Well I made it back, back to clean toilets, safe food, comfortable living situations and job opportunities! That doesn't come without missing some of the finer things about Honduras as well including a wealth of real good friends I left behind. How did it all go down? Why am I back home so early? Some of my answers will be answered to you on a private basis but at least I can give you the general idea here.

First off, Peace Corps is a sacrifice. A big sacrifice, you leave behind all the comfortable things in the states and end up in some small town that on rare occasions has electricity and you have running water only 2 hours a day. Quality of living goes down and for many volunteers this is a deciding factor for leaving early. It played a roll in my decision on a very minor scale, only because my living situation was completely un-necessary, un-avoidable with the help of Peace Corps Honduras, and counter productive to the relationship between Volunteer and Counterpart.

Unfortunately I have to keep my situation to you all as vague as I possibly can. Many individuals and party's participate in the failure of a volunteer and since naturally people are sensitive it is best to keep specific details out of the discussion, at least on a public forum.

Without diving into into my personal philosophical and moral beliefs I will say this. I was poorly placed in Honduras by Peace Corps and the skills and ability's that I have to offer went to waste. There was no relevant work in my site to continue my stay there. You could say that I was the wrong tool for the job. I can sacrifice my quality of living, I don't mind pooing in a hole. I can live with all the junk and the none sense of the Honduran culture. I can even live with the fact that alot of what I do in Honduras as a volunteer may have zero impact on the host country. Not because what I do isn't significant but because both Honduras and the world does not want that country out of it's rut. What I could not live with is sacrificing my mind and what I am capable of doing.

I came to Honduras on the pretense, as stated by more then one Peace Corps officer, that I would be a technical volunteer. That never happened so I came home. If you want to know more you will just have to sit down and talk to me, or chat over the phone. I could go on for hours about the details of my decisions including some of my beliefs and including the beliefs on aiding third world country's. Maybe I am young and naive but I can't consciously continue to work on something while I know it to be wrong.

I could write books on everything we talked about but fortunately people out there already have and if you want a good reading recommendation I can give that to you as well.

In the end though I am very thankful and happy for the 9 months spent in Honduras. Nothing is wasted and I gained alot. I don't regret going and I don't regret leaving early. I had a unique situation that required attention, thats all. I have brought some very valuable things back with me, things I will never forget. I also would not tell any one thinking about going to Peace Corps that it is a bad idea. I would indeed state the opposite, in fact I think everyone should do something like it. Do it, learn what life is like outside of the US.

Often times on these things I want to write more but realize I don't have the time or the motivation to write a whole book for you guys. Plus many things are best left unsaid here on this blog. You all probably noticed the pattern of my blogs throughout my service become less frequent and their quality more lacking towards the end. There is a reason behind that too but as I said I didn't want to spend all night writing a book for you all.

So with all of that said, I am home. I'm happy to be home, thanks for the support from everyone. It has been the most amazing experience of my life.

For now I am going back to work as soon as possible and will work on newer projects in my life. Projects that may take some time before I can get them started. I don't know when the next time will be that I update this blog, it may be a loong while. Unfortunately I will not be able to return to Colorado. I have moved up to Washington to be close to my family.

For latest pics from Honduras check out my flickr account, there is a link in the top right corner of my blog. For questions or concerns fill free to post or a comment or email me!

Love ya all!

Cliff

Here is a little recap on the last few weeks in Honduras. In the beginning of November I was privileged enough to use some vacation time I earned in Peace Corps to explore the department of Copan. In this department I visited a city called Las Ruinas. As you no doubt now have guessed this is a town located near a very old Mayan city that left behind some incredible ruins.

I forget exactly which day I was that I head out but traveling to copan took a total of about 8 hours by bus, over the coarse of two days. To minimize the possibility of me traveling at night I took one of the teachers buses from my school to Tegucigalpa and spent the night in a hotel there.

The next morning I took a bus out from Teguc taking special care on what I eat. I usually starve myself when I travel in Honduras. The kind of stomach problems that you can rapidly get become so much more severe when you don't have immediate access to a restroom. One of the luxury's of the united states is, when you need to use the restroom you don't think about it you just go. There is always someplace to go. In Honduras it's different, especially if your traveling 6 hours in a bus. If you need to use the restroom you hold it until the bus comes to a break or until you change buses. Then if you assume that the next bus, or the bus that your currently on is going to wait for you, you will be left behind. Even if you've paid they do not pay attention to who's in the bus or not, they will be happy to leave you behind on the side of a road while you used the restroom.

Then comes the ultimate fear, having to go number 2 while on the bus. Usually in Honduras that means diarrhea, without getting to detailed into this let just say it can get very painful. Some of the worst stomach pains I have ever had in my life, stuck in a bus unable to do anything but hold out until I can run to the bushes at my bus stop. Every up, down, and curve you feel sharp pains go through your body. I don't know how people down there deal with it.

Any how, I left teguc early in the morning and swapped buses in La Espranza. Consequently I only had one cup of water for breakfast but still had to pee when I got off the first bus from Teguc. I dropped my backpack in the storage bins of the next bus and run to use the restroom, which cost 3 limps per use and were indescribably disgusting. As I was walking out of the restroom the bus, and my backpack were leaving! The driver knew I wasn't in the bus and he knew I left my pack in there, he didn't care! He would have been just as happy to take my backpack from me as well, they're idea of being a theif is much more extreme there. If I leave my pack, trusting this company to watch it while I pee, it is me who is at fault when they flat out rob it from me. They justify themselves with, "You shouldn't have set down your pack". Even though it was supposedly secured INSIDE of the bus. Any how without getting to drawn out on ladrones in Honduras I will continue.

The bus ride to Gracias Limpira was amazing. We drove over a remote mountain pass where the road was just about washed out. Needless to say I took the more dangerous yet more scenic route. Fortunately there were no highway men out on the road today so we had no problems. We did cross over a few questionable wooden bridges but in the end after passing over incredibly jagged yet dense forested mountains. I arrived in gracias where I met up with probably my best friends in Honduras Kate and Brody. A married couple who are Peace Corps volunteers and went through training with me.

We had a nice week planned to possibly go up into the jungle and do some forest exploring but almost as soon as I arrived Kate got giardia. So we had a bit of downtime.

I went ahead and left a day early to Copan with some of Kate and Brody's friends. They caught up with us a day early once Kate was better.

Copan is nothing at all like Honduras. Once getting off the bus you drop into a lush tropical paradise, only not on the coast. It's insanely beautiful. Everything from the food, the shops, and things to do that town has it all. We stayed in a wonderful apartment for a few days. Everything about it was just wonderful. I have nothing to complain about other then the cloudy rainy weather which didn't stop us one bit.

Any how there isn't really enough time to go into detail on everything right now but in my flickr account I have uploaded pictures of the Ruins at Las Ruinas Copan and I have included pics of many many other things. Check them out. My next update will be on why I am back in the states, what I am doing now, and what I will be doing in the coming months!

Sorry for the brief update but I haven't had the time for the past month. I will explain more on why in the next update! Enjoy!

Cliff

Yea,

First off I want to apologize because I have about a book of material to update for you all. I however have been very pressed with time in my site and have not had the chance to update my blogger like I usually can. I even have like 300 new pictures of Copan and the surrounding areas which includes some ruins of an ancient Mayan city!

Any how, due to things working out in my site I have decided to come home to the states and start work again. All of this will be covered but in a later update when I have more time to do so. Right now I am trying to finish up all my paperwork for peace corp.

Real quick on some good news! I tested leaving Peace Corps at a spanish proficiency of Intermediate High. In a little over 9 months I learned a big chunk of the spanish language including being able to talk pretty comfortably with most spanish speakers. After all I did teach in an only spanish speaking school!

Any how check back in about a week and I will have hopefully a thorough update including new pics!

Love Ya and Miss ya all!

Cliff

It came, and it went. There isnt much more I can tell you. We had a stronger storm come by two weeks ago. The eye, if the storm would have held it sould would have moved directly over my town, however it turned into a tropical depression before it even hit us.

Actually I am kind of dissapointed, this was going to be my first real hurricane experience. I went through one when I was 2 but who can remember back then!

Any how the world starts again tommarow like normal! I'm ok and now have a load of extra water!

Cliff

Check out the movie below to get an idea of what the backcountry is like in Honduras

Well its that time,

It's been a while so I am going to divide up all the stuff I want to talk about in different topics. And here they are..

PC Reconnect and Cerro Azul, Lake Yojoa Mystery Bugs Hurricane Felix and what in the world am I doing about it?!Health Moral and MoreFirst I want to start out with the most exciting topic. My week long trip to Honduras's only lake. I actually didn't spend any time on the lake but instead up in a very thick cloud forest just to the east of the lake. The point of reconnect is to reflect over the first 3 months in our sites. Given I have been in Honduras for 7 months now I have actually only been in my personal site, "alone", for 3 months. We talk about how our site integration worked out, problems we have, ideas we have, and stuff we have started working on. I got a whole wealth of good ideas out of it from other volunteers. One volunteer even changed the way an entire city is monitoring taxes. I was floored when I heard that but I will never be getting into that kind of stuff in La Venta.The lake is a much lower altitude area and since it is much further north then La Venta I had to adjust to the increase in heat and humidity. It is breathtaking however. I arrived in the last week of August on a tuesday. We lodged in one of the national parks called Cerro Azul. We had cabins sitting right at the base of the cloud forest. Describing it's beauty is impossible you will just have to go look at the pictures.We spend Wed and Thurs studying, and talking, and having meetings amongst volunteers and our Peace Corp Boss Edell discussing ideas on how we can improve our time here. On friday however we were free to do as we pleased!We took a 4 hour hike making a circle into Cerro Azul to get a better look of the forest. We we came across was nothing short of breathtaking at times. This is truely how I pictured central america. We crossed wooden bridges, climbed streight up the steepest mountains, were immersed in a dense jungle like forest but it was a cloud forest. We walked up an insane ridge where it was literally a drop off into a sea of green below us. Then climbed down into a dense part of the forest housing a nice remote waterfall. You can see all the pictures at my flickr site here.It was definately one of the coolest places I have been yet but there is still alot more to do!

Myster Bug

About a month ago I was walking through the forest behind my house with a new volunteer. She was site visiting. Its an activity new volunteers do, they go visit volunteers who are already working in their site to see what life is like here. Well we decided to go hike up to one of the waterfalls above my house. Just as we were climbing up the hill we found one of the most wildest looking bugs I have ever seen. I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at, so like every good internet junky. I took several photos and emailed it to a website called "What's that Bug.com.Apparently this particular bug is called a "Cerogenes auricoma " and is a type of plant hopper. You can read an article about it here along with my photos.http://www.whatsthatbug.com/aphids_2.htmlHurricane FelixHonduras is a country that hasnt had the most pleasant history with Hurricanes. They don't get them often but it seems like when they do get them it always hits hard. The previous one, "Hurricane Mitch" devistated the country. The country is still recovering from that disaster in 1998. In fact the original main road from Teguc has been destroyed and the new road goes through a different route. I sometimes on my afternoon jogs run down the old road untill I hit the river. Where the old bridge has been washed out completly. Wondering around here you find numerous old structures and bridges destroyed by mitch. The main road now functions because Japan donated a number of new bridges around the country. Any how we have another Catagory 5 headed our way but I'ts not as powerful as Mitch, and as for as much as the people are panicing here it looks to me that the storm will head north. I feel bad for volunteers on the north coast....Any how regardless of what I think will happen I went a head and made perperations. I have about 5 gallons of drinkable agua and a bunch of stuff to make sandwhiches. Thanks to my Fam back home I also have several instant meals ready to go that just require water. Living in La Venta has already got me prepared for extended periods of time without electricity and water so I am pretty much stocked on candles and water. The only thing I want to have worked on is perhaps tommarow one of the guys here can work on my roof. I do have a descent sized leak when it rains hard! I don't need to be sleeping in a pool of water when the hurricane hits. Felix is projected to hit this coming Wed but I feel I am ready for it. Peace Corp Honduras has on high alert and we are prohibited to travel. When Mitch occured they evacuated the country, but as I said this guy doesnt seem to be as powerful. I guess time will tell.In the mean time know that I am doing well! I'm not worried about a think. Maybe I should be?.... More information on Mitch here and how it effected Hondurashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_MitchTop news on Felix herehttp://www.weather.com/newscenter/tropical/?from=wxcenter_news Health Moral and MoreOverall things have been going quiet well with me. Reconnect was great for me because I got to see friends from training and spend some time with english speaking people! That doesnt happen to often here in La Venta. After the trip I even spent an extra day in the beautiful Colonial city of Comayagwa. I am almost 100% certain I spelled that wrong but due to time which I dont have, I cannot look it up right now. Any how I bought a Hammock chair there for less then 15 bucks. It's a rockin awesome thing but instead of it being like a regular hammock its made for sitting in. Once I have it setup I can read from the comfort of my hammock chair! I can't wait!Health wise I have been kickin serious butt. No bacterias, colds, sicknesses, nada for weeks. I think I finally got adapted to the food here and various types of bacterias they have. I feel great and I have been running again to in the afternoon. I especially enjoy that.I am still working in the bilingual school with the kids. Theyre great to work with, 36 kids with a crapload of energy who are learning english at a great rate. More importantly for me however is I have just about finished a full Network Curriculum Module that is already half translated into spanish. I am pretty proud of it and hope that it helps the schools Computer Science program expand in that particular topic of computer science. My counter part has also taken my advice on a few updrades we made here in the school and more changes will be done over christmas when there are no students. So my hands are still wrapped in the network, if only not so advanced as it was at Hammersmith.I also have finished my 6th or 7th book and am about to finish another. Without TV theres alot of time to read and study! I have succesfully studied the basics of C++ and can pretty much make any basic program and some basic windows programs with buttons and everything. I am pretty proud of myself.One of the advantages of being a volunteer is, not that you necessarily have more time. But as an american you run around with your head cut off trying to get things done. Here time works differently, it's much much slower. It's almost difficult to get used to in the beggining. Everything I need however is less then a minute walk away and without TV, internet, and stuff like that I have a whole wealth of time to do things I would never normally be able to do back home. Like teach myself an entire programming language all while tackling 7 books over the coarse of 3 months. Not to shabby.

Whats going on in La Venta?

Well not a whole lot, just work, work and then more work! Working here is a pull and tug type of game. There are things you want to do but are not always necessarily things you get to do. I myself am in that situation.

Those of you who know me well know that I worked hard to receive my CCNA about a year ago. I also graduated with a 4 Bachelors of Science in Computer Network Management a year before that. On top of all that I got a very healthy solid year of experience working for Hammersmith Management in Colorado. My old boss Clint and the Company HMI put me in a solid position to get some wonderful learning done and some great administrative experience in the world of networking. Not to mention what a pleasure it was to work with everyone there! Fortunately most of the administrative decisions were left to my boss, which left me with the fun of researching, learning, and doing!

Often times I think about the type of job I had and where I could have gone with that company. No doubt if I stayed in the states I would still be in the fast lane to success. Peace Corps has proved to be more of a sacrifice recently that I expected. I was not fully expecting to completely drop my ties with technology but it seems I am being pushed in that direction.

My counter part solicited Peace Corps for a volunteer who specialised in technology. Since I was the most technical volunteer our current group had, I was who he got! However to my surprise when I get here he asks me to work in a bilingual school teaching 6 year old kids English all day! Because of that I have no idea why he asked for a technical volunteer, or that he even knew what he was asking for. When I talk about it now it does not seem to be of great concern to him.

However he has his duties and he knows what he needs for his school. We compromise and everyone sacrifices. When talking about the subject a very good friend from the states and my wonderful sister reminded me that it is always a sacrifice when helping out humanity.

Yet even still I can still find technical stuff to do so all is not lost! And I am still learning C++ and also plan to be ready to take my first CCNP test when I return in 2009!

Aside from all that life goes on quickly here in La Venta. For as quiet as it is time seems to fly. Here I am already half way through August and I can't begin to think about what has happened the last 3 months in my site. It's hard to beleive that in another 3 months I will be getting ready for Christmas!

Besides all that, I did have a very interesting experience the other day while hiking in the woods. I stumbled across the most curious little animal I have ever seen. It is some type of bug but it moves so gentle and looks so soft that I at first I thought it was something else. At first glance because of the small feathery looking parts hanging off this creature I thought it was some type of small bird. However while watching it fly it moves way to slow and and casual to be any kind of bird. When it landed you could see the hard shell looking wings on the back but that is the only solid looking part I could find on this bug. Any how I have a few pictures so check it out on my flickr account. I also emailed the people at "www.whatsthatbug.com" so we will see what they have to say. Hopefully they will be able to identify it for us.

I also purchased a new bike thanks to Peace Corp. It's not to fancy but it will be fine for exploring around La Venta outside of the mountains and for getting around town a bit easier.

It is pretty difficult to describe living here, all I can tell you is it is nothing like living in the states. There is so much "Different" that it is hard for me to keep up on. However feel free to ask questions in emails! I should be able to answer almost anything.

In a couple of weeks I am heading to the countries only natural lake so I should have some good pictures to share with you then.

Thanks for reading, until next time!

Adios

Cliff

Howdy everyone,

It's time for an update. I imagine most of you have been wondering what in the world have I been doing. Well now that I have finally settled into my site I have been doing the same thing as you, working! Only in a much different environment obviously. My primary place of work is still in the school called Asociacion Nuevo Amanacer, and will probably remain that for the duration of the next 22 months!

Real quick I will give you a sum of all the things that I do here at the school.

Curriculum writing bilingual manuals for technical and non technical learning Network Manual

Basic computer manual

Administrative network duties and management(yay)

Network Upgrades

Help out in the advanced computer class almost daily in the morning

Assist the local bilingual school with English. Students at the age of 4-6 learning in English

Basic computer classes, and two days a week I help in a PE class as well

Map Project

researching ideas for future projects

There is the basic idea. I also try to occupy my spare time with reading and I am continuing to teach myself more about C++. One of my problems is the large amount of work I have to do. I don't get paid to work here and I don't particularly care to wear myself out mentally in a place that already mentally exhausting. Sometimes what is expected of me is to much. However it is my own responsibility to make sure I don't get taken advantage of. There is alot of help to go around here, this place could use more volunteers.For example, in all honestly when I agreed to go to Honduras in February I didn't have any thoughts in the back of my head about teaching 5 year old kids English. It's not what I wanted to do. Not that I don't think it is a good program, people here who can speak English generally make more money. It's a great thing. However I didn't just get my CCNA and graduate from college, work a years at Hammersmith helping Clint with the network to teach English to 4 year old kids! I had a descent life in a good future in Colorado. To drop all that to teach kids is not what I had in mind.Originally my counterpart hear requested a technical volunteer for assistance, which is why I am here. While I am given administrative duties to work on the network I think he wanted to take advantage of the fact that I do speak English and have me work in both. At the same time I have other people asking me to start other projects, like these manuals I am writing. I am literally creating a curriculum for learning networks, all in Spanish. After I am done with that I will probably have to write something else.Such is life however, it all comes down to compromise. We negotiate and come to an agreement on where I will help. I just need to make sure I don't take on to much at once! My free time here is important. I don't want to spend two years in an office! I am after all a volunteer and can do what I want.It's not all bad though by any means. The people I work with are wonderful and the town I live in has got to be the most peaceful village in all of Honduras. It is totally relaxing. I love to just sit for hours in the hammock and read. They just need alot of help and try to get it where they can. I don't blame them at all.Any how, how have things been lately? Wet. Honduras considers this time of year their winter. It is considered a rainy season here and let me just say we have seen enough of it. At times I feel like I am living in a warm version of Washington state. The water brings allot of bugs to, tons of bugs but fortunately I have not seen any tarantulas for the past week.On another note, I finally moved into my own room. Mike the volunteer before me left and I had the opportunity to take his apartment. A room in the same building as my room but twice the size. I spent all day on Saturday cleaning it up and sealing up any holes where bugs can get through! It only took most of the morning to get it all clearned up and moved in. Mike was nice enough to leave me a nice bed and a small frig for my own room! Mike also had someone at the school repair a leak in the roof before he left so it has turned out quite nice. I plan on having pictures for you next week.For now, not many new exciting pictures for you to look at other then the ones from the World Map Project. Mike and I started a world map project that allows students to draw and paint a world map. Some student's do not even know where Honduras is. It is nice to see those same kids learn about the world that they live in. While we draw we talk about all kinds of things in the world. The largest forests, largets rivers, deserts, mountains, ect... I will have more to show in my other projects later. The map project just happends to be the most tangible thing to show for my work at the time.Any how, that is about it. Send me emails for questions. Things have slowed down for me here but at the same time I am not any less busy. I don't have as much to talk about just more to do. Maybe it is because I am getting used to several things here and they don't stick out as much, I don't know for sure. From here on out my updates will probably be shorter and less frequent but that should give you all a break from the mountain of information I had you read during my training. Any how thats all I have for now, if any one wants to plan a vacation to central America shoot me an email! Miss you all! Cliff Pics of the map project

Howdy,

At last its my wonderful birthday. The Hondurans tell me at some point today I am going to take an un excepted bath. We shall see, I have eyes everywhere!

I have had many of you ask me how you can send me care packages and such. I was going to explain this system to you all, but quiet frankly I don't feel I deserve to much from everyone. No need for you all to spoil me! However, if you do feel that burning desire to hook me up with something fun there is an easier way to go about doing it rather then shipping packages.

My grandmother recently sent me a gift card through amazon. This prompted me to play around on Amazons site and look at shipping and such. After messing around in the website I have found that it is cheaper to ship directly from Amazon then it is for my parents to send me a package from the states! So my point is, if you want to give me a birthday present, send me a gift card on Amazon. It's easy and I can sort through my wish list and decide what things I want to buy. *Hint Hint, Nudge Nudge* @ Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents, Ect....

As for my friends from HMI and and from CO. You guys don't have to send me squat. I know you miss me. =) However if you reeeeaaally must, and if you can find a cheap way to do it. Feel free to send me some home made cookies, I know my sister is already in the works of sending one package with cookies! The chocolate here isn't all that great so whatever I can get is wonderful! Some good beef jerky is nice to.

If you ship by USPS its much cheaper but the package takes about 2-3 months. If you ship by fedex it costs quiet a bit more but I should get it within the month. While I still would rather you all throw some cash at me on amazon. If you must send me something then email me and I will give you the address immediately.

As for the amazon stuff, you should be able to apply a gift card to my gmail email. Let me know if you have problems. Off I go amazon shopping. Thanks Grandma!

Love ya and miss you all!

Cliff

P.S. I'm hoping my next update will include pictures and a summary of our world map project we are doing here with the kids. It should prove interesting to you all.

A week out on the range!

I was coming home from Teguc on Monday; it had been a day of restocking on supplies that were needed for the house. The ride home to Teguc was easy and I had arrived in my site early enough to miss the afternoon storms. I had spent most of the trip home standing up on in an old school bus that serviced our town and other small villages outside of Teguc.

I got off the bus and was lucky enough to catch a ride into La Venta from one of the administrators of the Colegio. It is about half a mile walk or so from the highway to my house so catching a ride is welcome. When I entered the vehicle I found my local Honduran friend, Ricardo, who was also catching a ride into La Venta. He had mentioned to me that there was an opportunity to rent some horses from a nearby farmer. After spending some thought on it I could not think of any thing else I would rather do for the next few days!

The principal let me off at my house and Ricardo told me he would come by later to talk about it. I enjoyed a nice quiet afternoon reading one of Dan Brown’s books. Around 6 or so Ricardo and my other friend Hector arrived with stuff to cook dinner with. We cooked dinner and discussed the plan. The idea was to leave in the afternoon on Wednesday and return on Thursday.

Wednesday afternoon couldn’t have come quicker and just as I had enough time to pack my bag Ricardo showed up with two Horses. Unfortunately we did not have another one available for Hector, but next time we have plans to rent some extra horses from another local farmer.

I locked up the house and was ready to go. I admit that getting up on the horse for the first time in a LONG while had been somewhat intimidating for me. I have only really gone horseback riding once and it was in a very controlled environment. This trip was just Ricardo and I and the open range! Immediately I realized how natural the process was for Ricardo as it probably is for most Honduran men here. Knowing how to ride a horse here is just as common as knowing how to drive a car, or perhaps even more so.

The first half hour was tricky for me; Ricardo wanted to go faster into a gallop. I had not yet adjusted and still felt unbalanced like I was about to take a dive with every hoof that hit the ground. Surprisingly though it did not take long for me to become more comfortable with the beast and ride bit more easily or controlled. Once I learned to trust the beast I was doing a lot better. After a while I completely forgot that Horseback riding was new to me and we were cruising all over, exploring the rolling planes of the valleys below the mountain range that housed La Tigra. The area was amazingly beautiful. If I didn’t know better I would have guessed we were in West Texas! I was amazed.

Our intentions were to ride for an hour in the afternoon to a cave entrance that opens up into one of the rivers nearby. The entrance had a nice beach in which to lay a tent on and would be soft to sleep on. Unfortunately we never got that far.

We arrived in the general vicinity of where we believed the cave was but the brush had grown very thick and we were unable to locate it. After a solid hour of climbing up and down steep canyons to find the cave we decided to make a decision. The hour was getting later and you could see the afternoon storms rolling in. I told Ricardo we had two choices. Find a rock, and put up the tent. We wouldn’t be able to start a fire because of the coming rain and odds were we would get wet unless we just remained in the tent from then until the next morning. Considering it was still early, around 5:30pm I mentioned the second option would be to race the storm and ride home. There we could eat dinner, sleep in our own beds and leave early the next morning for more adventuring. We had paid two days for the hoses and had every intention on using it!

We agreed that we would try to race home and beet the storm. Of course, we only made it about halfway. One interesting thing about rainy season in Honduras is sometimes it fools you. Occasionally we have a dry afternoon, but the afternoon is never without distant thunder constantly reminding you of what time of year it is. When you think a storm is coming it passes and showers elsewhere. I have learned now however not to rely on that. In this time of year you should always count on getting at least one shower in the afternoon, usually it starts raining and doesn’t stop until sometime in the night. It was a gamble I decided to take. Now I know better.

We met the storm head on and it was powerful. The kind of storm where rain drops pelt you as they land on your skin and thunder shakes the ground. Big huge heavy drops, we could smell the Caribbean ocean around us as we rode. We raced back to La Venta in a mad dash; we could have been two bandits running from the law on an old trail in west Texas.

One of the fun parts about this particular road that we were on was that it used to be the main passage to Tegucigalpa. It was no longer in service because Hurricane Mitch had destroyed a major bridge that crossed a river. We however took the horses right into the river, and boy was I thankful to be on horse back. It was clear that I would have been up past my waste in water just to get through. The horses didn’t mind though, they walked right through it as if they were used to situations such as this.

We had just arrived at the edge of town and were completely soaked from head to town. Thankfully I remembered to bring my rain coat and was able to protect my camera; my cell phone however suffered a worse fate. The thing was soaked through and through with water and now no longer works.

We finally arrived at my house drenched from head to tow, the rain was still pouring out of the sky. I decided to change into my swim trunks and hang all my clothes on the clothesline for drying. We made sandwiches for dinner and Ricardo left for his home for the evening. We decided to go to bed early and get up and go again the next morning.

Round two, we were out the door by 7am with the horses. We decided to explore the mountains behind La Venta. Ricardo knew of a town deep in the mountains. This was a remote village of farmers who had no electricity or running water and lived in remote mud or adobe homes. They lived off the land that they tended to. Our goal was to arrive there by 10am and have enough time to head home before the afternoon showers.

The trail to the village was amazing. It was small only large enough for man or beast to pass. There were no roads for cars to get through. Some places had made me nervous with the beasts, on many occasions we had to walk the animals up and around different parts of the mountains. It was well worth it however, we reached a peak where the view was nothing short then a cloned Rocky Mountain vista only right here in Honduras. It was amazingly beautiful, and you should thank me that I have pictures for you all! Standing on this mountain I felt a cool shiver through my body. I was back in the Rockies again. A pine covered mountain range with lofty peaks. You could hear the harsh wind pound on the trees above. The only thing missing was that slight hint of winter that always seems to linger in Colorado. The funny thing is the mountains in my pictures are the foothills of La Tigra. We are sitting right around 3000 feet in those pictures, and La Tigra is an additional 3000 feet above that. It’s hard to believe when you’re in the cloud forest that you’re passing over the peaks of this mountain range. The environments here are so sensitive and change rapidly with location. It’s interesting that I can go from a west Texas feel, to a Colorado feel, to a tropical jungle feel all within less then a day by horse, or less then a few hours by car.

I had also found a very large waterfall that must have been at least 15 meters from top to bottom. My pictures don’t give it its full detail because it was too tall to capture everything. I took the photos from on top of a cliff, the water fell down below the cliff and you couldn’t tell exactly how far, only that it went a ways.

From what I hear the mountain range houses a wealth of other natural beauties so I suspect I will be going back many times.

It only costs 100 limps a day to rent a horse, that’s equal to 5 bucks. 5 American dollars to rent a horse, its unbelievable! Including the cost of the new phone I will have to buy would have been more of an accurate comparison to how much it costs in the states I imagine.

Any how, if you have been trying to get a hold of me via phone I apologize for the past few days that my phone has been dead. Hopefully this Friday I can purchase a new one, we will see.

With that said, PLEASE look through some of these pictures. I want you to see how beautiful some of these places are.

Cliff

PS, if you want to print some of my pictures ask me for the originals. All the fotos on Flickr are degraded versions of their former selves, they are also smaller.

Well the rainy season has just begun here in Honduras and let me tell you it comes in full force. I don't remember thunderstorms being this strong since I was a boy in Houston. It's exactly as I remember it however. When it rains it floods, literally. I walk home in my Chacos thankful I have sandals and am not ruining my otherwise descent shoes! A river usually runs over my feet.

The rain has brought a few things, less heat and more humidity. One thing I think I suspected to have happen in my subconscious but refused to admit to was the increase of bugs it would bring. At first I had hoped that maybe La Venta would be a special place without the bug problem but I was wrong!

It all started after the second straight day of heavy rain. We had an afternoon free of heavy showers but a few lingering drops were still falling reminding us of the season. I happened to be walking home from the local school noticing a very odd swarm over one of the workshop buildings. When I realised it was a swarm of bugs they had already completely surrounded me and the Hondurans I was talking to. They were everywhere, you couldn't move your arm without hitting one or five. The air became saturated with these flying pests. We tried to walk away to avoid the swarm but that is when I realised that the whole town was in a cloud of these things. Partially the insects were naturally falling from the sky from death, others would fly right into you clumsily. It might as well have been raining insects. After about two hours had passed the swarm subsided and it the air was clear again. The next day the ground was littered with little black insect wings and dead flys. Later I found out they were a type of termite.

Later that night I woke up at about 3am to use the restroom. I walked to the latrine like I normally do in my sandals. I only walk on the grass when it is absolutely necessary to reach the latrine. The rest of the way I use the sidewalk. Well, while I was using the restroom I felt something pinch my big toe. I turned on my REI headlight and looked down. Huge leaf cutter ants were everywhere. I had rudely interrupted their effort of constructing a lofty ant palace made of sand. The project involved every abnormally sized ant in the area, the ground was literally crawling. Yes, I can use that phrase here! The problem with these ants were, they are so big they cannot bite you, only pinch. They're heads are huge and have big claws. So I brushed them off and tried to walk back to my room. As I was heading back to my room I found another large group doing the same spread all along our sidewalk. They were all building new mounds just off the sidewalk. Apparently the rains had forced them to abandoned their old homes.

Two major bug encounters in one day was fine for me, it was what I would find the next day that really surprised me.

The first one I saw was again in the latrine where I was about to use the restroom. It was exactly the same as you would see in all the pictures, or in some exotic pet shop. A big, fat, hairy, black, tarantula. And can you imagine, he was kind enough to let me take pictures! However, I had the pleasure this morning to find ANOTHER one in our outside sink! The picture he let me take of him turned out so well that that will be the one you see today, even though he is slightly smaller then the one I saw at night.

Any how, in light of all of this the local battalion came through and fumigated every house in town. Not mine, because I did not give them a key, and I conveniently went on a jog while they were doing it. I didn't want to have my clothes and computer sprayed with insecticide. Unfortunately they also forced their way into the school without warning and shut it down. For 2 hours the kids waited to go back to class as the spray cleared.

They told us they were spraying for mosquito's but I cannot fathom why on earth you would only spray inside of buildings for mosquito's, when it is generally common knowledge, and even for the public, that mosquito's and sancudos (A similar species) reproduce in water!!!

Any how, enjoy the pictures. I also uploaded some pictures of my room and of my kitchen. Ill be posting more later!

Until then...

Cliff

P.s. It's not my right to give you details of why I am asking this from you. Only that I request thought and prayer on the health of my family. Nothing that will jepourdize the strong relationship that my family holds, only that we are having some health issues and want them to pass as quickly as possible. With that said, if you would lend an extra prayer for my family I would appreciate it. Thanks

So I have a lot of extra time on my hands. I have been teaching myself how to use Corel Photo Paint, Regular Corel Painter, and how to program in C++. All while keeping up to date on latest news in networking. At this rate I should leave here smarter then when I arrived. Who would have guessed!

Talk to ya later!

Cliff

Well it has been a few weeks and I haven’t updated anything for you guys yet! So I will give you a briefing on what has been going on. In the last several weeks I have been trying to integrate myself into my site. Meeting new people, learning about what the needs are of the community and learning where everything is has been my primary activity so far.

As I said before my site is just north of the Cloud Forest La Tigra, and about 45 minutes northwest of Tegucigalpa. Because of my low altitude and being further inland the area is semi arid but still considered tropical because of the annual warm temperatures. La Venta has a somewhere around 600 to 800 people, but they are all scattered around the area. There really isn’t any dense location of buildings or a town center. The main road has a church, several houses, a couple of pulperia’s(small stores), and a local public school. The town is roughly one mile south of a major highway (2 full lanes). It takes me about 15 minutes to walk to the closest bus station if I need to take a bus out. La Venta is the smallest site for the business team but also the most technical.

My house is actually on the property of Asociacion Nuevo Amanecer. In fact this building was the original school. There are two buildings here. The one I sleep in has 5 separate rooms, they are used like apartments. Only 3 of them seem to be useable at the moment. Behind my building is a much larger room that the school uses to store older stuff. The grass grows halfway up to the roof on that side so I never go over there. The school has an old colonial look from the red shingles. The two buildings are catty cornered next to each other, I am able to walk from the kitchen to my room out of the rain. The building with the kitchen also has 3 rooms, two are currently being used by teachers. Next to those rooms, the kitchen which we all share is a half descent size with a stove, oven, and a refrigerator. Eventually maybe I will get a microwave but first I must get a barbeque! Between the two buildings is a small structure. The structure has a large pila, a huge sink, and two spots for showers. The showers fortunately have wooden doors so you can bathe in private! The pila holds all of our water for bathing and washing clothes or dishes. We get water only 3 times a week from 6:30am to about 10am every other day. Yes, when we have no water I have to bucket to bathe. Now, if I time it just right on the days we have water I can use the shower head to bathe like you normally would in the states but we still don’t have any heated water. At 6:30 in the morning the air quiet cool so I find myself waiting until the afternoon heat to shower. About 10 meters from the house is our latrine. I won’t go into detail to much. Just realize how lucky you are to have running water and nice clean white porcelain toilets!

I live with two Honduran teachers. Both of them are very nice and are helping me with my Spanish. In the evenings we split up whose cooking and who is cleaning. We rotate daily to keep it fair. Sometimes they even pitch in on the food!

Quarter of a mile south of my house is the vocational school. Since I teach in the mornings I get free breakfasts and lunches. The school is semi large and spread out with several large buildings for workshops and classes. Since the school is vocational, kids at a certain age can choose some type of specialty to study. That is where I come in, to teach advanced computing. On top of teaching in the morning my counterpart wants to plan and implement several upgrades for the campus network. Right now we are working on getting a terminal server setup for other volunteers who work from other countries to connect through the internet. Above and beyond that, as I have already stated, I will be able to help with many other things around the village.

I have decided to help the bilingual class. This is a large class of kids around the age of 5-8 who are being taught subjects in English. The idea is if they can learn Spanish and English at an early age being bilingual will become almost second nature. In Honduras people who know English usually end up with the better jobs. I will also be doing several other educational or technical projects with the businesses and other schools in the area.

There isn’t much to talk about when it comes to La Venta in general, however the surrounding countryside is quiet charming. La Venta has a real west Texas feel to it. Somewhat dry, hilly and with mountains in the backdrop it just adds to that appropriate Wild West feel. Some of the most amazing sunsets I have seen have been here in town. Sometimes when it is humid enough everything turns red as the sun reflects itself through the atmosphere. I am not close to the beaches, rain forests, or anything like that. There are several cloud forests in my area though. You just simply just have to get to a certain altitude to see the thick lush forests. A 3-4 hour bus ride could get me on a nice beach however; someday I’ll take a Friday off and head out there! La Venta itself is a hilly area with large rocks to climb on, perfect for sunset watching and exploring.

I thought that with the less amount of water here there would be less bugs but I was mistaken. There is a type of beetle here called Chenche. This beetle bites you and causes you to bleed slightly. The bite becomes swollen for a couple of weeks pusses and is real nasty. After that it heals and you are completely fine. Then in about 20 years your heart just randomly decides to fail and you die. I’ve actually heard it makes your heart explode in some way. The disease is called Chagas and is only spread by this beetle. I wondered why we had a bunch of brochures about them at the school until a couple of days ago in front of my kitchen there it was. The nice little red beetle with an intricate design on its exoskeleton flew past my head and landed on the wall outside of the kitchen. I told my Honduran friend to wait so I could go get my camera but before I could take 2 steps he killed it. Perhaps it was better. Between that and the monstrous amount of mosquitoes I decided to sleep inside my Mosquito tent for the next two years. It works pretty well; I’ve never seen a bug inside yet! Just to be safe though I will get tested for chagas before I come to the states, the whole dieing thing is completely reversible by a simple shot if caught ahead of time.

I also saw the biggest grasshopper I think ever to exist on the face of the earth. This thing was easily bigger then both of my hands. I was climbing on a rock just outside of town so I could get a better view of the surrounding mountains. As I moved my hand to a cleft in the rock this huge rabid buzzing flew past my head and landed in front of me. This ridiculous thing was the size of my foot I could hardly believe it. I rushed to get my camera but the huge bug flipped out its wings and took off. The part of the exoskeleton that blocks the wings was completely red. One of the coolest looking insects I have ever seen. I sure am glad it didn’t land on me!

Any how I think I gave you a hefty amount of nonsense to read. If you want more detail on anything feel free to email me. I have uploaded some pictures of La venta and made a separate set for them. Feel free to check it out.

Check out the fotos! There will be more to come as well...

Well it’s been a solid two weeks and I am finally out of Cantarranas. Included in all the recent action I finally found out where I will be serving for the next two years. So be ready for a somewhat lengthy read as I try to fill you in on everything. I am serving in a small pueblo just north of Tegucigalpa known as La Venta Viajo. This ridiculously small town houses only 600 people. The center of town itself is nothing more then a few houses and a church. What on earth will I do here you ask? I’m glad you asked! There is a huge complex that overwhelms the entire south side of town. In fact, from satellite, it is easier to point out this complex then it is the town itself. This is a vocational school that is called Asociación Nuevo Amanecer, and serves over 300 students.I don’t have any pictures yet of the school because I just got here, but believe I will get some soon enough. I have 2 years to photograph every inch of the school for you all! They have a variety of programs which I will get into more detail later. Most importantly they have a huge computer training program here which I hope to be a big part of. I will start by giving classes in advanced computing in the mornings for four hours. Some of the topics include, Programming, Hardware, Networking, Graphic Design, and Web Design. I hope to enhance the network portion of the program and also assist in the management and improvement of the campus network. Right now they service internet through the school via satellite but this not being used very effectively for the students. I hope to improve that as well during my two year stay here in La Venta. There are tons of other activities which I can participate in and or even start up. During my first two months I plan on starting a World Map Project where the students can draw a map of the world and we are given an opportunity to talk about each region, this will include drawing each country! On top of this I have many other possibilities for work in the small town of La Venta. There is an orphanage, a central health center, regular school and more. I can give training, offer help, whether it is technical or not so technical to any one of these parts of town. I still have a lot to learn in the language section of things. One of the first things I plan on doing is looking for a tutor for Spanish assistance. I can communicate half as good as any Spanish novice can. I can travel around town and ask for basic necessities for daily activity. I can hold basic conversations with the locals on most general things. When it comes to technical training however I lack a lot of vocabulary. I hope to correct that in the next three months. The week prior to last we held a week long class in a local highschool over business management. We included Marketing, Accounting, ad Production in our curriculum. We had three to a team of volunteers and had to teach any where between 15 to 20 students. On that weekend I got the pleasure of going to an authentic coffee tasting session with one of the coffee farmers in San Juan Cito. This town is directly below the national park La Tigra. If you remember I visited La Tigra only weeks before on a Eco Tourism class. The tasting was incredible, this guy a great deal about so many different types of coffee all across the world. On top of that, since we were so close to La Tigra we decided to visit and check out a waterfall deep in the cloud forest. I have some great pics of both the coffee tasting and of the hike in La Tigra for you all to enjoy. I will be adding the La Tigra pics to the “La Tigra Set” in my flickr album and I will make a new set for the coffee tasting. The coffee tasting was an exclusive thing and we were invited by the coffee farmer outside of the effort of Peace Corp. It was truly one of the most authentic things I have done thus far in Honduras. Only last week however we had site announcements and a small party at the local Mayors house in Cantarranas. I said goodbye to my family to Cantarranas and headed to Siguatepeque for counter part day. I really enjoyed my family in Cantarranas, they were super nice and accepted me as one of their own. I am going to try to get a picture for you all in the coming weeks. Counterpart day is a day we meet our counterpart in the community which we will serve. My counterpart is a Swiss volunteer who helped start the school. The school was founded by a group of Swiss volunteers and a few of them are still working there today. We have all kinds of neat German toys in some of our production rooms because of this. We spent a day in Siguatepeque with all the other volunteers and their counterparts then head to La Venta. Now, I write this update for you from La Venta. This coming week I will return to Santa Lucia for one more week of training, a Spanish exam, and swearing in at the Embassy in Tegucigalpa. If I fail the Spanish test I get 3 more weeks of solid classes before I get to go to my site followed by another test. If I fail the second test they send me home! Don’t worry however I doubt I will fail the first one and don’t plan on failing the next one. I am going to leave it at that for now; I don’t want to spoil everything about La Venta for you today. Enjoy the pics I post and expect another update after the swear in at the embassy.

If I can’t do it today I will try to get more information about Asociacion Nuevo Amanecer and more about La Venta and the surrounding attractions! Love you all. Cliff

I added some pics to the la tigra set, and made a new coffee tasting set. After looking through my stuff I realised there are alot of pics that I want to share not uploaded yet. So expect alot more next update.

Hola guys, Just a quick update, I added some more pics of some of the gorgeous area around Cantarranas. I just want to point out that I am down to two weeks left in my training. My Spanish apparently has taken a turn for the better and I am now finally able to halfway speak to the natives. I don’t really have that much to talk about other then for the last two weeks I have been in some intense language classes. I also gave an AIDS class to a group of kids at a local High School. It was a part of our language/tech training combined. Last weekend we also had a Country Holiday known as Samana Santa, it’s basically Easter but taken a bit more seriously here. For the Thursday and Friday of Samana Santa the entire country shuts down. It’s just as important as Christmas here. For Samana Santa I relaxed and spent time with my host family. They have a farm with a private pool. It is small but pretty deep so it is fun, especially when it is 95 degrees outside. I also did a great deal of hiking and exploring the river area of Cantarranas. You will see in the photos how green the area is, it’s gorgeous. I can’t really think of anything else right now other then I miss you all! Don’t be discouraged by my real short update. Things are winding down as we approach the end of our training. Expect to see a big update in two weeks including the revealing of my site. I will explain all the details then. Since this update has been surprisingly small for me, in the event I have further small updates are there any questions you guys have you want me to answer here? Something you want to know about Honduras, or third world countries. How Peace Corp works or anything for that matter? I have now finally thought of a few things I wish I had… I am going to make an update on the page that will include weird things and stuff I wish I had with me here! With that said, I love you all. Talk to you later. P.S. You can all start making fun of my English, I can feel it degrade as my mind adapts to processing two languages!

I didnt add any new albums I just added pictures to old sets. So if you want to view all the new pictures just click this link to go to the main flickr page and view all the recently added pictures! Or navigate to the Cantarranas set and view the new pics there.

It’s been two weeks, time for a BIG update. Well, a whole lot has happened to me in the last two weeks. I have much to share with you all. I will try to start from the top. Two weeks ago I left, on a Sunday, to our FBT site. We arrived Sunday afternoon in a hot small town called Cantarranas. Our objective here was to learn how to integrate ourselves into a new town. The first thing I noticed is that Cantarranas obviously doesn’t get very many gringos! It had been years since Peace Corps used Cantarranas as a FBT site. Now before I start talking about my family and what activities I have done thus far in FBT I want to talk with you about some of the rich Honduran culture.First off let me explain to you the term Gringo for a second time. I am a gringo, an outsider, a white person. Gringos are white people that come from another country other then Honduras. It is generally assumed that all gringos come from the United States. Even volunteers from Asia, Europe, and other “gringos” are usually just assumed they are from the USA and called gringos. People here stare at you, and not secretly. They will walk right up to you and stare you down. Not in a mean way or in a way were they are angry or prejudice. I can’t really explain it, they do a lot of things I cannot explain but I do not believe it is ever a matter of prejudice. They are simply amazed at seeing someone not brown! They probably think there is no Sun in the USA. So the nickname for white people is Gringo! Understand that in Honduras people are called what they are. I am going to sound somewhat mean here but it is a part of their culture and is not viewed as negative to name someone by how they look. However, if you are fat you are called fat, if you are skinny your called skinny, and If you limp, your called a gimp. You can be called these names by your very own family and it is often used as terms of endearment. It is quiet normal. Women admit they are “Gordo” and are quiet content with it. I had a funny experience with a lady I met in Cantarranas who openly talked to me about how she is “Gorda” or large in size. She didn’t understand why I argued with her in an effort to be polite. She looked at me like I was blind and stupid. So in other words that’s just how it is here. No one takes offense on that kind of thing and as a result it’s used quiet openly. One thing though, asking a women here for her age is equal as it is in the states, it is a big no no! Any how, Gringo’s are you all, white people and in general people who aren’t brown basically. If your American and have dark skin, people here assume your from Honduras. They really get confused when you don’t know Spanish in this case! Part of being a gringo is the attention you receive. You are suddenly the town Super Hero. Quiet a few things happen to all the volunteers here. First off you get the odd staring. People will stare at you for long, long periods of time. Not from a distance or secretly either. One of our volunteer’s host families doesn’t even talk to her during dinner; they just stare at her in amazement. They don’t mean to be rude and aren’t attempting to make her feel uncomfortable, it’s just some of the few things they do. If you’re a male all the women in the town will secretly giggle and talk about you behind your back. Some are less shy and walk up to you and talk to you. If you’re a women the men openly whistle and make noises at you in the streets. It is hard for some women volunteers to adjust to this because here it is not considered harassment; it is just a part of daily culture. The girls in our group are pretty tough though and don’t have any problems. When I walk to class it is normal for every single person to stare at me on the way. At this point I have gotten used to it. Now on top of already receiving all the attention in town if you do any activity out of the norm the natives really go wild! For example, a few of my friends and I enjoy running in the morning before class. When running a few odd things often happen. People whistle and shout at us, not angrily, it sounds more like mocking us or encouraging us. Apparently this type of activity is not the norm. If you run on a road cars will honk at you and people will shout at you with smiles. We actually had a school bus full of kids drive by us one day. The entire bus began to scream at us all the kids were shouting. After they passed we thought it was over, this was at 6:15 in the morning! However they actually turned around down the road a bit and made another pass by us screaming again! Not wanting the added attention we turned up a small dirt road and they finally left us alone. Kids here especially get excited about gringos. They will run after you down the road screaming and laughing. It is pretty fun to see all their faces light up just at seeing us. So it is very different here, some people love you, some people feel invaded. We just have to be very careful. At the same time I want to make it thoroughly clear however that nothing of what I have said was intended to sound negative toward Hondurans. It is hard for people in the United States to relate because we are so used to seeing people of all different types of colors, types, shapes, and wearing different outfits. I really can’t describe it other then having a martin in your home town. Naturally you’re going to be interested in that martin and give him extra attention as apposed to a boring human! Overall however I want to point out that the hospitality here is far above and beyond that of many parts in the states. Many people here are very humble and extremely courteous. It is quiet the experience to see the type of respect you see here. Just a brief example, one of my activities in FBT was to help start a World Map project in the local school. When I first entered a classroom of 40 students, all the students stood up at the exact same moment and said good morning. They said it very sharp and very loud. After that the teacher asked the students to be seated and they all said Gracias and promptly sat down. I have never seen such discipline in such young students. It was amazing. I also want to touch a little bit on the food. Some of you are probably still curious as to what kinds of stuff I eat down here. I can tell you that my diet is pretty repetitive. Being in the states we are naturally used to eating food from many different cultures and back grounds. That influence is not here, Honduras is not a melting pot. I will always get at least one of the following in any meal of the day every day of the week; Beans, eggs, rice, cheese, Plantains and tortillas. Now sometimes I get a combination of all of this, and sometimes I get lucky and eat other things. I have had one hamburger in my stay here; occasionally I get chicken, fish, beef, and a little bit of veggies. I rarely get solid fruit other then plantains, sometimes in the way of a drink. Generally speaking I have to go find my own apples and such. The cheese here is absolutely horrible. It is nothing like I have ever tasted in my life. Growing up here I might think otherwise but I miss the good ole cheese of the United States. I enjoy the plantains; they fry them and are usually drenched in a buttery type of substance. Over all I enjoy the food here but it gets repetitive and generally is not my preferred “healthy” diet. As long as I can keep running and active I shouldn’t have any issues. I did however kind of sprain my ankle this week so I have been sitting on my butt! Music here is awesome. We listen to Regetone, Romantica, and local Honduran music. Some of it is quiet fun. Someone is always blasting music out into the streets. Regetone is great for getting a beat stuck in your head for the whole day. Not only that, you can hear the same beat all day long even though they are all different songs. Some Romantica is really good and a lot of fun to listen to. It all has a real tropical exotic kind of feel to it. I will have to get some music and upload it for you guys to sample. It is quiet fun. I just want to say one thing about Cantarranas. It’s freaking hot here. It’s always at least 90 every day. It is especially bad when after it rains. I quickly started getting flashbacks of being a kid in Houston. At least Santa Lucia was high up in the mountains. Ok, I will summarize kind of what is going on for me in FBT. First off let me just say I got lucky again and probably got the best family in all of Cantarranas. My family is awesome. They help me with Spanish and feed me well! During the days we, trainees, go to a building that we borrowed from the community. For the first 4 hours I study Spanish. I get exclusive one on one teaching from a teacher. It is insanely amazing how much Spanish I now know. While my Spanish isn’t great I can talk more Spanish then people who studied it all through high school and into college. The type of private training I am receiving here would cost a fortune in the states. It doesn’t come with out a price however. I have to spend all my free time studying and constantly learning more. I don’t get to spend as much time with my friends as everyone else does because most of my evenings are spent studying. It’s the price I pay though to stay here and work in this wonderful country for two years. Sometimes I think my English is degrading, maybe it’s a side effect? In the afternoons we do projects in the community. Some of the volunteers are working in the schools doing educational lessons for the youth, others chose business to observe and help. I am working with a photo studio in Cantarranas but I have also helped in the school creating a World Map. Many of the schools here lack an accurate World Map so a volunteer way back in the day created a project called Mapa Mundo. The idea is to have the kids create a world map and talk about the different countries as they make them. Since we were limited with time we drew the map for the kids and let the kids paint over our drawing. You will see some photos in this update of us working on the project. Now, I realize many of you are probably wondering why I am doing all this NON technical stuff in training. The truth is there are only two technical trainees in our team and we are both way competent enough to carry our own weight in the tech world. With a 4 year degrees and certifications to back up my credentials, I don’t need further training in that area. Besides, no one here is qualified to teach me! Right now Peace Corps is focusing on teaching us how we should integrate into the community and how to learn Spanish! When I am done with training my service is going to be in the technical area, no worries! With that said I joined the business team on another trip to a National Park. While, it’s not a technical lesson about networks and IPv6 any chance I can take to get out in the jungles of Honduras I will take! This particular exercise was to demonstrate a potential for Eco-Tourism in Honduras. We went to the Sierra De Algata National Park. The park consists of some extremely lofty mountains with thick forests. Deep within the valleys of this very rugged mountain range are quiet a few coffee farms. These small farmers are nested deep within the mountain and can only travel in and out with oxen, horse, or by foot. No roads go into the mountains, only trails. It is fun to see a wooden cart being pulled by two Oxen. I still need to get a photo of that for you all. I was told that you can walk back into the mountains for 7 hours and constantly reach new places with new farmers. Or for several day trips you can reach the Mosquita area which is where Honduras’s most famous tropical Jungle exists. The tops of the mountains are cloud forests so there is a lot of water, and a lot of water falls. We unfortunately did not get the chance to go that far in. We did however get into the forest and got to see a Coffee Farmer. He used a solar drying house to dry the coffee beans. I didn’t get the details on who or where he sales his crop at. On top of the mountains and the forests this national park has a few natural caves. The caves had evidence of a supposed very old culture, older then the Mayans. More interesting however was the stalactites and stalagmites and the under ground rivers that go through the mountains. I have a few movies for you all to watch so you can kind of experience what I went through. As for the coming days, this next week is the Holiday known as Semana Santa. It is exactly the same as our Easter only taken more seriously here. The whole country shuts down on Thursday and Friday. Likewise we get those two days off. On Wednesday we are doing a culture exchange day with our families here and making different types of foods, sharing music, games, and different activities from the States, and from Honduras. It should be interesting. I can’t really think of anything more right now but I am sure I will as soon as I leave the internet café. I want to apologize to everyone for the long delay in information. Cantarranas has no internet and we had to get clearance from Peace Corps to travel to a different town. It is always a huge security risk when we use public transportation, especially when our language skills aren’t completely up to par. With all that said, know that I love and miss you all! There will be another update in two weeks. Cliff

Sierra De Agalta National Park

Cantarranas

I just did some extensive reorganizing of the photos. Check it out.

Greetings my long lost friends! Oh how I miss thee.

In this update I will cover my first “bacterial infection” along with our departure out of Santa Lucia to our FBT site. I will try to start from the top.

Ok, this week is our last week in the beautiful city of Santa Lucia. What I have learned here is not to judge Honduras based on this town. This is like the Vail of Honduras, a lot of money runs through this town Land Rovers, BMWs and large white houses that you would normally only see in Scarface. Most of Honduras doesn’t quiet live up to Santa Lucia as far as money goes. Any how, we are leaving for 5 weeks to another city, the name of which I cannot remember. I will have it for you as soon as I get the information. All I know is, we will not be in the mountains and it will be hot. Joy…

The point of FBT is to learn how to integrate ourselves in a new city. This will help us integrate ourselves in our sites when the time comes. It also gives us the opportunity to observe other businesses and opportunities in Honduras. FBT stands for Field Based Training. We leave on Sunday.

So to prepare for our departure we went through our second language interviews this week. They use these interviews to see how far along we are coming in our comprehension of Spanish. I have to say I have come a very LONG ways since I arrived in Honduras. Since I had absolutely zero Spanish in my head at the time it was easy to improve. I started at NN, or Novice Novice. I am hoping to hit Novice High or NH. I have to reach Intermediate Medio or IM when the training is over. If I can at least hit Novice High that means that I am on the right track to reaching the goal. Here is the ranking system

· Fluent

· Advanced

o Advanced High (By end of service I hope to be here.)

o Advanced Medium

o Advanced Low

· intermediate

o intermediate High

o intermediate Medium (I need to be here)

o intermediate Low

· Novice

o Novice High

o Novice Medium

o Novice Low (I was here)

It is harder to transition into a new rank the higher you are. For example, to reach Advanced High from Advanced Medium is far more difficult then going from Novice low to Novice High. Today’s interview however shows that I am slowly and surely increasing my competency in Spanish. Expect me to be pretty savvy by the time I get home.

On another note I had my first encounter with a bacterial infection. Yes, Already!!! You know, it is funny. We were joking here at Peace Corps about how comfortable we have become about sharing our bowel movements. However, we have to, in order to look after each other and our health. It is important here to keep a close eye on ones health! In my case on Wednesday morning I came down with a horrid case of diarrhea. It would happen several times an hour. I figured it would pass but nope, it lasted all morning until finally I gave up and called our PCMO.

One of the benefits of being a Peace Corps Volunteer is having 24/7 access to a team of medical experts awaiting your service. In my case I called our PCMO’s (Peace Corp Medical Officers) and filled them in on what was going on. Then I had to do the inevitable….

Do you know what a stool sample is? Yea, I didn’t know what it was either but I had a good guess when they gave me a small cup with a lid on it. Needless to say, and without further description, the sample was easy to get in my condition. Not but less then 2 hours later they called back the training facility and told me over the phone. I was 95% positive for a bacterial infection. The infection would not be known exactly for another 3 days. Regardless however they already prescribed me some medication.

At the time however I felt absolutely horrible while I was on the phone with them. One of the employees drove me into Tegucigalpa to the Peace Corp headquarters. They gave me my first dose of the medication in the medical office and said that if I did not improve in 4 hours they would send me to the hospital. So I slept for 3 hours in the medical office. Well, whatever they gave me was powerful because I started feeling better immediately. Bowel movements subsided, cramps and pain finally started to die down. After 4 hours I was much better and they sent me home back to Santa Lucia.

Again they won’t know exactly what it was for a few more days. The real sad thing is, today at school I felt way better but 3 other volunteers came down with the exact same symptoms, accept some were vomiting. Lucky me I never got that bad. Turns out they all had bacterial infections. It makes me wonder where it came from. We often eat at the same places so it is likely that we got it from food or a drink of some kind.

Either way, the important lesson here was to stay positive. I didn’t die, and I could have gotten the exact same thing in the states, just a different type of bacteria. In fact about 4 weeks before my departure I was hit with some type of food poisoning that was way worse then this. Again however, staying positive and remembering not to let this ruin my experience was the lesson for the week. The truth is, it is going to happen. Over the coarse of two years I am going to get sick, probably a number of times. It is ridiculous to think that I could avoid it. Even in the states that is next to impossible to achieve. Oh well, I feel great now! I wonder what this medication is doing to my liver…..

Hey, I just want to point out real quick the type of amazing people I get to work with here in Honduras. I have to admit that being in the Peace Corp I have met some really incredible people. So I decided to take some pictures of some of us so you could see my new friends. It is interesting to note that the type of relationship you develop with people here is a powerful one because of the circumstance. However, since we are so far away you learn quickly that the folks here are your support group. It also has reminded me however of the special friends I had back home. I miss you guys. There were some important friends I left behind that were truly there for me. More so, I wish you could all experience what I am, and will be, experiencing.

Enough of the gushy nonsense. So in this update I have included pictures of my room and my friends. I should note that in our FBT site (the city we are visiting for 5 weeks) there is no internet. We already discussed this with our program director and I think he will clear us to travel to a nearby town to use internet. However be prepared for my updates to be spaced and lengthy when they come about.

In my next update I will have pictures of my host family that I lived with here in Santa Lucia. Some extremely amazing people would be an understatement. I should also have pictures of the new town I am in. So keep watch. Have a wonderful week guys I will try to post another update either next weekend, or the next weekend!

Nos Vemos.

Cliff

The Pics! of friends

House pics, I cannot add to many because this is someones home. I can only add certain objects of interest like the woodburning stove, ect...

OK,

Technically speaking I was completely lost in Honduras about 28 hours ago. HOWEVER, due to my quick decisive action and keen language skills I was able to become unlost. Lets just pretend that "unlost" is actually a word.

Any how, it started out with a specially little thing Peace Corps does for training. They send out trainees to volunteer's host sites for a weekend. The trainee has to travel on his own to the host site. Then observe the volunteer who works there.

My destination was a town called La Venta, only about 45 minutes out of Teguc. Obviously they didn't want to send me to far since my language skills still need alot of work but unfortunately I got lost any how. I bet my other trainee friends will get a BIG laugh out of this one.... There are two La Venta's around Teguc. One is south of town, the other north. I was suppose to go north.... It was hilarious because we were all joking about how I was going to get lost in Teguc. In a way I kind of did.

I went south, for about an hour before I looked at my map and realised there was another La Venta going north. With what little language skills I had I talked to the bus driver, in spanish, and decided that the La Venta I wanted was north. I correctly turned back around and headed back to Teguc. Got a cab in teguc to another bus stop, then got on the correct bus to the correct La Venta. It was hilarious however, when I got on the second bus it was filled with mostly female passengers. They all sought interest in me and for some reason decided to help me get to where I was going. It was hilarious because I didn't understand a thing they said. They all just continued laughing at me. But in my little bit of spanish knowledge I discerned that they would make sure I got to La Venta. Apparently I was a big hit on the bus, everyone was trying to talk to me. It was real interesting to see the cross cultural differences. They would all ask me a question about the states and I would try my best to answer. The funny thing was, most of the questions were about men, and women, well you get the idea. I guess that's what you get when your a young white male in Honduras. Any how the bottom line is that most people here have incredibly nice hospitality towards foreigners. It was an amazing experience I was speechless when I got off the bus. Everyone on the bus said, "Adios, Los Vemos" all at the same time.

It was pretty scary not knowing where the heck I was going in a world where no one speaks english! I am pretty proud of myself to have been able to identify my mistake and correct it. With that said let me describe to you a little bit about my site visit.

I visited a very intelligent person named Michael. He is a teacher at a local school and teaches advanced computer classes. To my surprise they actually are advanced, very advanced. Everything from programming, networking, and computer hardware information. Kids here are getting some of the best computer education around!

Even though the school is a good size the town is rather small. A few houses, a church, and a dirt road. It is pretty out here though. The area is a bit more arid then Santa Lucia but it has its own appeal. You get that sort of west Texas feeling out here. Hot and with mountains all around you. We hiked up some radical looking cliffs and had a beautiful view of the valley around us. I wish I had my camera!

Apparently white men don't come out here to much so I was a big hit at the school. Everyone was looking at me!

Any how, I will have to unfortunately leave you this update with no pictures. I made a conscious decision not to travel through Tegucigalpa with any of my valuables. Mainly because I don't know the language to well yet and Teguc is a very dangerous city. White men like myself stick out like sore thumbs and unfortunately robbery is a common thing that happens to Peace Corps Volunteers. Since I didn't want to loose anything valuable, I didn't bring anything valuable. As I become more knowledgeable about traveling here then I will feel more comfortable bringing my equipment.

With that said...

I love you all,

Cliff

PS, if you have not seen all my pictures yet look through them!

At last, another weekly update!

Hey guys another update for you to read is here! I am sorry my updates seem to be lengthy, I don’t mean for each update to take a half an hour to read and view. However it is way too difficult to fit everything in.

Today I will share pictures with you that display a day in the life of me as a trainee for the Peace Corp. I should note that I am technically not yet a Peace Corp Volunteer. We each get 11 weeks of training with a very heavy emphasis on language. If I do not meet the minimum requirements for everything before the 11 weeks are up they will send me home.

Fear not however, my language is coming along quiet well and I am not able to discern pretty semi complicated dialogues spoken by Hondurans, and I can comprehend even more if they talk slower.

A typical day at the training office includes 4 hours of solid language classes. All of the instructors only teach in Spanish. English is not allowed. You can imagine how quick your brain kicks in gear in a setting of this sort. Most of the teachers do not speak English, so even if they wanted to help you translate they cant!

On this particular day after our 4 hours of language was up we ate lunch. Some of the pictures you see are of the entire team of 50 lounging and enjoying our hour break on the patio of the Escuela, also known as a school in English. I got some fun panorama pics of the school, especially an amazing intricate tree we have that grows on the patio. PLEASE check them out and tell me what you think. I want to get more feedback from everyone on what they think so far of Honduras and the pictures I have taken.

After lunch we loaded up in the Range Rovers, AKA the Jurassic Park Vehicles. We drove into Santa Lucia and talked with some of the local business’s. In the pictures you will see a local farmer and the city’s lake. We also talked with the local municipal about bringing tourism to Santa Lucia and what types of plans they have to make the town more attractive. You will see pictures of those as well. We walked around town for the remainder of our 9 hour day. We do this often for training for us business/IT guys.

I would like to take a few minutes now and explain to you what is going to be happening to me in the next few months. There is a lot of confusion on what I am doing right now and what I will be doing in the next few months. First off, everyone should know that from the second I wake up, usually at 6:30, my day is packed to the very end, 9:30. I constantly have to remind myself to take pictures and get mental notes of the things that go on during my week. Days here fly by so fast you cannot imagine. It is truly the adventure of a life time; however, the hard stuff is still yet to come.

Even though we have a team of 50 volunteer’s we are split into 3 groups which are Water Sanitation, Health/AIDS, and Business/IT. Each team consists of individual people that are capable of delivering different skills to help benefit their group. As you no doubt have guessed I am the IT guru of our group, Business/IT. Myself and maybe a couple of others will be handling all the training, advice, and any other expertise needed for our team in regards to IT.

Our group has 15 members. Out of the 15 I have the most technical background. Not to discredit my counterparts however everyone in the group comes from a different background with a different expertise. Everyone has something to offer the team and in this way we can work together as a unit.

I have two weeks left here in Santa Lucia, roughly. After these few weeks are up I will temporarily move away from my host family for a several week event called Field Based Training or FBT. Everyone in our group will split off and go by themselves to a site where an existing volunteer is already serving. When we arrive we will have several weeks to learn, take notes, and get an idea of the different types of projects we can do in our future sites. During FBT I will probably live with the volunteer who is already serving there. Lets hope my Spanish drastically improves in the next two weeks!

After FBT is over we move back to Santa Lucia for a short time. The remaining time there will be used for testing of language skills and placement for our service. If we graduate the 11 week coarse we will get placed, by ourselves to a “site” in Honduras.

Sites are small villages or cities scattered throughout the country. The entire Business/IT team will work separately from each other in our own designated sites. We will get placed based on existing projects, or lack of, in the area. Even though our team of 15 is spread across 15 different locations across the country we still work together as team. We will meet often throughout the year to share ideas, plans, and strategies to overcome whatever problem comes our way. We also must stay in contact incase either one of us needs another one of us for information! For example, I am sure many people will be calling me for IT advice.

It is believed but not confirmed that Peace Corp will give us a cell phone during our service. If this is not the case I will purchase a local phone here. That is a ways away however.

To add to this update I spent the whole day in a national park known as La Tigra. I will sort each set of pictures in a separate set so they will be easy to browse through. La Tigra is known as a Cloud top Forest. The plants there get their water from the mist that is in the air. This is the dry season however so it was quiet sunny. We hiked up to just about 6,000 feet above sea level however the highest point in the park is just under 7,000.

In the pictures you will see how insanely lush it is. The forest is nothing like I have ever seen in my life. Many of the plants looked like something aliens brought from another world. We hiked through the nation park with a local NGO group known as Enedh or something to that sort. I apologize if I get the acronym wrong; any how this organization focus’s on the youth of Honduras. The people who we were with today were absolutely wonderful. Our guide knew all kinds of stuff about the forest and the different plants belonging to it.

I did get a few pictures of some orchids, however since it is not the rainy season they had not yet blossomed. Still they are beautiful plants along with all the other beautiful stuff in this forest. The closest type of forest I could relate it to is the Ho Rain Forest in Washington. Later on in my service I hope to visit the tropical rainforests on the northern coast.

To recap real quick on the point of this trip, since it is obviously not really business related or IT related. The Business team attended this hike because it was a team building event along with a chance to establish a good relationship with this NGO. We like to take opportunities like this to improve our relationships with other organizations in Honduras. Well, that was a huge update and I think that is all for now. I love all of you! Talk to you later.

Cliff Rosson

P.S. OK, I just found out Flickr limits my Sets to 3. So I will put all the La Tigra Photos in the Honduras set. Sorry if you see any repeat pictures. I will work on purchasing a pro account so I can keep uploading as many pictures as I can!!!

Day in Class

La Tigra, These are only La Tigra Pictures now

Check out this panaramec view of Tegucigalpa that I took from on top of a mountain in Honduras.

Greetings my friends,

After talking with several of my Peace Corp Trainee friends I have realized that it is wiser to right my blog posts at my sight using MS word, and then copy them over onto my blog when I arrive at the Internet Café shop. For some reason I never though to do this but it makes sense. This way I am not pressured to finish my posts.

My days here are extremely filled and fly by way fast. Today I climbed a huge mountain and got some wonderful pics of the nation’s capitol down below, Tegucigalpa. Tegucigalpa is off limits for us Peace Corp Volunteers. It is considered a huge security risk due to the amount of crime the city has. However, once we have been sworn in we may make occasional trips to Teguc to gather supplies or do things of that sort.

I want to continue to share with you how different things are down here. It truly is a whole different world. In Santa Lucia, the town I am training in, there is a descent amount of wealth. Most family’s that live here are pretty well off. There are also, scattered throughout the village, some pretty richly looking houses. Some American’s have conveniently built some nice retirement homes back in the hills here. In that respect the layout is quiet odd, going from extremely rich to pretty poor looking homes.

Most of the city has a strong colonial feel to it. In that respect it is very beautiful. I am told that I should not base my judgment of Honduras off of my experience in Santa Lucia. The rest of the country is disproportionately in poverty. I can however see strong signs of a poor way of life here. My goal as a Business/IT volunteer will be to help improve the quality of life of different communities in Honduras.

As I stated earlier my house is nothing to spectacular. However, my host family keeps it extremely cozy and even though there is a huge language barrier they take very good care of me. Every eight days they are delivered more water. So showers, washing, and anything that uses water tends to be limited. I can only shower once a day. On days that I play futbol in the evenings it would be disrespectful for me to wash. Showering more then twice a day is considered a waste of water. My host family is kind though and would let me do it any how, out of respect however I plan my showering to accommodate my sports schedule!

I am not allowed to drink any water here accept for bottled water like you would normally purchase in the states. Before I can drink regular tap water I must boil any water for at least 3 minutes. Or, I can use chlorine purifying tablets to cleanse the water. Some say it is best to use both methods! This stuff kills everything that could make me sick, rumor has it though that I could still catch a worm. I won’t get into the details of stomach worms but you probably already have a good idea. If your from the south you already know what I am talking about.

Bugs, bugs, and more bugs. Being here, while even 5,000 feet above sea level, is just like living back in Houston. I can only imagine what it would be like if I was on the wet side of the country, closer to sea level.

In this update I have included links to my hike up in the mountains above Santa Lucia, with Tegucigalpa in the backdrop. The mountains here are extremely similar to what you would expect to see in the Pacific Northwest only lacking the tall volcanos. They are more spaced so they give a more lofty appearance. Whereas the mountains in Colorado are so close together they might resemble a more hilly type of feeling.

I have also included several pictures of my house and what it looks like. The house has 5 rooms, I think. I have not been through all of it since my room is accessible from the outside. My door opens to a small courtyard area where you can access the outhouse or the rest of the house at. Our whole yard is fenced with a gate that will grant you access.

Being at this altitude the wind is always blowing, but it is warm. The clouds here fly faster then anything I have ever seen. There is no way to describe it. It is like watching a video of the clouds moving in fast forward mode. Its incredible.

Any how, time for me to get some shuteye. Check out my pics, and hopefully if I get some time I can post some movies up on here.

I love you all,

Cliff

Check out my picture set of my hike.

This is the movie I wanted to upload the other day of some kids playing for their church in the town park.

Ok I am going to breifly try and answer many questions that have been floating around in my emails. I do not have any new pictures today for you however I am going hiking in the afternoon so sometime next week more pics will be posted!

This is how my daily routine pretty much goes.

I wake up at about 7:30am CST. I climb out of my bed which is surrounded in a huge masquito net. My room is like a seperate building in our house so I have to get my cloths and go outside to the outhouse to take my shower.

My host family only gets new water once every 8 days so my showers must be quick. All my showers are freezing cold, they do not have any heated water. The outhouse is very small, just enough room for a shower, sink, and a toilet. There is a small hand held mirror hanging on the wall for use if needed. After my freezing cold shower I put my cloths on.

I put on a healthy dose of bug spray and head to breakfast that my host mother has waiting for me. She uses a wooden stove to cook everything. No electric heat. She does have a refigerator but I have never looked inside. The meals I eat are primarily, eggs or beans. Sometimes I get an american dish like pancakes or pasta. After breakfast I stumble some spanish words to her in an attempt to say good day and head to class.

It is about an 10 minute walk from my home to the school where I learn spanish. I walk through mid town, all of town is filled with cobble stone streets accept for the main road which heads to the capitol. I walk by a huge lake that is abnormally green. This is due, I assume, to the amount of algae that grows in it. The whole place is extremely lush and plants and trees grow everywhere.

I climb a small hill and finally arrive to the Peace Corp training center. The training center is a beautiful colonial type of building. Surrounded by a 5 to 10 foot wall with barbed wire all around it. There is a door man at all times monitoring who enters and who leaves. I spend the first 4 hours of my day studying spanish. At lunch our host mothers send their children or someone in town to bring us our lunches. We eat for one hour, play basketball or other games like that. In the last 4 hours of my day we spend activities in our programs. My program for example is Business/IT. So yesterday we walked around Santa Lucia and talked to the local business owners. We did thos so we could get a feel for how business is conducted in Honduras.

When the day is over I usually go spend a couple hours at the local park and play Futbol, not football. Or, if I do not do that and if I have some money to spend I come to the internet cafe to update this blog!

After that I go home at about 6:30pm and my dinner is usually ready to go. I eat dinner and practice spanish with my host family untill I go to bed!

I will think of more things to add as I walk around town today. Expect another update sometime this week with pictures included.

Also, there were some questions about a church I went to earlier in the week. Churches here are different and because of my lack of language skills it is hard for me to tell which ones are catholic and which ones are prodestant. They have church at least 3 days a week here, and it usually involves some type of festival. This includes dancing, live music, worship of that sort. It is pretty neat. When I get more time I will upload a movie for you all to watch involving this.

Any how, off I go to explore the mountains!

Again, forgive the spelling. Spell check does not work on these computers and I dont have the time to figure out why!

I love you all!

Talk to you later

Greetings,

I am typing this update to you all from an internet cafe in Santa Lucia. We arrived in the north part of the country on saturday. When I landed I had the fun time of peddling through customs. Turns out that people here like Peace Corp members and we got through quiet fine.

We had a 4 hour bus drive to our training center which is in Santa Lucia. This is directly east of Tegucigalpa which is the capitol. We are about 4700 feet in the mountains.

When we first began our 4 hour drive we were surrounded by dense jungle. Slowly we climbed in altitude and made it over the mountains into the dry side. Our site is conciderd a dry area but it is extremely lush. Flowers grow everywhere naturally. Banana tree´s are littered all throughout the forest. What is very intresting is that now that we are approaching 5000 feet some of the trees are piney looking. Very similar to what you would see in Colorado. At the same time there is a dense and lush beautiful underbrush that accompany´s these smaller sized pine trees.

My town is a smaller sized village that has a real comfortable sleepy feel. It is nice and warm and since the town is on the side of a mountain there are views everywhere.

My host family is awesome! Even though I did not know a lick of spanish when I arrived they are helping me learn. On top of that I have language classes all day so I hope that within a 3 month period I will be able to carry an intelligent conversation. We shall see!

There is so much going through my head that I wish to share with you all but it is hard to take it all in. There is SO MUCH awesomeness! Do you like my word? "Awesomenes". Any how, the food here is also great. My house is a small concrete building with an outhouse for a bathroom. I take cold showers in the morning and my host family cooks dinner on a wood burning stove. There is electricity in my house so when I want to listen to music or get on my laptop I can do so.

All the native Hondurans are excellent people. My host family especially is are wonderful. I wish I could in some way describe the types of emotions and feelings I am getting now. All I can say is, it is like nothing you could ever imagine or dream. I feel like I am in paradise.

I set up a flickr account so I will share my photo albums with you in this way from now on. I also have another movie to share with you. On sunday the local church was playing some music. The people who were playing were young boys. They were pretty skilled and our whole group was impressed. I will get the movie on here as soon as I can.

Love you all!

Cliff

PS Sorry if my spelling is bad. Spell check won´t work!

Pics around Santa Lucia

Click on the picture of the sunset to view more of my pictures.

Well as it turns out 2 inches of snow in Washington DC was the result in our canceled flight. Now I will not be flying out until Saturday. Our Peace Corp Group is going to be split into two. Half of us will fly out on Saturday and the other half on Sunday. We are all very disappointed but still have high spirits.

On the plus side we received an extra day of vacationing and sight seeing. Tomorrow we will start a day of training here in the DC area.

Winter in Washington DC is rare, as always I find ways to entertain myself in snow. To keep you all entertained since I am obviously lacking pictures of Honduras I have a short film of me being a genius on the ice!

P.S. I also just added a few more pictures.

View of Capitol from inside the Washington MonumentView of the painting inside the main dome in the capitol

Good Evening,

It is 7:24pm in Washington DC. We volunteer's of the Peace Corp are getting prepared to depart to Honduras. Our international flight leaves tommarow at 6am. We have a long day ahead of us.

There are 51 volunteer's total going to Honduras. These talented young individuals will be participating in three major programs. Water sanitation, Health/HIV, and Business/IT. I belong to the Business/IT team. Beyond that, I am not familiar with the details of my tasks yet or where exactly I will be located.

I want to thank everyone who helped me off on this trip, you all mean alot. I have spent the last day and a half in an orientation with all the new volunteers. There are truely some wonderful people here. In less then 24 hours we will all be in Honduras!

As for myself, I am doing extremely well. I arrived in DC a day early and was privlaged enough to spend a morning visiting all the sites. I have provided some pictures for you all to enjoy! Email me if any of you have any questions, my internet access will be limited at first but I should be able to return most everyone's emails.

Love ya!

Cliff

Click on the image for a enlarge.

You win at life if you can tell me which mountain this is. (My Hammersmith friends better not fail me on this one!)

I got a great shot of this while flying into Denver back from vacation. I also got a great shot including an overall view of the Front Range with Mt. Evans in the background and you can also spot out Eldora Ski area in the same pic. If your interested in those pics just ask and I can email them.

When I get a chance to get off and on some broadband I will upload a fun little video of me flying past Mt. Hood in Oregon on my way into the Northwest.

Cliff

Greetings my friends!

Welcome to my blog space I made to keep everyone up to date!

As most of you know I am going to be spending the next 27 months in Honduras starting next Wed. I will use this webspace to post pictures and keep all my friends and family up to date.

I still have a few days left in the Pacific Northwest before I ship out. It is insanely beautiful up here. To bad I will not get to spend more time. One thing is for sure however, we hit a high of 49 degrees today and I cannot begin to describe how balmy that feels after this winter in Colorado.

I won't be writing to terribly much just yet. I am going to save the most timely material for when I get into Honduras. For now however I can share with you the beautiful woods of the Pacific Northwest. These pics are right at the foothills of the Cascades. Just outside my grandparents backyard!!!

Hey, I wonder if I could wear this? This would be a great toupee one day!

That is a beaver dam!

This Sunday I fly out at 7:40am to Washington DC. Expect an update for that lengthy plane ride! If any one knows where I can host allot of pictures for free on the web let me know!!!

Cliff