The Daily Grind

Ok so I´m doing these all at once...

I wake up at 5:30 am, make my bed, and then go to the kitchen/family room where I awkwardly watch Suyapa make my breakfast and lunch. Our families provide us with all of our meals. They receive a daily allowance for us, that is supposed to cover these types of costs. Suyapa hasn´t really let me participate in the kitchen much beyond stirring some vegetables.

So breakfast has pretty much become cereal with milk and bananas. They like to heat up their milk, but Suyapa knows that the gringa likes her milk cold. This morning I had pink (supposedly strawberry flavored) oatmeal, fried tortillas with quesio (strong cheese). FRIED FRIED FRIED. GREASE GREASE GREASE. Now that pretty much all of the trainees are having stomach problems the doctors always say "´Don´t eat too much grease. Try to stay away from fried food." Trying to explain that to Suyapa is like asking her to stop living!

So after I eat my breakfast the hot water is ready. Suyapa takes the boiling water into the bathroom, puts it in the bucket and then combines it with cold water from outside. I stand there, shaking, attempting to rinse all the soap out of my hair and my body all in one go. I think my showers last less than 5 minutes now because it´s so cold.

After that I get dressed, finish getting ready for training and then walk to meet the 10 other people who live in my vecino. We then walk about 15 minutes up to the bus stop, where the bus Peace Corps hired to take us all to training, picks us up. There are three stops and we then arrive at the training center at 7:30 am. We have language classes for four hours, where we are separated into levels of experience/fluency. I´m in intermediate low. My language teachers should be ashamed! Hah just kidding.

After language we have lunch for an hour. Now lunch is a topic that needs to be discussed. In Honduras, it is extremely rude not to eat ALL of the food provided for you. There are a lot of stray dogs running around our site, but it´s poor manners to feed the dogs anything more than bones. Therefore, we are all forced to eat everything that is provided for us! That´s a lot. For instance, the girls get portions most men would be satisfied with, and the men get 2x what they need to eat. So if I have spaghetti for lunch, I also get fruit, vegetables, beans and inevitably tortillas, with which I am intended to use as a utensil for to eat my spaghetti. Yes, you eat carbs with carbs. Yum. I´ve been having stomach problems and I seriously can say it´s because I´ve been eating too much.

By the end of lunch we´re all groaning because the though of another bite makes us all want to be sick. More than we already are. One kid, Matt, seems to be the garbage disposal for the group because he is forever hungry. I haven´t gained weight, amazingly, but I had to have a serious talk with Suyapa BEGGING her to give me less food. I told her it was making me sick and she finally cut back A LITTLE. Last Saturday, I woke up at 7:30 and ate cereal with the kids. Then, when Francis woke up at 10 am we had to eat again! I protested, but the food was already made and served, so I had to partake of it.

Anyways, lunch is our social hour when the entire training group gets together and finally gets to speak some Spanish and relax. We have a great group and everyone is really fun. We laugh a lot and it seems like we´ve known each other for much longer than one week. It seems like I´ve been here longer than one week. Time flies when you´re having fun.

So after lunch we divide up to have security training (whoa man Honduras is dangerous. Sorry guys it´s true.), culture lessons or divide into our sectors and do job related funness. We have three sectors in this training class: health, business and water and sanitation (the best ever!)

At 4:30 we hop back on the bus and head home. We eat at 5:30, and now that I finally have homework I do that and then generally go to bed around 8 pm. These are the joys of living in the campo (country).

That´s my daily schedule thus far guys. We are in Zarabanda for three weeks before the move (by sector) to our Field Based Training. Here we will continue our language training while working more specifically on our job stuff. We´re in Pespire, where it will be very hot. Yuck. Right now, in Valle, it´s about 60-70º. The weather changes so fast here, it can get kind of annoying.

Next I´ll try to elaborate more on the security and my new friends! PS I´m not editing these. No time when you´re paying for every minute.