January 25, 2007

Comments

Please feel free to leave comments on the blog. I just realized today that they are there. So thanks for commenting Aunt Lora, Cousin Sarah, Jordan, and person from cyberspace with Peace Corps questions. As things progress and we actually leave the country it will be nice to know folks are checking in, and it may motivate us to write more if people act interested. Remember that comments can be read by anyone as this "blog" thing is completely public and can be accessed by anyone with internet, sort of like overseas phone calls these days......someone is listening.

Anyhow, in an attempt to encourage people to "comment" I have a trivia question... it is agriculturally related. The questions requires that you download google earth http://earth.google.com/ Download google earth, zoom to Honduras, now go to the very southwest corner where the border with Nicaragua meets the pacific Ocean. You can see here a series of man made structures (they look like ponds or irrigated fields). The question is what are they?? Leave your answer via "comment". Two hints: it is agriculture and I found the answer in the latest issue of National Geographic.

Bueno,
Luke

January 23, 2007

Sold

Well the 4runner no longer exists to me. I sold it this afternoon, I had delusions of driving that truck until either I or the truck exploded. It was a good vehicle, and I would guess my overall transportation costs were pretty reasonable for the years i owned it. I never quite trusted the thing to go farther than i could see, but it only once stranded me and I never did figure out how or what managed to cut all three belts and puncture the radiator, so that maybe wasn't the Toyota's fault. And I figure i can find one for pretty cheap when i return to the states....unless we are forced to drive E85, I am not sure an old Toyota will convert easily.

20 days until we fly out of CR for Honduras.

_luke

January 18, 2007

getting closer


We received what I think is our "staging kit" in the mail on Wednesday, it gives us a little more information about what we are doing and when. The plan still seems to be in affect. I have 1 more week of work here in Fort Collins, I am still trying to sell my truck, and when i say goodbye to the Toyota I will feel sad. I have become quite attached to that truck. hopefully it will find a good home, but i doubt it, most inquiries have been high school kids who need a cheap vehicle and are not asking any of the right questions, but if they can keep from crashing, or rolling it down a mountain, it should go another 50,000 miles, more if whomever buys it is in any way mechanically inclined. I will try to post a picture of the Toyota to practice posting pictures to the blog......OK that was a success only the picture is ontop of the text which is not what i had in mind, but I have learned not to fight the computer, all I will do is make things worse.
Somehow our blog got linked to the peacecorpsjournals.com website i had mentioned in a earlier blog, someone in cyberspace must have put it there.

January 11, 2007

Mailing Address

So, for the first three months (through the beginning of May), we'll be living with a family in Santa Lucia, a town not far to the northeast of Tegucigalpa, the capital city. To send us old fashioned snail mail during this time, send it to the following address (double check to make sure it's written exactly as it is below on the package/letter):

Luke or Annie Gingerich, PCT
Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz
Apartado Postal 3158
Tegucigalpa, Honduras America Central

It's my turn!

So far Luke has been in charge of the blogging (if you couldn't already tell by the lack of capitalization!), so I thought I'd take a turn.

My thoughts on what's to come...
Truth be told, I really have no idea what we're in for! As most of you know I've lived outside the country several times but never for more than 4 months and never with a job so you could say I'm definitely excited and scared. I can't tell you how much easier it is to go into this knowing that Luke's coming too! One of the most difficult things I've found about living abraod is that my closest family and friends don't share the experience with me and therefore you're left to tell them what happened without all the emotions that accompanied the stories. And while describing your life in the US to a long-distance friend is difficult, it's much easier than trying to describe, for example, what your life in a rural mountain community in Honduras is like. So...needless to say, I'm very excited to share this experience with my best friend and husband! I don't really have a lot of expectations because at this point I can't even visualize what I'll be doing on a day-to-day basis or where we'll be living. I do know that we'll probably experience some of our lowest lows and some of our highest highs while we're gone. I can easily say that we're prepared for anything but it's not true. One of my worries is that I will struggle with the fact that no matter what, I will always be an U.S. citizen and can "escape" back there whenever I need to. I think that makes walking in any Honduran's shoes nearly impossible and I can only hope it does not impede my work and making good friends while there. Anyway, that's all for now.

January 3, 2007

Job titles??

I have tried to update the blog a little. The photo at left is a picture of Annie and I in the Rawah wilderness just west of Ft. Collins this summer.
I realized that not everyone who checks this blog may be up to date on what exactly we are going to be doing in Honduras, this is most likely because we don't really know either, but we do have job titles. They are as follows:

Luke - Water and Sanitation Engineer

Annie - HIV/AIDS and Health Educator (it is also my impression that she will be dealing with some womens reproductive health issues as well as child survival)

My brother Levi was nice enough to point out that sanitation engineer is just a churched up term for garbage man.

So we have job titles, which may or may not give some indication of what we will be doing.