03:23 More in People & Blogs

I don’t like the term “reverse culture shock” because America is still my culture so there’s not much about it that could shock me. But coming back from Honduras,  it’s tough to remember how it was and catch up on … Continue reading →

Sorry I have been really bad with my blog lately but here are some articles that I think you all might find interesting. The articles lay out a pretty ugly picture but I do think it is a fairly truthful picture, I do also want to state however though that most of the rural areas (aka our sites) are a lot safer especially because we are a part of the community. The travel in the country and the increasing issue of wrong place wrong time is the real issue for keeping PC in Honduras. We will just have to wait and see what they decide however.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57361753/peace-corps-pullout-a-new-blow-to-honduras/

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/19/world/americas/narco-wars-guatemala-honduras/

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2012/0118/Honduras-home-to-the-most-violent-city-in-the-hemisphere

http://insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/2101-honduras-officials-unearth-mass-grave-suspect-more-will-be-found

http://inthesetimes.com/article/12545/thunderstruck_in_honduras

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/01/181487.htm

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/01/18/2355211/honduras-is-test-of-new-us-policy.html

http://www.dailypress.net/page/content.detail/id/534398/Prayer-quilt-for-Honduras-created-by-first-graders.html?nav=5001

After a four day Peace Corps conference at the Hotel Maya in Tegucigalpa, I successfully travelled back home. The million small differences between San Luis Planes and Highlands, NC are adding up to a relatively large shock, but luckily I'm unemployed and poor and don't have a lot of things to do other than work on my adjustment.

As for the BIG QUESTION: "What now?" Honestly, there is no concrete answer. The limbo that I'm in is definitely going to cause some stress, but I also have to believe that there is great opportunity to be had. So here are the possibilities (I daresay they are similar to those of lots of my fellow PC-Honduras volunteers):

1. Ideally I will get into a graduate school program in Environmental Policy and Economics/Business Administration in the fall.

2. Keep fundraising for my town's Health Center project.

3. Travel a little and visit friends/family.

4. Catch up on news, politics, movies etc.

5. Get a part-time job in the mean time.

I'm deciding what to do with this blog, whether to change its focus to my life as a young professional in the US or let it fade into being a relic of one person's go with the Peace Corps.

Thanks for the support everyone has shown me throughout this time of unexpected transition; it means a lot.

I arrived in Seattle yesterday after a long day of travel.

We arrived at the airport in Tegucigalpa after breakfast early enough to check in the nearly-150 of us on 3 different airlines before flying out that afternoon. The last farewells were said and everyone told to come visit their town soon. About 20 of us boarded the flight to Atlanta where, 3 hours later, we made our way through Customs. I hand them my passport and they ask the usual questions about what I'm bringing. Realizing that I've returned to the United States with my American passport, they say to me:

"Welcome home."

ˈhōm

a: one's place of residence

b: the social unit formed by a family living together

c: a place of origin

I might be home, but I certainly don't feel at home.

a: relaxed and comfortable : at ease

b: in harmony with the surroundingsc: on familiar ground

I was just uprooted from what I considered my "home". And I'm also going back "home"? Do we really ever go back anywhere? We're always moving forward - changing, progressing, improving, developing into new people; people with new experience, new understanding, new perspective.

Going back is never normal. Return to the old; the faded fragments of worn memories. This "familiar ground" and I need to get reacquainted, because we've both changed. Fortunately for us, we're adaptive creatures by nature. But some habits take more effort to change than others. I can't tell you how weird it feels to throw toilet paper in the toilet. And the fact that it feels weird, makes me feel more weird. Haven't seen any over-crowded buses or too many hitchhikers, but I did catch one of these guys on the road -

Que le vaya bien.This guy makes me think I won't have as much culture shock as I thought. Or maybe I'll have more? Either way, I think we just have to treat each place, new or old, with an open heart and an open mind because nothing's ever really the same. But you know what? That's OK.

Adam

I’m back in Chicago after attending the volunteer conference in Tegucigalpa for four days. The entire conference was extremely helpful,  it updated us on the security issues and gave us time to reflect and  adjust. Here are the main take aways I had from the conference: - As I mentioned earlier, my site, Las Capucas, is extremely safe. But travelling [...]

This will be the last post here. Due to security concerns, Peace Corps no longer will be operating in Honduras. I am safe in Houston, albeit a little sad that I had to cut my time there short. It’s now time for a new chapter in Houston!  

Granada was impossibly charming, and it was easy tounderstand why people often said they got stuck here. The same colonialambiance that pervaded León was even more present in Granada. The buildingswere painted a little crisper, the streets a little cleaner and the whole townwas just a few kilometers from Lake Nicaragua and the immense Volcan Mombacho.Granada was much smaller than we expected. At just over 100,000 people it hadthe small city feel that León lacked. The central park was crammed with foodand art vendors and lined with horse carriages waiting to take you on a tour.Just behind the gorgeous yellow cathedral was La Calzada, a pedestrian avenue lined with trees, shops andrestaurants with alfresco dining. We spent hours passing up and down thestreet, taking in the relaxed and artistic atmosphere. It seemed that almostevery other shop was an art gallery of some kind boasting original prints andpaintings from local artists. We ended up buying two interesting prints onhandmade paper that caught our eye, plus a beautiful painted jicaro fruit Christmas ornament. We fellin love with a juice bar that whipped up a calala-naranja(passion fruit-orange) smoothie which we ended up drinking once a day. We alsotried some yummy street food including doughy fried balls (possibly made of yuca)with a sweet syrup, tostones con queso(fried crisp plantains with chunks of fried cheese), yuca con cerdo (boiled yuca topped with spicy roasted pork and cabbagesalad), and more local juices like granadillawhich tasted like cream soda.

Cathedral on the central parkTostones con queso

We took two wonderful tours while in town. The first was aboat ride visiting the islets in the lake just off the coast. Our guide was abubbly young man who spoke not only English and Spanish but was also working onhis Dutch and Italian to communicate with the thousands of tourists that visiteach year. Our fellow tour takers were a pair of older Swiss men on holiday whoalso spoke six languages combined. We felt glad we had at least two solidlanguages and a little Italian and had a fun time chatting with everyone in allof them. We motored slowly around the islets, of which there are 365 (one foreach day of the year our guide said). Created mostly from volcanic eruptions,the islets are mostly just big enough to fit a luxurious house and little dock,which is what most had. You can buy your own islet and build a house if youwish, something we almost considered doing until realizing the price was alittle out of our range. From some islets you could see out across the windy,choppy lake to the dome of the Granada cathedral. Another island featured anold fort, and yet another had a pair of monkeys brought there for protectivepurposes since they can’t swim off. We stopped at one island which had arestaurant for a drink and our guide explained about local bird life and theongoing rivalry with León. It was relaxing and calming, the weather breezy andwarm.

One of the many personal isletasMonkey showing off on the Isleta del monoThen, we decided last minute to sign up for a chocolatemaking tour which ended up being our favorite part of the trip. Our guide was arather witty guy from Managua who spoke English, but seemed thrilled that hecould give us the tour in Spanish. First, he taught us about the plants. Cacaopods grow on trees in tropical regions around the equator, on trees that canget up to 15 meters. Each tree produces hundreds of pods between September andDecember and each pod has 20-50 beans. Some pods turn from green to yellow whenripe, but others are always red and no one knows why. The beans are harvestedfrom the pods and fermented in their pulp before being dried and then quicklytoasted. We were able to toast our own beans over an open fire and then handshell them, taking out the warm, chocolatey smelling beans. We ground the beansinto a paste called chocolate liquor with a mortar and pestle which really tooksome arm strength. Surprisingly enough, that was pretty much the whole process –so simple!

Toasting cacao beansGrinding the beans to make chocolate liquorWe mixed the chocolate liquor with some water and spices andviola, hot cocoa! The Maya were the first to make a cocoa drink and used justcinnamon and some honey for flavoring. The Aztecs later on added otherflavorings like chili powder and vanilla which made it tangy. Then the Spanish addedmilk, giving it that creamy flavor we know today. We tried each kind,preferring the Aztec flavoring the best. Our guide then explained the processof making a chocolate bar. The liquor gets mixed with sugar and blended forseveral hours to make the chocolate which is simply poured into a mold to cool.The respective ratios of liquor and sugar give the chocolate’s percentage youread on the package, i.e. 70% is 70% liquor and 30% sugar. Tempering makes thechocolate last longer and keeps it shiny, but we didn’t need to go through thatprocess. In the end, we knew all about chocolate from how to select beans andtoast them to how to prepare hot cocoa and chocolate bars at home, and we hadtwo homemade bars to show for it. Fabulous!

Making hot cocoaWe spent most of our time just wandering around taking inthe beautifully restored buildings, most of which have only been redone in thelast 10 years or so. There were kids playing jacks in the street, fountainswithin every courtyard and, as in León, abundant rocking chairs. We climbed thebell tower of La Merced church to get a view of the cathedral with the lake inthe background. We visited the old town train station, wandering through thesteam engine and cars in the small but well-restored station that is no longerin use. We finished our trip with a delicious splurge at a restaurant that caughtmy eye, Imagine. The owner/chef was from New Mexico and had some deliciousfusion dishes made with local ingredients. We enjoyed a bottle of Carmenere,pork tacos and chicken enchiladas surrounded by art in homage to John Lennon,perfect!

Just be careful that you don't rock yourself off the edgeUs with the cathedral in the backgroundOld steam engine at the train stationImagine all the people, living life in peace...We savored our last relaxing moments in Granada, enchantedby the people, food, scenery and architecture that never failed to impress us.Even our early morning taxi ride into Managua to catch the bus home wasfascinating, our driver yammering on about local political issues, his familyand his views on Costa Rica. We left Nicaragua feeling lucky (and a littleguilty) that we were able to take our vacation and escape Honduras for a fewdays and a little sad that our week of sunshine and solace had to come to anend.

Enjoying our time in Nica before heading home to pack up and leave...

Hello Everyone!

Today is my first official day back in the U.S. after having to leave Honduras so abruptly for security reasons. We had our 3-day Close of Service Conference in Tegucigalpa which was a lot of information about transitioning back into the U.S. culture (consumerism, independence, solitary living, speaking English, etc.) We also talked a lot about why we're leaving Honduras and some of the statistics of the crime rate which were quite convincing. One that I remember was how in our area, in 2010, there were a recorded 82 murders for a population of 100,000 people. In the U.S. our murder rate for 100,000 people is around 6....so that is quite different! Yes...so, there was some quite telling data.

The conference overall was good...we had time to visit with other volunteer friends, turn in all the important paperwork, programs, reports, medical exams, pooping in cups, etc. and we had fun times with our groups. We (as Youth Development Volunteers) had a t-shirt decorating night and then all of us volunteers had a dance party/open-mic night the last night at the Maya Hotel. We got to dance BACHATA!! I love bachata so much!!

The time leaving my community the week before the conference was rough. I got back from the Christmas holidays to have a week in site before the conference in Teguz. During this week I was literally visiting all the families in my town, giving things away, explaining the situation, finishing projects, and trying to enjoy myself as much as possible. I spent lots of time with friends, we (Yanori, Regina, some others and I) went on a picnic and had a little hiking adventure where we got lost like 3 times looking for this lady's house in the mountains...lol. I will never forget that. Cristino and I visited this lady who was sick and brought her some food and good plactica. Isabel and I talked and cried.

Then, the last night that I was there in San Jose, we had a going away party where Maridi, Mabel, Regina, Yanori, Cristino, Isabel, Prof. Erica and her daughter, Marta, and I got together and danced, ate some chop souy, they all said some words about me (Isabel couldn't talk for crying) and then danced some more! We danced to Cristino's LMFAO cd where he danced vulgarly until the little girl came in the room and then he was too embarassed...lol. I have a video. LOL. Then, we danced bachata (I danced with Regina), some other booty music with Regina and Yanori (lol) and then ranchera when, por fin, Cristino danced with me and then later Mabel danced with me to a really sad song about leaving but staying connected. It was all very sad and we cried. Isabel cried the whole time. But, then, we all went home and I packed. Then, there was the light of day the next day. This last day I mainly spent at the house, watched some tv, hung out with the people in my house, and that was it. Sara and Cristino drove me to the main rode where I then had my last hugs and "call me's" and I left on the busito with the other volunteers to Teguz for the conference.

We ate Mexican food in La Paz and then got the hotel when I found out that, out of the 143 volunteers, I was the only fortunate one to get a room to myself with a king size bed and a corner room with windows all around...it was SOO beautiful.

So, I wake up the next day at the hotel and it's all very surreal. Where are all the familiar faces that I've seen for the last 19 months of my life? Is it true that I am leaving...it already feels like I'm so far away yet I'm still in Honduras...just not in San Jose. It was VERY sad those first few days in the conference. I cried myself to sleep a couple of nights and was bombarded with feelings of hopelessness and loss and despair and what am I doing? Can I stay in Honduras? But why and what would I do? What about my student loans? What about my family and the future I want to have? BUT, what about the family that I'm leaving behind in Honduras? How can I visit these people just once a year? Is that enough...how is this going to work? The weight of all these feelings and decisions was really heavy on my heart. I can't believe how close I've gotten to many people in my town. Will this feeling of closeness always be there...or will it fade away which would be really sad? How do I keep these connections strong? What do I do with my life, God?

Some good news after all this craziness of emotions...I am already planning a visit to Honduras around May/June/July this year (2012), Isabel is going to work on getting her Visa to come visit and maybe we can meet up in the states, and Cristino is working on his Visa right now to come see me the end of this year. SO, I know some how this will all work out and in the mean time, we are calling each other, messaging, and talking on Facebook. It's just SO crazy to have someone in your life so much and then have them so far away. But, I believe God knows what he's doing and He will work everything out according to His master plan that is greater than ours could ever be.

So, as of now, I am searching/applying for jobs (prayerfully a government job)and finishing up my Grad school application also. Also, for general goals, I want to clean this house, lose some weight (goal:15 lbs.), get into a good church, connect with some friends, and stay connected with those in Honduras.

Love you all!

Victoria :)

The Peace Corps Office in Teguz.

Sara Victoria, the baby (Victoria) and I. There where 3 of us ladies with the name Victoria in the house! lol.

Jorge Emilio and I...the son of the lady that I lived with (Sara)

Aida and I in front of the store in front of the house.

Cristino and I in front of our respective rooms.

Paula and I in the kitchen.

The going away party...the food portion.

My room in the Maya Hotel in Teguz with the view.

In the Atlanta airport with all my luggage...and look I just bought that scarf in Teguz...isn't it pretty? It also functions as a shawl. :)

Well after a full day of travel I'm home safe! Hopefully more to come in the following days to update everyone on the situation etc.

I can’t even begin to figure out how to summarize the past 19 months… I left my home, my people, my culture and my language to give two years to strangers in a developing country. Giving up security, amenities and comforts is not easy. Making it through 3 months of 12 hour training days is trying. Living with several different host families can be frustrating. Arriving in a small town with just a suitcase (or 2) and little to no resources is overwhelming. Yet despite all of the challenges and personal struggles that all Peace Corps volunteers face, I still found myself bawling in the arms of my project boss at the airport when we finally had to part ways.

Typically, people spend the final few months of their service saying their goodbyes and wrapping things up in their communities. We got 22 days’ notice about the departure from our sites, and once I got back from my Christmas vacation (nearly half the volunteers in Honduras went home for the holidays) I had 5 days to say goodbye (possibly forever) to the town that became my home and the friends that became my family. My community heard about Peace Corps’ evacuation in the news, and saw my picture in the paper, but they still were all dying for me to tell them if it was true or not. Sadly, I told them it was, and thus began a whirlwind of lunch and dinner invitations, speeches about their gratitude for my service, vultures coming to see what possessions of mine they could claim, lots of hugs, and lots of tears.

The past year and a half has opened my eyes tremendously, and though it came with its string of mishaps, I wouldn’t trade a second of it. The Honduran Peace Corps staff is amazing, in particular my project team, Sandra (Youth Development director) and Ronaldo (Youth Development training specialist). Because of their passion and dedication to our project’s mission, my fellow youth volunteers and I were able to take our sites by storm and have their unconditional support through it all.

As a way to re-cap a little bit of what I went through since June 2010, here is a list:

1 parasite (giardia lambia)

1 incarceration

1 witness of a human corpse in the street

1 bacteria infection

1 bus stall (stuck in the mud for an hour)

2 cases of lice (I am shocked it was only 2)

2 Christmas caroling events, in Spanish of course.

2 birthday piñatas

2 successful grants written, accepted and received to fund projects

2 t-shirt making parties with other youth volunteers (we are a special breed for sure)

3 whistles

3 cell phones (things break much more easily in developing countries)

3 original Spanish children’s songs

3 times we were put on “standfast” which means we could not leave our sites (2 for political unrest/protests and 1 for the few weeks before our evacuation)

3 nation-wide teacher strikes

3 Spanish language interviews with Peace Corps

4 “super-star” moments (giving the president a Valentine, meeting the Olsen Twins, having my picture selected for the Peace Corps homepage, and being the picture in the Honduran newspapers article about Peace Corps’ evacuation)

4 birthday cakes (only 2 birthday’s… but Hondurans love cake!)

4 In-service trainings with Youth Development

4 overnight visits to fellow volunteers (I rarely left my site on account of always having a lot of work to do! I was saving a lot of visits for the last few months of service figuring I would have finished up a lot of projects… I guess this is why you really should live in the moment).

5 shirts torn from hand-washing them on the pila

6 weeks on medical evacuation in Washington DC

6 times pooping in a cup (for medical purposes, not a weird Peace Corps hobby)

7 sing-a-long songs that my teacher’s learned in English

7 stand-in moms

13 teachers who learned dynamic and participative methodology from me

20 (approx.) nail painting parties with kids who had never seen nail polish prior to my arrival

26 teacher observations where I went and sat in on their English classes to give

feedback

30 bucket baths (just one of my host families did not have running water- I lucked out!)

38 5th and 6th graders who hopefully feel more confident about themselves and will remember what they’ve learned about healthy relationships

40 lessons about brushing teeth

50 best friends under 6 years old

120 cards/letters/packages received from family and friends (a fairly accurate estimate as I could cover the entire back of my door with all the cards I had gotten)

300 (approx.) elementary school students who participated in a spelling bee and got excited about studying the list of words- they would literally run up to me in the streets and spell words they had been practicing

600 (approx.) high school students with more information on contraceptives and resources to help avoid teen pregnancy

13,500 hugs from the most impoverished kids in my town (assuming each day in site I received about 30, which might actually be an under-statement!)

27,000 cat-calls/gross gestures from men (an approximation, assuming each day in Honduras involved about 5 encounters)

Thank you to everyone who helped me through this experience- everyone from home who reluctantly let me pack my bags and move to the most violent country in the world, everyone in Peace Corps for their unfailing support, all 158 volunteers in Honduras for being part of something so special, my dear little town of Gracias and all it's people for welcoming me with open arms.... Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

So we have made it to the conference and as I write this I am sitting through a series of boring lectures where staff members from DC keep telling us how they can relate to us (because they worked in … Continue reading →

Tomorrow I fly back to the USA and I don’t really know what I’m going to do. The last week and half at site was boring at times, but I tried to take advantage of every moment to visit friends, eat my favorite foods, take pictures and just wander around Sensenti. Last Wednesday was a [...]

A week from today my flight leaves for Honduras.  Some of you are probably aware that the Peace Corps mission has been temporarily closed because of narco-traficante related violence in the country.  I nonetheless will be returning to La Paz, a region which is one of the safest in the country.  That’s not to say [...]

When you join/apply for Peace Corps, you expect your life tobe unpredictable in very predictable ways:

You expect to have your sense of culturally appropriatebehaviour challenged.You expect your American-ness to color your interactionswith everyone you work withYou expect that you will be in limbo for an unlimited amountof time until you get your invitation (PC never tells you that while you make a27 month commitment to them, they do not reciprocate that. We have 30 days to start a new life,and that is considered generous).You expect to eat weird shit and get really sick.You expect to get your hands dirty in unpredictable ways.You expect that your work will fall through due todeveloping world problems.

You never expect that Peace Corps will evacuate you, tellyou that you can’t go back to your home, send you to your “home of record”which isn’t really a home, and give 30 days of not-even-minimum-wage-pay tofind a job again in the worst job market this country has seen in more than 50years.

What you may or may not have known from our last post isthat we are already in the United States of America. For ongoing medical problems, Jeff was medevac-ed inmid-December. What he told PeaceCorps was: If you medevac me, you have to bring my wife. Otherwise I will worry too much abouther safety to be able to recover. So here I am as well. Wewere here a week before we got the official news about Honduras, the securityreview, the Standfast—though we knew something was coming.

We had been working with the doctors and country staff tomake sure that we would be able to come back to Honduras, to pack up ourthings, and hopefully our cat too. Everyone had been supportive of that idea. We were finally at a point where we were discussing dates,because the conference date was known.

I emailed my country director on a Thursday for moreinformation on how to bring our cat back, and guess what? She was informed by Peace CorpsWashington that we were not coming back to Honduras. Well, that was news to us. It was a weird thing to find out third-hand, sinceapparently that decision was made on Tuesday. I immediately called Jeff so he could ask some questions atHeadquarters--trying to figure out who made the decisions (Medical, since that’swhy we’re here, or Region) was difficult, since they were all finger pointinglike a bunch of Hondurans echaring la culpa.

Leaving a country comes with a complete roller coaster ofemotions. We are being removed dueto the safety and security situation in the country, which is remarkablydisturbing. A murder rate of 86 per100,000 is absolutely a reason for our removal. We’ve been wondering for a while if Honduras, the wholecountry, isn’t the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, it leads to a lot offeelings from the volunteers.

Jeff and I encouraged other volunteers to report all safetyand security incidents, since we were aware of a large number of unreportedcases. Jeff having a BA inHomeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, was very concerned that PeaceCorps would not be able to adequately support us if the volunteer withheldS&S incidents. We definitelyagree that this was the right decision on the part of Peace Corps. However, the decision that was madewith regard to us was absolutely ridiculous.

After two days of speaking with various people in PeaceCorps, we were told that medical had absolutely no reason not to send us backto Honduras, and frankly thought it might be a good thing to do to give us someclosure. They have a policy of generallynot sending people back to post if they are within 30 days of their COS date,but that doesn’t exactly apply in this situation. We took it up with our regional staff. After a long process, it wasadmitted to us by the person who made the call that this was a decision ofconvenience. He decided not tosend any of the medevacs to Honduras for the conference (all 3 of them whocould go, and me), because it would put a logistical burden on in-country staffto deal with our transportation, etc. Mind you, Jeff and I would have had the same transportation, so we aretalking about a maximum of 3 different transports (IF the other two folks haddecided they wanted to come back). It was even more outrageous when people in Honduras got approved forvacations to Nicaragua, leaving the country and coming back, AFTER we were toldwe couldn’t return.

It is difficult to process the abrupt end to the life we’vebuilt ourselves in Honduras and the feelings of happiness, financial andmedical security that Peace Corps provided. It is even more difficult to have the rug pulled out fromcompletely underneath you and not get really say goodbye. When we left we had every expectationof returning. I’m a veryconflicting ball of emotions still, three weeks after this decision. I apologize to the family and friends Ihave ignored over the past few weeks. Jumping back into the life we had before we left is not possible, andtrying to do so feels too much like saying it never happened. I didn’t want to write about it beforebecause I was too angry, though anger is no longer my predominating emotion.

Relief is one of those emotions: we are relieved to be outof the dangerous country that is Honduras: headed toward a murder rateconcurrent with the death rate of US troops in Iraq/Afghanistan. But on the same part, guilt. Guilt that we have a right to expectsafety and security in our lives when others do not.

Not one of our counterparts is surprised that we are leavingHonduras because of S&S. Theydo not expect security, they expect insecurity, but they think that we deservesomething safer. But they don’tbelieve that about themselves. Having dinner with my counterpart and her husband the night before weleft Honduras, I just wanted to scream, “Instead of taking vacation to the US,why don’t you use that money to apply for a Visa!???” Her husband is US educated (legally), and she is superbright. They only have 2 kids. Please, please come with us, don’t stayin this dangerous country, I don’t want you to die.

Yet I feel that way about so many people in mytown/community. Our hostmom/brothers/aunt. Ourneighbors. Our neighbor’s brotherwas just killed in a bus assault, and he has several family members living inthe US. Please, just go. I want your children to grow up. How do you leave people you love whomay as well be family (they certainly treat us as such) in a country where youknow they will grow up being victims of drug crime and suffer for it?

Now that we can’t even go back to say goodbye it has allbecome real way too quickly. Ithink I was convincing myself that this would all be easier if I could go home,talk to people, make sure they understood we weren’t abandoning them by choice,and pack up our cat. I thought tomyself that everything would be ok if I could just save the cat. Just that one thing from Honduras. But now that has all changed, andthey’ve decided that we can’t go back. And Peace Corps regulations forbid PC staff from dealing withanimals. She’ll have a good lifeby Honduran cat standards—we were teaching the neighborhood kids how to handleher, pet her, cuddle her, but still none of them believes that they can touchher without getting bitten. Shewill never again be cuddled or slept with or held in the way she was usedto. And really that’s nothingcompared to the way Honduran people will be treated under the drug lords andorganized crime, but it hits me in a different way. She was part of our family and now I have to abandon her,courtesy of the US government.

I never expected Peace Corps to be so unfeeling in thisway. I know it’s not theindividuals (well, actually there were some individual calls there), but as anagency it really upsets me.

To any Honduras staff who may read this: Thank you for beingamazing. I sincerely hope that theviolence calms down and volunteers will return. In particular, Luis, Javier, and Jorge—I hope we can allstay in touch. I completely bawledon the phone with Jorge as he asked what he could do to make this easier for us(Who does that as they are losing their own job?). Being here with other medevacs and hearing horror storiesfrom other countries makes me appreciate the staff from Honduras evenmore. Thank you all for your serviceto our country and yours.

My apologies for the longest post ever--it was more for me than for you. Hope it was ok anyway.

Sam

Just wanted to update everyone about the current situation. I am in Tegus (the capital city) with all the other volunteers from all around Honduras. We are all participating in a conference and we are having a lot of our questions answered. I have found out that I will be getting in late Monday night, real late! Can't wait to see everyone!

In less than 24 hours, I will be walking away from my home with whatever I can carry.

It's sort of like rewind. All the things I did to create my life here are being undone - buying things for my house, getting settled in, meeting people, delving into work. And the emotions are just as reversed. All that excitement I first had has turned into dread of leaving. "Nice to meet you" is now "Adios." "I give classes at the school" is now "I gave some classes at the school." And "I live in Subirana" is now "I used to live in Subirana."

There's not much to say. In fact, it would be easier to say nothing. Attempting to speak a foreign language while in a highly emotional state is no simple task. Heck, people have a hard enough time saying anything intelligible even in their native tongue.

It's strange how things change, though. While I've learned the art of being patient in this culture, I've come to learn a somewhat different, though similar lesson from this experience: Seize the day. Why wait to do things when there's time today? In other words, How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog - it's here a little while, then it's gone (James 4, NLT). Most of what I'm leaving behind in Subirana is plans - plans for the future, plans to teach classes, plans for the cooperative. It makes me think what I could have done if I lived each day not waiting for tomorrow. Because, the reality is: Tomorrow is here. Earlier than any of us expected it, and definitely not how any of us planned it, but it came anyway.

So if I were to do Peace Corps again, or give advice to any future Peace Corps Volunteer, I would say this:Take advantage of every moment you have.

Enjoy the time you spend with people, be involved with what you're doing now, be intentional with people, plan for the future, live in the present.

Whiskey's Last Corner

The logistics and costs of getting Whiskey to America in a short amount of time are nearly insurmountable. I also came to a realization about Whiskey's future home. This came when I took him to the finca to pick coffee with me - Whiskey is a finca dog. His home is here in Subirana where he can chase cows, play with other dogs, run freely in the dirt roads, and eat out of other people's garbage piles. So after much wrestling, this is where he belongs.

He's been a good friend and unwavering companion and I hope that when the people see him around town, they will remember me. I'm leaving him in good hands with the agri-business teacher and town veterinarian. They promise to send me photos as Whiskey grows up, which I plan to share with all of you. It's been emotional, and probably will continue to be, but putting Whiskey on a leash in a fenced backyard with no farm animals on the paved streets seems cruel. May the wild campesino spirit live on in him and may he continue to chase every living animal to his heart's content.

This is all part of making plans for the future. Sometimes you plan on having a dog for 2 years, then you have to leave him behind. It's a little overwhelming when your future plan didn't work out like you thought. So now I scramble as if I'm in control of my life to find a home, a job, even myself after what I'm sure will be some very unexpected culture shocks. But in the end, I only echo the words of David:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.He makes me lie down in green pastures;He leads me beside quiet waters.He restores my soul;He guides me in paths of righteousnessFor His name's sake.Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,I fear no evil, for You are with me;Your rod and staff, they comfort me.You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;You have anointed my head with oil;My cup overflows.Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life,And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Amen.

Just wanted to take the time to wish my sister, Megan (better known as the first half of Merl) a very happy bday and I also wanted to let here know that my present is that I will be coming home on the 16th! BEST PRESENT EVER, from the best brother ever!

I'm not gonna lie, the past few weeks have been very difficult. We are restricted in what we can do and have been getting limited and delayed information about the next steps. We are being asked to leave this country that we now call home, without warning or closure.

In a lot of ways I feel like I just lost a game -- I picked the "go to jail" card in Monopoly, hit the snake in chutes and ladders, or drew Plumpy in Candy Land. Is this a joke? I've worked hard to get where I am in terms of work projects, furnishing my apartment, and building personal relationships, and now I am sliding backwards without reaching the finish, and unable to do anything about it.

Even within the context of this Peace Corps pullout, I drew the bad card. Many volunteers were permitted to take their pre-approved vacations, but since my visitor was merely a friend (not family) and we were traveling within Honduras (not to a safer country), we were forced to cancel our plans. I also had to cancel a much-anticipated training with the staff of Plan, on a small business curriculum, since it was in La Esperanza and would require me to leave my site. It was tough not being able to visit my office to say goodbye to my counterparts there.

The plus side to all of this is that I really do like my town, and aside from the above frustrations (which were plenty), I did not mind spending three weeks here. We even made the best of Amy's vacation -- helped with a service event at Georgetown, played soccer with family, went to the President's birthday party, made tamales on Christmas Eve, picked coffee with one of the colegio teachers, and spent a VERY festive New Years with my host mom's extended family. It was nice being in my site for the holiday season.

But overall it has been a whirlwind -- one minute I am running around town, the next I am infuriated, the next I am too sad to get out of bed. Random things make me want to cry, and things that used to annoy me are suddenly endearing (except Rooster still annoys me). Three weeks was a really awkward amount of time to say goodbye (a fellow volunteer described it as doing a slow waltz out of a burning building). I stayed in denial for as long as possible, but it's finally time to leave.

We leave on Thursday for a closing conference in Tegucigalpa with PC Washington staff, and supposedly everyone flies back to the states on Monday the 16th. I'll close with a photo journey of the past few weeks.

Esperanza passing out Christmas gifts to poor kids at the Georgetown event.

Pepe Lobo came to town for his birthday, and we got to meet him again.

With my host parents at a high school graduation party.

At the family's corn field (milpa).

Making tamales on Christmas Eve.

My host family on Christmas Eve.

View of town from the new water treatment plant.

First stop, León, the ex-capital city and Nicaragua’s centerof education, culture and liberalism. We were pleasantly surprised by thetemperature, not too hot, not too humid; quite different than the inferno webelieved awaited us. It was the first of many things that would pleasantlysurprise us about both León and Nicaragua. We spent our two days there takingin the grinding urban vibe of the city of around 200,000 residents. It had alovely colonial atmosphere with brightly painted and well-maintained buildings,complemented by ornate churches on every other corner. We reveled in the dust-freepaved streets, watching “buses” fly by that were little more than a coveredtruck bed lined with poles and seats with travelers hopping on and off like aSan Francisco street car. The city hub was of course the central park, borderedon one side by the magnificent cathedral, the largest in Central America and secondlargest in Latin America. The other three sides were the municipal office, aseminary and the old president’s residence, varying in styles from gaudy gothicto austere art deco. The park was abuzz with artisan vendors, snack kiosks andcell phone hawkers.

Cathedral from the top of the old president's residenceNicaraguan "buses" - hop on if you canWe visited all the key museums in town, learning a greatdeal about Leon’s defining people and events. First was the home of famedNicaraguan poet and dignitary, Ruben Darío, who was raised by an aunt-likefigure in the late 1800’s and died young of stomach ailments. We read amusingpoems in his own hand, and gazed over his clothing and deathbed. In addition towriting some of the most nationalistic poetry in homage to his homeland, healso was an ambassador to several countries, garnering him respect and wealththat have lived on to this day. You can scarcely walk two blocks without seeinga street, building, school, statue, mural, or event named in his honor. Oneblock from Darío’s home was a wonderful art museum housed in two separate haciendas across the street from eachother. The museum, which only cost $1 to enter, had everything from European religious art tosome Picasso and Braque etchings plus tons of more modern art from artists inCentral America. Our favorite was a long painting showing the geography of thearea from León to Granada with the city grids marked out in opalescent squaresnext to bright blue lakes and rivers.

Tomb of Darío guarded by a lion, symbol of LeónNext, we visited the museum of the revolution in the oldpresidential mansion, where a veteran guided us through a series of movingphotographs, telling us the story of his country’s harrowing history.Nicaraguans, led by a caballero namedSandino, were some of the first to challenge the U.S. imperialisticintervention in Latin America leading to battles in the early 1900’s. Fromthere, the U.S. imposed a dictator who ruled for decades before being assassinatedin León, setting off several more decades of guerilla style warfare in thestreets pitting revolutionaries (the FSLN) against the national army. Ourveteran guide had joined the revolutionaries as a 14 year old boy, and luckilylived to see the end of fighting as the liberals gained control of the country.The fighting though left many in León with physical and emotional scars, butinstilled a very strong sense of pride in their region, city and liberal party,which still is largely based in León today. To end our tour, our guide led usup a creaky staircase to the roof of the building so that we could see out overthe central park and cathedral and beyond to the circle of volcanoes thatsurround the city in the distance, a truly beautiful sight. Our lasting imageof the museum was a postcard of a young woman revolutionary marching with anassault rifle slung over her shoulder, simultaneously breastfeeding a child inher arms – this is what the people of León are like.

We then headed to a museum of folklore and tradition housedin an old prison. There, we read interesting short stories about the ghouls andghosts of Nicaraguan culture. There is the witch pig, a representation of theangry or cheated woman who turns into a pig and attacks men; the cryer, a womanwho cries constantly for the loss of her child; the high heeled woman whotracks down abusive men and embarrasses them in public; the headless priest,roaming the streets at night and other such creatures used to scare children intoan early bedtime. The prison itself was painted with torture scenes to recreatethe horrors that occurred there, but actually the place was quite tranquil witha fountain, mosaic murals and lovely drooping mango trees.

Mosaic depicting a death carriage marchLeón is home to the oldest university in the country, whichis still functioning today, glowing at night with colored lights. The city is famousfor its murals depicting local history and happenings such as the army fightingstudents in the streets and martyrs who died in the revolutionary cause. Anotherthing we noticed that was strikingly different from Honduras was the nighttimesocial culture. Around sunset, people pulled rocking chairs from their livingrooms onto their front stoops and slowly rocked, chatted and watched the streetlife late into the night, the heat driving them outdoors.

Mural of the army attacking students during the revolutionNolan modelling chicha morada (a fermented purple corn drink) Perhaps the best thing we did was attend a baseball game atthe local stadium. Nicaraguans love baseball and have four teams across thecountry that compete in the national league from September to January. At just$3 for a home plate seat with a view right down the third base line, we couldn’tmiss the opportunity to get a real sense of the baseball culture. The stadiumwas small, but packed by the time the first inning was underway. The lightsshone brightly on the field as the smell of beer and hot dogs wafted around usin the pleasantly cool evening. To be watching baseball in January was a treat,and it felt so familiar to us; families with kids, old men, guys out with theirfriends, all enjoying their team, which unfortunately is last in the league. Wecouldn’t understand the announcer or most of the jeers, but a few we caughtthat sounded the same, “Batter, you need glasses!” “He was out!” They use aninteresting mix of Spanish and English terms, strike and out in English, butrun is correo and ball is bola. The ball boy was actually a 40year old man, and the balls were obviously reused unlike in the U.S. Balls hitfoul over the seats were tracked down outside the stadium by another guy and broughtback into the game. There was no 7th inning stretch and singing. Leónended up losing the game 3-2, but we had a great time anyway.

Juego de beisbolOur other fun outing was a tour to León Viejo, the old cityoriginally founded by the Spanish in 1524 about 45 minutes from the currentlocation. They had selected the original locale for its proximity to a lake,but it was also next to a major volcano, Momotombo, so after a few tremors andflooding devastated the settlers and their resources ran out, they moved thecity in 1610. All that remains are some building foundations of houses and thechurches and convents, but the views are tremendous and our guide was very goodat recreating the scene. Of course the story is the same as many conquistadors,bloody confrontations with the natives whom they enslaved, harsh rule ofSpanish commanders and lack of local knowledge made life tough. During the tourwe stopped at a small restaurant to try some local fare, quesillo. Quesillo normallyrefers to a soft, bland mozzarella-esque cheese common in Central America, butin Nicaragua it also refers to a snack, a corn tortilla covered with a roundsheet of quesillo cheese, topped withsalt, creamy whey, and pickled onions rolled up and stuck in a bag. It soundsreally strange and honestly looks really strange, but it tastes pretty darngood. Even Nolan ate it! We washed it down with a local drink, semilla con leche, ground up dried seedsof the jicaro tree mixed with milkand ice that sort of tastes like chocolate milk with some spices. Tasty!

View from León Viejo of Volcán MomotomboMaking quesilloJicaro treeOur very intelligent guide shared some great informationwith us about Nica. They grow things like cotton, wheat and peanuts around Leónbecause they have the open farmland and to avoid importing such items. Theyalso grow copious amounts of sugar cane, caña,to make the famous rum Flor de Caña, named for the flower of the plant. Although people from León may have felt alittle gypped at having the capital stripped from them and moved to Managua,our guide seemed to think it was for the best since the unbridled growth andindustry in Managua has caused nothing but environmental and social problemswhile León has kept is character intact.

Our guide stressed that relations between Nicaragua andCosta Rica are not so great. He claimed that Costa Ricans didn’t likeNicaraguans or other Central Americans and often hassled people at customs.There is also a big conflict going on where the Costa Ricans are supporting constructionof a road along the border that is causing environmental degradation whileNicaraguans oppose the reckless construction methods. Ironic since Costa Ricaportrays itself as the ultimate eco-destination. Our guide explained he wasdisenchanted with the lifestyle of the U.S. where work was the primary focusand life was not as tranquil as in Nica. He said that we as PC volunteers wereliving the true American dream, having the opportunity to travel the world, butalways be able to go back home to the U.S. Our other tour companions, a French teacherfrom Mexico and a Dutch computer chip manufacturer seemed to agree that theirlives with ample vacation were more desirable than the American way of life. Itwas interesting to hear all these perspectives, both regarding Nicaragua andtheir ideas about the U.S.

It seemed like around every corner in Leon we found moreinteresting tidbits about its history and character and encountered friendly,intelligent and warm people who were willing to open up to us about theirculture. Perhaps because the pace of this vacation was a little slower, we wereable to more fully enjoy what we were seeing and reflect on the significance ofsubtle details. After two long days, we headed out of León for Granada,imagining what other simple pleasures we might find there.

January 10th , 2012

Todayhas begun my rounds of goodbyes here in Dulce Nombre, and suddenly this leavingHonduras thing has become a lot more real. The past few weeks I have known thatI was going to be leaving Honduras but instead of being sad that I was leavingmy adopted home I was excited to be seeing my family and friends again, not tomention the ability to flush toilet paper again (I am not sure why this is sucha running thread in my blogs…). I would lay awake at night thinking about allthe old joys that I would again be able to experience while I was back in thestates and those that I was going to spend time with during these saidexperiences. While I am still really excited to be going back home with myfamily and friends, the bittersweet feelings are definitely starting to take aholdof me. While we will not know for around another month or so whether or notHonduras will be deemed safe enough for us to return the overall feeling thatI, along with most other volunteers I have talked to, is that PCH’s future doesnot look bright at least not for the current volunteers. With somuch up in the air right now my mind is constantly changing and swirling aboutthe different possibilities for my life/new adventure. While it is enjoyable tohave such a blank slate open to me right now with the whole world at my feetand literally every path open, this same wide openness can also drive me crazy.We Americans like to have plans and this not having a plan thing is strangelydifficult to deal with, it remind me of how I was feeling when I first got intomy site and had absolutely nothing to do and no projects on the horizon. Whilenow, after almost four months in site, I have done so much work and started tolay the foundation of so many projects. Much of this work was simply spendingtime with people and letting them get to know me and earning their trust sothat I would have them behind me throughout the rest of my service. I know thatall of this work has not gone to waste because in every conversation I had withthe people I was learning as were they, however it does feel like the work willnot be able to reach its full potential and wasted potential is one of thethings that I hate most in this world. A great unknown has presented itself tome in the forms of many things. It has presented itself to me in the form ofthe potential projects that could be done here in the future, it has presenteditself to me in the form of the potential lives that I could touch, and it haspresented itself to me in the form of the potential improvements that I couldhelp to make in my community. The common wisdom in PC is that the second yearin site is the most fun because you finally know exactly what you are doing andyour projects are finally starting to be accomplished. I am starting to fearthat I may never get to experience these things. Asstated in one of my previous blogs, if PCH is not reopened back up to thevolunteer population, my likely next path would be to try to find a job near orin Chicago teaching at an elementary school with a high Spanish speaking andlow income population. While I am really excited about that possibility, I amalso saddened that I may not be able to complete my 2 years of PC service. InPC there is this attitude of how much can I handle before I call it quits/lookhow tough I am, though it may be a secret attitude that not many volunteerswill admit to I do think it is present. We as volunteers like to experiencehardships, whether we think it is part of the job or whether we have amisplaced feeling of the white man’s burden I do not know but there is no doubtin my mind that a certain pride factor places an important role in all of ourservice here in Peace Corps. So what might just happen with this currentsituation is that I will not be able to finish my 2 years here, sure I couldalways transfer to another country and begin my two years over again but justbeing honest I do not really want to do the waiting, the training, and the mixingin to my community all over again. So it seems like I may be “quitting” PCthough it sure does not feel like it, it feel like we were all just given afairly bad deal and we have to make the best of it and so that is what I amintending to do. I willreadily admit that this secret pride factor will make an impact on my decisionsin the future because I want to finish up my PC service. It seems dumb but Iwant that R before the PCV (aka RPCV, Returned Peace Corps Volunteer). Thinkingabout this issue and realizing exactly how I felt about this over the lastcouple of weeks has let me learn more about my real motives for joining the PC.I think that I have joined the PC for all of the usual responses, I want to helppeople, I want to gain a better perspective on my life and what I have, I wantto learn a new culture and a new language. However I realize now that I alsojoined because I wanted to do something that not many other people in thisworld have accomplished, and I wanted to do it for my own pride. I wanted to doit for my own glory, while I am not extremely proud of this fact it is true andI am glad that I have realized it. Even though most of my motives are wellintentioned there is also that small portion that is for my own glory and I donot like that. One of the reasons I think getting a teaching job in Chicago isso appealing to me right now is because I know that I help people withoutnecessarily having a motive of doing these good deeds for my own glory (By theway, I am pretty sure that the previous paragraph is an example of the oddstate that my mind is currently in but I do think that what I wrote has sometruth to it). Thispast Sunday, Fr. Henry gave a nice sermon about stars in relation to the storyof the three wise men and how they followed the star to find baby Jesus. Hepreached that we need to realize when God puts stars in our own lives and thatwe need to have the faith to follow them, no matter where they lead (He alsopreached that many of us are ourselves stars and have people following ushowever we do not realize it, but we must realize it and therefore be the beststar that we can be for the sake of those following us). I know that God hasput my star out there and all I need to do is to follow that star. However thatis a lot easier said than done, when I look up into my figurative night sky Isee millions of stars and I can follow any of them. The only problem is thatonly one of them is God’s star, the star that I need to follow. So which stardo I follow, the one that leads me back to Honduras, the one that leads me toChicago, or the one that leads me to another whole country altogether? At thismoment I do not know but with my faith in God, that night sky full of starswill become one single star and all I have to do is follow it.

As I sit here eating a sandwich and a cold glass of orchata that my landlady Imelda made for me, I am beginning to realize that this is it. In less than 48 hours I will be leaving my little town of Gracias, and then in 5 days I will be on a plan back to Boston. Like I said in my earlier post, I have many mixed feelings about leaving 7 months earlier than anticipated.

*I am relieved that I no longer have to live in such a dangerous country.

*I am sad to leave many good friends and coworkers who have treated me like family.

*I am heartbroken to leave the kids I’ve been working with, never being able to know if they’ll make it or not.

*I am grateful to have had a year and a half of amazing, life-changing experiences.

*I am overwhelmed with thoughts of returning to the developed world.

*And lastly, perhaps most importantly, I am satisfied with what I have made out of my Peace Corps experience- I accomplished what I came for, and even though I had more projects planned for the remainder of my service, I am still leaving with the notion that I have helped people, and that’s what this was all about.

I want to extend a hearty thank you to the Wayland Girl Scouts and their leader Angela for the clothing donation, and to Angi for the shoe donation. Both have been given out to the kids at the center where I work, and rest assured that they went to children who desperately needed them. Thank you for such a simple gesture; it goes a long way for hthese kids.

Another big thank you to Darien Book Aid, an NGO in Rhode Island that donates 25lbs of new/gently used books to Peace Corps volunteers around the world. I requested children's books for the IHNFA and books/resources on drug prevention, sexual education and culture for the Youth Center. The donation came in while I was on med-evac, and I finally got a chance to give them to my organizations!

This has definitely been a bitter-sweet week saying goodbye to my Honduran home. It is sad to leave earlier than expected, but if I were leaving in August it would be sad just the same. I keep focusing on all I have accomplished rather than what I had planned and did not get to see through. Putting everything into perspective has helped me understand that regardless of the specific number of months I've served, I have still seen wonderful changes in the people and children with whom I've worked. They have helped me as much, if not more, than I have helped them, and I will forever hold a special place en mi corazoncito for Honduras.

This post is for me.  It’s cathartic to write it all out sometimes. I went to Doña Gloria’s house for dinner tonight since I have no real food in my own house.  (Why buy food with only 5 days left?  Plus I’ve already given away all my cookware.)  I took Monica—our budding baker—all of my … Read more

As I am going through the piles of stuff in my house, I have begun placing things in three distinct piles: what’s going, what’s staying, and what ought to be burned (anything I wore while hiking Talgua). It’s been bittersweet. … Continue reading →

The other day, in an effort to cheer ourselves up about our impending departure, Maggie and I started coming up with a list of things we would not miss about Honduras. Here’s what I remember, plus some of my own personal additions. My house. I really don’t like my house – it has way too [...]

JP wrote a very eloquent post that very well mirrors my own thoughts and reactions to getting pulled out of Honduras. People join the Peace Corps for many reasons; to save the world, to find themselves, to travel, or just … Continue reading →