Some ladies in the women's group I work with make pinatas to help supplement their income. One day they let me help, and even taught me to make my own. They didn't know, but it just so happened that I finished the day before my birthday :)

PS. Don't make fun of the Barbie adornment, haha

There are some other “gringos” (North Americans) who live in town, and I guess I had mentioned that I had gone to some caves up in the mountains, so they had asked me to take them there. Well, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to find the caves again on my own, so I called up my friend M and asked him if he would take us.

In Honduras, everything takes longer than it ought to. Hondurans know that in the scheme of things, another 15-30 minutes more really doesn’t matter. M said, sure let’s go, but then when we went by to pick him up, he said, well, actually I don’t really remember where they are…let me call a friend… Long story short, 1 ½ hours of wild goose chase later, we head off with M’s dad (to give you an idea of the extent of this chase: at one point, the mayor was called). We decide, since we have a car, to go to some caves that are farther away, maybe ½ hr drive? (there are more than 20 caves in my municipality) Being lucky enough to have a car, we are asked to run a small errand on the way (½ hr drive turns into almost an hour). We were told it would then be a 1 km walk (translate: 3 km). And then afterwords, there would be a good, deep swimming hole nearby (translate: fairly shallow river). Right before we leave (by now, around 11 AM), the gringos inform me that they have to be back in town by 2:00. Ha! We got back at 6:30.

BUT, the walk was gorgeous!!! The caves were amazing!!! And the swimming was so fun!!!

This river had a medium current, I would say, and was just deep enough that if you were careful, you could float… so we went “rafting” down the river. Maybe not the safest activity – the current flipped me head over heels twice, I got a little banged up on the rocks, and I was somehow nominated guardian of M’s sister, who was not a very confident swimmer. But it was so much fun – like a natural water park ride. And then farther down the river we found some delightfully chilly waterfalls feeding into the river, and a swimming hole that might have been deep enough to jump into (I decided I had tested my luck enough already and didn’t try).

This is why I love Honduras, despite the tendency to bend the truth and not keep track of time. It's gorgeous and natural and untouched...and having fun doesn't have to involve paying to be entertained...

Agatha made it quite rainy here for a week or so, and my house flooded, but no serious damage was done in my town.

I went to go visit a friend this weekend who only has one bus a day in and out of her site... I almost missed the bus up there. I'm really spoiled to live where I have regular transportation.

I found turtle food for my turtle - (s)he seems to like it a lot better than the other stuff I was giving him/her. Sometimes (s)he'll eat while I'm still standing there watching... I think it's really cute... (S)he kinda snaps at the food, as if (s)he's afraid the food pellets will try to get away.

I saw the craziest lizards (iguanas?) chasing each other around in my yard today. I wish I could've gotten a picture - they were maybe a foot and a half long. I was afraid for a minute they were going to run right in my door... not sure what I would've done with two iguanas running around my house.

I seriously think Honduras ruins technology. I'm always asked to read instruction manuals and fix various machines. I know I'm not a tech genius, but wow, trying to fix Honduran technology makes me feel stupid. Also, computer viruses travel through air here, I think. I wish these Honduran computers would stop sneezing on each other.

I no longer teach English - just couldn't do it any longer. I spend my time about half and half between the municipality and the cultural center. Got approached about a possible water project...that would be super cool - fingers crossed!

Me: Hey, so my roof was leaking last night H: Yeah, it’s because it was raining so hard last night Me: Yeah, but it was leaking pretty bad…. It was like it raining inside my house H: Yeah, everyone is having the same problem, it rained really hard last night Me: Well, I think the roof might be bad. My whole house is flooded H: No, everybody’s having that problem, look at those puddles (outside) Me: No really, my whole house is flooded. The roof is bad. It hasn’t leaked like this before. H: No, that’s because it rained really hard last night. But OK fine, I’ll talk to Y (my landlord) and see what he says

Me: Thanks, that’d be great

I'm positive my landlord won't think it's necessary to do anything. Luckily I was at home when the rain started so I was able to get (almost) everything of the floor and out of danger. We'll see what happens next time...

Went to a little rural community, Las Delicias, on Thursday… I went with a guy who told me that this community had just gotten a handful of computers in their new community center, and they were hoping for someone to teach them basic computer skills. I was relatively excited to start, and I figured it’d be fairly easy, especially since I have a complete set of lesson plans and powerpoints from some previous volunteers. The community is gorgeous, too. Well, we get there, and he takes me to an elementary school. They don’t actually have any computers, but what luck, they need an English teacher. Perfect…

To make a long story short, the grand total is now 18 English classes a week.

Eighteen.

Five days a week.

18.

What have I gotten myself into?!?

I’m also completely sick of Honduran men. Just because I’m white, I’m somehow considered one of the most beautiful women in my community. And being beautiful is a perfectly legitimate excuse for a Honduran to fall in love with someone. Oh yeah, and age doesn’t matter, either. Nor does being married.

Needless to say, I’ve had a great week. …. I wish sarcasm was typeable….

Oh, my friends came back, though, haha. They were planning on staying at least a year up there, and ran out of money in a week. Good planning, guys. Cracks me up.

The news here is that my two best friends in site decided last week that they were going to move to the Bay Islands permanently on Sunday (tomorrow). The idea apparently started as a joke, and neither of them really want to go, but now that they've agreed to it, they think that they can't back out, because they're men of their word, or something like that. Not sure I understand, but it stinks.

So I've started teaching 12 English classes a week. Now as far as I can remember, being a teacher has never been one of my aspirations. But that’s beside the point. Only one of the two elementary schools in town has an English teacher, although English is a required subject from 4th through 6th grades. So, the director of the other school asked me when I first came to town if I’d help teach English and I said sure because I had nothing else to do at the time. Actually, as I remember, he told me that I was going to teach English (he’s an awesome person, btw, don’t want to sound bitter). It’s been a rather mixed experience so far in my first 2 weeks. There are probably about 400 students in the school, and I teach each of them once a week. My largest class is 42 students (26 of whom are boys). My smallest class is at least 25, probably 30. The students are extremely affectionate, especially the girls. They don’t have English books that I’ve seen, so common practice in general is for the teacher to either write down or dictate everything for the students to copy down by hand. In my 5th grade classes the other day, I realized they didn’t know the pronouns – and these students have supposedly had a year of English. Even the 6th graders were struggling with the verb “to be.” While most of the classes are fairly well behaved, in my largest class (5th grade), the poor teacher (a young woman) has absolutely no control over her students. I’ve never heard anything resembling silence in that classroom. I struggle with planning lessons without any materials, especially since I don’t want to be just another teacher that teaches by copying and memorization. This doesn’t always work so well. I tried to do a simple little activity in a 2nd grade class the other day – find a partner and greet them in English, then switch up and do it again. They didn’t want to do it, so I offered them the option, “Look, we can either do this activity, or you can copy down what I have on the board.” They told me they’d rather copy. What?! Other students have outright refused to do anything when I ask them to. I usually just ignore them and hope they get bored of not doing anything. I also wonder how in the world I’m supposed to teach anything in only 45 minutes a week. There’s no way they’re going to remember anything from one week to the next. And of course I’m sort of uncomfortable with the whole imperialism of teaching English in general – the director introduced me to my first class by saying, “Now you need to pay attention to Teresa, because who knows how many of you will go off to the States to work.” Now, I don’t have any problem with immigrants to the States, and I understand why they go, but I’m not teaching English to encourage it. I can just imagine how much more might get accomplished in Honduras if everyone put their efforts into working here in their own country rather than into going to the States. So then the question remains, why is it exactly that I’m teaching English? And I’m left without a good answer.

But at least I'm not bored....

I'm realizing once again why I don't usually keep a blog: I can't keep it updated. I can try to blame it on the lack of internet connection in my site, but it really has more to do with me being lazy.

But I'm in the USofA this week and have no excuse not to write, so I'll try to give a brief update:

End of Nov: went to San Marcos de Colon in the south to celebrate Thanksgiving. It was the first time I was allowed to leave site, so it was super exciting to see everyone and to eat US food :)

Dec: moved into my own house! its really nice, and in an awesome location. I have a full size stove/oven, but no fridge. although I loved my host family, I appreciate not having to eat huge quantities of food anymore

English classes officially peter out. I usually only had 2 kids come, and although they actually really were sweet kids, I couldn't bring myself to continue. My casa de la cultura hosts a week-long music/drama/painting/reading/writing camp with teachers from San Pedro Sula. I helped out with the music classes (OK, I really just wanted to learn guitar) and made a couple friends, both here in town and with some of the guys from SPS. We had a really nice program at the end of the week, but I haven't been able to practice much since. Doesn't help that I don't have a guitar.Parents and brother come to visit Hondu! Consensus is Honduras is beautiful (I told you so). Dale has pics up on facebook if you want to check them out. We spent a week in/around my site, went up to Tela for a day (it was raining the whole time, boo). Then Dale had to leave, but the parents and I continued on to Copan Ruinas and Gracias, Lempira

Jan: recovered from vacation, visited Kathy for her town's feria

In the process of trying to free the catastro (sort of like the city assessor?) guy's computer from its 400+ viruses, I end up making the computer work even worse... with the help of another volunteer, I'm hoping I can rebuild his computer soon - I'm also currently trying to re-learn AutoCAD (this time in Spanish) so that he can use a mapping program that he actually understands, instead of MicroStation in English

Feb: went to reconnect (week-long meeting of everyone in the municipal development project) and spent the weekend in Teguz

learned that my grandmother had passed, and came home for a week to be with family

and now you're up-to-date!

This upcoming week, I'll be doing a lot of translating for a group from Wisconsin that gives scholarships for school supplies to students in my town - hope I haven't forgotten all my Spanish in these last two weeks - I've already discovered that I can't speak English anymore

Being in the USA makes me miss my little 7,000 person town in good ol' Hondu. I can't handle Walmarts and multiple lane roads and not being able to walk anywhere...also its freezing!

I know I haven't posted for awhile - but I am still alive and kicking here in Hondu. One of the things my site is famous for is its caves. Right outside the town on the main highway, there's an entrance with lights, and I think walkways. I haven't been. But up in the mountains there are unmarked entrances as well. One of the reasons they're famous is because (apparently) so many people have gotten lost in them. My guide book encourages adventurers to be careful and consider hiring a guide at the main entrance. One of my Honduran friends offered to take me the back way, and of course, I took him up on the offer. He and his friend (we'll call him Oscar...All Hondurans have at least four names. When you ask their name, they will tell you all four of them, but won't tell you what they go by, often a different nickname. One of his names was Oscar, but that's not what Alan was calling him. However, I could never catch exactly what he was actually calling him) had been before, and assured me they knew the caves well. I should have suspected something, I suppose, when they couldn't even remember how to get to the entrance. After finally getting there, and probably about an hour of caving, we reached a large, spectacular cavern with no easy way to continue, rested for another hour or so enjoying the complete darkness, and decided to head back. And promptly got lost. (Honduras is spectacularly rich in natural beauty. And Hondurans take very little notice of it. In the US, you would never find a cave like this without lights, walkways, and big signs telling you not to touch the rock formations. Here, Alan decided he wanted to climb one of the formations – and did so. Made for a much more exciting (also, free!) experience for us, and once you learn to ignore the occasional discarded food wrappers... Well, it's incredible. But it also means that so many people will miss out on its beauty. It's a dilemma.) I think the caves diverged and then by some stroke of luck, re-converged later. We definitely did not come and go by the same path, but miraculously got out to the same entrance. Oscar was serving as our guide and several times had to go on ahead to scope out paths. I, of course, hadn't been paying special attention to our route, because I had come with two guys who knew what they were doing, right? We did eventually get out, obviously. Ah, the joy of seeing outside light after hours of only the weak light of two puny flashlights. I came out covered in mud and bat droppings (doing laundry was fun), a huge bruise on my leg and several scratches all over (what d'ya know – one of the disadvantages of not having lighted, safety-railing-ed walkways is that you have to navigate over loose, slippery, muddy rocks around bottomless abysses), but alive to tell the story, and with some good pics of Alan climbing a stalagmite (I'll upload someday). Oh, and after we got out, Alan insisted that he knew the way to a great lookout spot. Ha. And I still hadn't learned. At least then we were outside and could see where we were walking. And when we were still out there when it got dark, we already had flashlights on us from exploring the cave :) But it was totally worth it. PS, who wants to visit me? I'm a total caving expert by now :) And now for your Spanish lesson:cabello – hair caballo – horse If, for some strange inexplicable reason, you happen to mix up these two words, any sane Spanish speaker (or host sister) will be doubled over with laughter for at least five minutes. Just a warning.

1. All meetings include at the very least a cookie and a drink (although it's often soda) and if you're lucky, a full, hot meal served in styrofoam boxes – the best box lunch I've ever had. I think it would be even easier to go for a month without anything other than free food than it was at UVA – but perhaps my energy is better spent elsewhere here :)

2. The Environmental Office guy is in charge of collecting said styrofoam boxes and plastic soda bottles, presumably to burn them with the rest of the trash – and no one sees any irony in this.

3. It's perfectly acceptable to answer your phone and have a conversation in the middle of a meeting. Or arrive halfway through a meeting.

4. Sodas in glass bottles are served with straws half as long as the bottle is tall.

5. All meetings start with prayer, even official city council meetings. In fact, official city meetings with the sole purpose of praying for the town are perfectly acceptable, if not expected. Said meetings ending in what could only be described as 15 minute prayer shouting match are also perfectly acceptable.

6. I've been here a week and have been on TV three or four times already (I'm assuming – I haven't seen myself, but I've been video taped at least four times. My counterpart showed up one day with absolutely no warning, two guys with camera equipment in tow, and told me to introduce myself to the community. The other times were just while I was in meetings.)

7. My town has a library that actually lends out its books. Many libraries here only allow you to read their books inside the building. Also, it's just the right size to have a “mini-super” market, as well as a market every Sunday that extends for blocks, selling anything imaginable

8. My counterpart is awesome. And eats even faster than I do – like Dale speed.

9. The school across the street from me has offered me free use of their internet whenever I like :)

10. My house has an awesome hammock. And a cat that likes to cuddle.

11. I'm close to Amy Wier – 'nuf said :)

golpe de estado (coup d'etat) and toque de queda (curfew)

The short version: I'm STILL not a Peace Corps Volunteer

The long version:

Monday – Mel Zelaya decides to return to Honduras

3:30 – curfew announced (starting at 4:00), teachers freak out, because our training center is at least half an hour from Teguc where they all live, we all go home early

I start feeling sick, but don't think anything of it

Tuesday – curfew extended, no classes, I stay in bed all day feeling pretty awful, curfew extended again

Wednesday – I do not receive the news about not having class again, get up and get dressed, despite still having a fever of 101, learn that there is no class and go immediately back to bed. I'm hungry at lunchtime, someone decides that an appropriate lunch would be french fries, greasy rice, and fake processed chicken nuggets. I start to have stomach issues and skip supper. I get a call from the medical officer asking if I'm sad because my family is worried about me since I've spent 2 days in bed. I tell her, no, I'm just sick

Thursday – feel much better, fever is gone, but still having stomach issues. We learn in training that because we've missed so much time (2 days), we have to postpone swearing-in 5 days (granted, only 3 of those 5 days are weekday/classes). We then proceed to do practically nothing all day. I eat 4 crackers for lunch, then manage to sneak out to take a power nap. Also, I have my language interview and learn that I've passed the language requirement for serving in Honduras! (I'm at a level 5 on a scale of 1 to 10.. I think that means I can only say half the things I might need to say in order too survive.. but pssh, that was while I was sick.. ha.)

Friday - a day of classes aka not much all day. We had reservations for a restaurant afterwords to celebrate being sworn-in.. HA! We didn't even get to take advantage of those reservations because Zelaya was creating noise in Teguc and there was a curfew put in place again that night

Saturday (today) - I wake up feeling good, and decide to go for a walk to a waterfall, but start feeling awful on the way there. I worry that it might have been a mistake, but after forging up the river to the fall I feel 100% better. totally worth it, it was gorgeous.. one day I'll get pics up

I've decided there are a couple foods that have to be brought back to the states... one is mantequilla, which I believe is a strictly Honduran thing. Spanish speakers will know that mantequilla means butter. Well, not here... Honduran mantequilla is a wonderful, wonderful thing... sort of like sour cream, I guess, but different.... It's delicious with everything, from fried plantains to beans to pancakes..

Baleadas are my favorite food here, definitely.. flour tortillas (the only time they ever eat flour tortillas is baleadas) with refried beans, scrambed eggs, and mantequilla. When Kathy's host mom makes them for us, though, she usually puts avocado in as well. it's wonderfulness..

and finally, fresco de avena.. (or oatmeal drink) two scoops of oatmeal (I guess it would be like instant oatmeal) a little sugar and cold water... so good and refreshing...

I've also decided (as if there was ever any doubt in my mind before) that I never want to be famous... As an example, I was making a banner the other day on my front porch. you know, just writing feliz cumpleaños on a big sheet of paper.. and had no less than 7 kids crowding around me, touching me, crawling on the paper, asking me what I was doing, which marker I wanted, offering to draw on my banner for me...

I've been told that I'll be working with catastro (sort of like a mix between city assessor's and planning) and a school in my site. My mayor is known for being honest and is expected to win the election this year. I'll also be near some other volunteers from my group. On Thursday, I'll find out where my site actually is...

OMIGOSH WE SAW A REAL LIVE BAND TODAY! It was so cool.... It makes me miss band a lot :( Music is not a regular part of Honduran education, sadly...

Also, the other night, I think I accidentally told my host family that I liked wrestling, and had to watch it with them all night.

Sorry, I always forget my good stories whenever I finally get to the internet. don't have much time right now, trying to catch a bus soon.

The other day, my host mom brought home some exotic Honduran fruit that I didn't recognize at all... Excited to try this new fruit, I asked her what it was...... They were uvas (grapes). haha.. I guess I was just convinced that since we were in Honduras, clearly it couldn't be something familiar like grapes.

We're half way through with field based training (A month and 3 days from swear-in, and only about 3 weeks until we find out our sites!). We've started our semi-individual projects in the surrounding communities.. considering my still terrible Spanish, I had mixed feelings about our project, because I was afraid that my group would just get in the way. But after starting it yesterday, I feel much better. The guy we were going to work with is out of town until September 6 or something, but we were able to help another lady who has been having trouble with some software. She had (as far as I understand) been copying charts from the tax software cell-by-cell into excel to play with the numbers, but we were able to figure out how to export the data into excel almost perfectly. So hopefully her work will get a lot easier after this. Our next step is to figure out what she's trying to do with the data and see if we can help her with that.

We've been here in Honduras for about 2 weeks now... about a week of regular training, and then our first week of field based, so our training group is now split up into our three different projects. It's hot, but not like the DR. I live in a house connected to another volunteer, so we basically we share two families. I did my laundry by myself for the first time yesterday - my wrists were really sore all day.. Kathy and I both got in trouble for not cleaning our clothes well enough, though...

Just wanted to give you these two links. The first is a video that one of the other trainees put together of our training thus far. The second is my flickr, which has some photos, although I haven't taken many :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnnGN9tDKTg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigpinkt/

Still in Miami.

Honduras is not happening tomorrow. Sometime soon, si Dios quiere. Current Honduras volunteers are still in their sites. We will continue our training here in Miami for at least a couple of days

We got up this morning at 3:30 to go to the airport, with plans to arrive in Teguc around 1:00 local time (3:00 Dominican/eastern time). To make a long story short, it's now 5:30 and we JUST got to a hotel in Miami.

So yeah.

Honduras may or may not happen tomorrow....Si Dios quiere, as they say

As Phil noted, yes, we only have electricity part of the day..... at the training center, we have a generator, so I don´t notice the power outages as much. it seems to generally come on in the evening..maybe somewhere between 7 and 9, but turns off around 6:30 or so, when I wake up. Water and internet are the same way... Everyone has huge plastic canisters to store water whenever it comes, to use later in the week. As I understand it, the shortage comes from the utility companies not being paid enough by the government, so they´ll just shut it off whenever they feel like it so they don´t lose money.

Our barrio has unpaved streets and very few sidewalks.. Maybe I´ll have time to upload pictures someday.... The driving here is crazy in general (not in our barrio, but on the surrounding streets.. traffic lanes are poorly marked, if at all, and even then are really just suggestions :) it´s not uncommon to see someone driving the wrong way on the shoulder of the road - especially on a motorcycle.

A couple days ago, we got to visit one of the volunteers here in the DR. It was cool to talk to him, but since the Peace Corps doesn´t do Municipal Development in DR, we (the Muni D´ers) went to a youth volunteer´s post instead. It was exciting, though.

We recieved official word today that we will, indeed, be going to Honduras! We´ve been planning on it all along, but it wasn´t official until now. Our swearing in date was pushed back a week to giveus some extra time for training. Of course, the situation could escalate at anytime and plans could change, but for now it looks like its actually going to happen. They say that Hondurans speak a lot slower than Dominicans, which is good, because I still can´t understand anybody here....

My life here can prettty much be summed up as: I can´t speak spanish, I can´t stop sweating, and I itch all over (mosquito bites plus heat rash = ick) haha, fun times...

Over the weekend I got to go to the beach (Bocachica). It was a lot of fun... the water was really shallow and warm.. it rained a little, but ended up being a really nice cool day. Last Thursday, we went to a car wash...which is more exciting than it sounds.. the car washes here are the place to hang out. They actually are car washes during the day, but the at night, they turn into bars. It was a lot of fun, and we got to try out our new found merengue and bachata dancing skills. Everywhere here plays really loud music. I´m lucky that my window faces away from the local shop (colmado) so I don´t get too much noise at night. Oh and last Wednesday, I think, we got to go into Santo Domingo.. They have a pedestrian street, just like good old c´ville!

The power and internet were both out all day today..it was pretty unbearably hot. Luckily this internet center has AC (must have a good generator) and somehow the internet is working :)

They say that the national religion of the Republica Dominicana is baseball, and the national sport is gossip. Well, the other national sport is dominos. I didn´t think dominos was a difficult game until two days ago. The people here play so fast, and are able to keep track of all the dominos as they´re played. When they count the score, even if there are 15 (or more) dominos left, they can add up the points in a matter of seconds. And they´re not blow trying to trick the gringos into giving them more points than they deserve ;) If you hesitate in playing, they will skip your turn, and even so, we slow down the game a lot. It´s really amazing... but of course every evening is spent with at least a couple hours of dominos before dinner, and they´ve probably been playing since they were kids..

I really like this community.. it´s super mixed use and dense, although not too overcrowded, and really close-knit, but also very wlcoming and hospitable. Oh, and I already resond to ¨gringa¨ just as well as ¨Teresa.¨

...and realizing how little Spanish I know, haha... I'm definitely one of the worst speakers here, but the range of ability is large, and I'm not alone, so I suppose there's hope... My host mother has two daughters, one 14 and one 3, and a little white kitten, but I have an extremely hard time comunicating with them. I just say si and gracias a lot. Yesterday evening I got to play Dominos with the vecinos. I'm lucky to be living next to two other volunteers, so we can help each other understand. Dominos is theoretically a simple game, but the strategy is stilll over my head, and they play so fast its hard for me to keep up. The food has been really good too, especially the pineapple, and the mangos that grow at our training site...

oh, so my birthday in Miami turned out pretty good after all. Four of us decided to go to the beach, even though the weather didn't look too good. Thinking we were being super prepared, we all wore jeans and brought our raincoats and umbrellas. Of course, as soon as we got there, the sky cleared up and it became extremely hot and sunny. :( The highlight for me though, was running into two other groups of PCTs who had found out that it was my birthday and sang to me. by the way, I'm not the youngest. There are at least 2 volunteers younger than me.

Because the Peace Corps wants to remain as apolitical as possible, they have decided it's not a good idea for us all to go to Honduras right now. Instead, we will be sent to the Dominican Republic for a couple of weeks of training, until the situation (hopefully) blows over. The don't think the situation is a serious threat at this point and all the current Honduran PCVs are remaining at their posts. Since this change in plans happened yesterday, we're not all flying together anymore - some of us are leaving tomorrow, and some of us (including me) are leaving on Thursday. I think we're all really excited that we get to experience two countries for the price of one, so to speak. Also, in DR, it's possible that I'll have internet connection more readily available :)

Made it safely to Miami. Haven't heard anything more about the coup, other than what CNN tells me. I expect I'll know more tonight. Registration starts soon, so I need to go downstairs, I guess.

I had a conversation recently with a gentleman (who was very nice, don't get me wrong) but who basically told me he thought the Peace Corps was a waste of the government's money. So, somewhat in response to him, I thought I'd post this link. The Bible has a lot to say about the poor that often gets overlooked, and I don't understand why (well, other than the fact that we like being rich). As for whether this is the government's role or not, now that's a different question. I believe yes, I know others would say no. But the Bible leaves NO doubt that we are to care for the poor. I'm not smart enough to look all these verses up/write intelligent comentary, but I think this is pretty quality: http://www.zompist.com/meetthepoor.html.

Just one of the (many) reasons I'm liberal.

I've created this blog to update my family and friends on my travels and keep a record of my adventures. If you're reading this, you probably already know that I'll be in Honduras with the Peace Corps from June 30 til mid-September, 2011.

I'm leaving tomorrow for Ohio for a short family vacation (then to Miami for a day of "staging"/orientation, then on to Honduras). I probably won't have internet access for a couple of weeks, but I'll update when I can!

I've pretty much finished packing - I've got two suitcases, totaling about 73 pounds, and two carry-ons, to last me two years...woo!

While I won't have internet, you can always use snail mail :) This will be my address until mid-September:

PCT Teresa McCoy Cuerpo de Paz Apartado Postal 3158 Tegucigalpa, D.C 1110 Honduras, America Central

In the meantime, I'll post some thoughts on why I'm doing this, since everyone has been asking. There are many reasons, of course but it seems to boil down to three primary reasons:

1. For me right now, I see no point in living if I'm not helping someone else.... (Not being a people person complicates things a little here, but hopefully I can work that out... haha)I belive I'm here for a purpose... or at least that I need to have a purpose (I think those are slightly different..basically, life is meaningless if it doesn't have a purpose, and I don't think/don't want my life to be meaningless, so I must have a purpose, right? (wow, I'm bad at explaining things)) But I have been blessed beyond belief to have been born into a wonderful family in the United States of America. I have been provided with enormous support and resources, and I refuse to squander that blessing (at least not entirely) on myself and my own selfish desires. Maybe this is still selfish, because at the very least, I will feel better about myself for at least attempting to help someone else :) Thoughts?

2. I get bored easily, and the thought of going to work in an office 40 hours a week makes me want to cry (I did that for the past couple months and barely survived...)

3. And of course there is the added bonus of getting paid (however little it may be) to travel outside of the USA :)