February 28, 2007

Pics

Luke sleeping in hammock at our house on Sat. afternoon

Watching the sun set from the lookout point in SL


Scroll down to see first blog from today!!

Also, I keep forgetting to mention that if you click on the pics that we upload, you should be able to look at them larger and be able to zoom, etc.

The next few months

An update on what we will be doing and where we will be in the next few months:

In SL until March 17 (next weekend, from Thurs March 8-Sunday, March 11 Luke and I will be doing a volunteer visit which means we will be traveling to a town somewhere (they will tell us tomorrow) where a current volunteer is working).

From March 18-April 25, Luke and I will be living in separate pueblos working with our respective technical groups (Water/Sanitation and Health).

From April 26-28 we will actually visit our future work site.

From April 29-May 3 we will be back in SL/Teguc to wrap up training and swear in as volunteers.

February 27, 2007

Mailing address

We found out that if you send anything to us via FedEx, UPS or DHS you need to ask us first for the name of the person to address it to because that person would need to be in the office that week in Teguc and they will have to sign for it (I also updated this info on the Mailing Address blog). The regular USPS address stays the same as originally posted. ¡Gracias!

February 26, 2007

Pics (see blog below pics for weekend events)

Luke and I in the back of our family´s pickup truck on Saturday
when they were showing us the nearby mountain and views of Teguc

The patio in front of our host family´s home

Street in SL on the way to training







Weekend events

Last Friday after we went home for dinner (fried yuca with pizza sauce, cheese, and pico de gallo salsa which they call “chismol”), Luke and I met up with other volunteers at a restaurant/bar in town and had a few beers. At one point I counted 40 of the 51 volunteers. It was fun to all hang out and talk about the first week’s events.

Saturday morning Luke and I slept in until 9 and got up to find no one home and our breakfast waiting for us. We ate and then sat out on the patio in the sun and drank our coffee – it was a beautiful morning. We went into town just to get some exercise, walk around and call home then went back for lunch. In the afternoon, we got into the back of our host dad’s truck and they took us up the mountain to “montañita” where we got a great view of the entire city of Teguc. I also got sunburned pretty good on my arms and feet. We spent the afternoon washing our clothes, seriously, it took the entire afternoon. Our host mom has some lady come to wash her clothes and she told us the lady would wash ours too if we want to pay her so I think that’s what we’re doing from now on!

Saturday evening, all the host moms put together a get-together at the training center. Each mom brought their family and some food to share so we all sat around and ate then they had a dance for us inside the school. After that, a lot of volunteers went to the same bar/restaurant so we went for awhile and then came home to sleep in again.

We had a big breakfast on Sunday morning and then went to check email and came back to the house. I sat with my host mom for about 2 hours just chatting and Luke napped in the hammock. When our host dad and brother came home, we got in the back of the truck again and they drove us to a restaurant in the mountains where they serve pupsas. The best way to describe them is like a mix between a corn tortilla and a thin piece of corn bread…I guess its kind of like a pita. Anyway, they put cheese or meat or both in between two pieces of the pita and then fry them. They serve them with pickled cabbage and a mixture of onions, jalopeños, and carrots that you put on top of the pupusa and eat. They were REALLY delicious. After the restaurant, we drove to a touristy town called Valle de los Ángeles where there are a ton of artesanía (craft) shops. We walked around there for awhile and then came back to SL. A fun day. I don’t think any other volunteers have a host family that is willing to drive their volunteers all around to show them different places (we got really lucky).

February 25, 2007

hola

Thanks to all who are reading and commenting on the blog, and emailing... it is great to here from folks. There are a number of internet cafes in SL and we walk by 2 of them to get to a from school so currently we have a lot of time to read emails and comments. Check out another volunteers blog to see a panoramic view of Teguc from above SL. www.cliffaway.blogspot.com

hasta luego,

Luke

February 23, 2007

attempt at pictures






hello all, this is Luke, Annie just posted the blog before this one and i am going to attempt to upload some pictures. things are going well...I still feel dumb as a post when people talk to me in spanish, but a slightly smarter post each day...


I will try to post pictures.... that first attempt took a long time and the picture is at the top of the page, it is a picture of Santa Lucia on our .5 hour walk to training.

Sometimes we post more than one blog at a time so dont forget to scroll down and see the blog we posted before this one.


hasta luego,
Luke and Annie

Hello all!

An update on the events of the week…

On Monday morning we walked ½ hour to the Peace Corps training site in Santa Lucia which actually was someone’s giant house at some point. It sits near the top of the town and the house is not visible from the road and there is no sign marking the driveway. After a steep climb up the driveway, there is a giant yellow house. There are at least 4 different bathrooms and plenty of bedrooms turned classrooms with a nice outdoor patio/cafeteria and basketball court. PC Honduras has lots of staff members from office staff, host family liaison, language instructors (all 11 of them), the training specialists, safety and security coordinator, guards, drivers, etc. There are a total of 51 of us volunteers all of us are living with different families (46 different houses because of the married couples) in a town of about 7,000 people. The last week of training has been filled with vaccinations, language training (in groups of about 7 with people of a similar level), and presentations on how to stay safe and healthy while in Honduras. Yesterday we had a presentation on how to safely wash fruits and vegetables with water and chlorine and then actually got to make a vegetable and fruit salad. We’ve talked about dengue and malaria and what to do in certain safety situations. The staff did skits yesterday to address issues that volunteers have had with their host families before such as being served warm milk with their cornflakes, coffee with an absurd amount of sugar, slamming car and house doors, and a few other things I can’t remember. We finally started our tech training yesterday so we are now split into three groups in the afternoon with our project managers learning all sorts of things. I am feeling very overwhelmed by all the health stuff that I know nothing about but certain things seem really exciting and interesting to me. Luke’s group of Water and Sanitation people (engineers and extensionists) have been going over basic water quality stuff which included taking water samples of a pond in the middle of the town. Today my health group had the head doctor of USAID Honduras come and talk to our group about all the statistics on child and maternal health and fertility and mortality rates. Very interesting stuff. My Spanish class is going to be difficult…we will spend 2 days in the community per week working on various projects that we ourselves have to set up (that have to do with health) to eventually present in front of our colleagues.

For those of you interested in what we have been eating…

So far we’ve been eating pretty well in our house and our family is warming up to us and vice versa. So far we’ve eaten a giant plate of fruit each morning (watermelon, cantaloupe, banana, oranges), coffee (not instant Nescafe like a lot of volunteers have been getting – our host dad gets it from some nearby coffee growers), and either bread, French toast, a sandwich (a double-decker ham and cheese sandwich, that is) and today she surprised us with fresh squeezed orange juice. All the volunteers bring their lunches to the training center to eat and some bring them with them when they walk to school in the morning and some host moms walk the lunches up to the school by 11:30 so the food is still hot (this is what our host mom does). We’ve had a variety of food for lunch. We have three separate containers in our lunch box so each day we get three separate food items, sometimes corn tortillas, and usually a freshly squeezed juice drink like strawberry or lime and mandarin orange. We’ve had spaghetti, another pasta dish, rice, stir-fry, roast meat, chicken, cooked broccoli, cabbage, potato salad and regular salad for lunch. It’s always a surprise when you open up your lunchbox! For dinner (we sit down and eat with the family around 6 or 6:30), we have had baleadas (type of burrito with cheese, eggs, and beans), enchiladas (a mixture of cooked veggies, meat, cheese, and hard boiled egg on a fried corn tortilla, nachos with beans and cheese, and beans and tortillas. We’ve also been getting coffee with our dinner.

Fun with the host family...

Usually after dinner Luke and I try to sit at the table and talk with the family for as long as they do. On Wednesday night we brought out the pictures which made for lots of conversation. Luke took quite a few pictures of the farm and the cows and they were very interested in how a farm works in the US. We told them we were about 20 minutes from the nearest city and he asked us how far it was on a horse! We didn’t know how to answer that one. Thurs. after dinner they decided to take us on a "paseo" around the town. Melvin, Gladys, and I sat in the front of the tiny Toyota pickup they have and Luke and Darío got in the back. They drove us to the park and we climbed up to the lookout about the park which is a hill with a giant cross at the top. You can see almost all of Teguc from there. We then walked around a bit more and found out where the health center is, where the town hall is, etc. and then stopped on the way home at a pulpería (tiny store) and they bought Pepsi and snacks which we ate when we got back. We joked around a lot. On the way back home, we stopped and picked up an older women who lives near us who needed a ride and Gladys laughed hard at Luke and Melvin because they each grabbed an arm of the woman and basically launched her into the back of the truck with them. Melvin commented on how strong Luke is. I also asked her about laundry (they do it the old fashioned way here – by hand with a washboard) and if she could show me this weekend and she said she would on Saturday. She then asked if Luke wanted to learn too (very few Honduran men have ever done laundry) to which he replied, "yes, of course" and Gladys just laughed and said that Peace Corps tells the families that both the guy and girl volunteers need to do their own laundry. She told me that she has plans to take us somewhere close by to eat pupusas which are apparently from El Salvador but Honduras claims them as their own and I’m not exactly sure what they are yet…sounds like a tortilla with cheese cooked into it with salsa and other things served inside before being fried. Looking forward to actually getting some time this weekend to study new words and read the material they have given us, plus learn how to do laundry!

February 20, 2007

hola y como esta

The title is about the extent of my spanish at this point, but it should be improving shortly. Annie and I are in the internet cafe waiting to meet a few other volunteers for a beer. Training is going well and they are doing a good job of scaring us all into safe habits. Tommorow I have my first language interview and they will decide what level i am at and who i need to be learning with. Annie also has a language interview tommorow and has done a technical interview where we talk with the Peace Corps folks about skills and what we think we are capable of. I have my tech interview tommorow as well.

So far living with a host family has been odd, nothing weird happens, but it is something i was not prepared for...We like our regular family in the states so much why would we want a temporary one for a month? (and then seperate ones for another month followed by another week with our current host family and then three months living together with another host family at our chosen site) But it is a part of the process i guess and we will attempt to make the best of it. The párt of the day that is hardest for me is coming home after training to our "house" nothing is familiar at this point and it makes the day mentally exhausting to never have a place that feels familiar. It will get better and more familiar with time and effort.

I feel like i have been hit by a brick shithouse of culture and language, but i am a sanitation volunteer and PC will teach me and others to build shithouses and i will try to rebuild the one that crashed into me and stand by it with a smile.

training during the day is really good, the other volunteers seem to be good, interesting people and that makes the days go fast. today we played basketball on one of the tiny Honduran courts over lunch and I am going to request placement in a community with one of these tiny courts with 9 ft rims.

we have to go, they only give us $2.70 per day and these cafes cost about $1 an hour.

we love you all

February 19, 2007

we´re here!

After a long journey by bus, airplane, then bus again, we made it to Santa Lucia yesterday (Sunday) around 7 pm. The bus ride was definitely very scary, flying over mt. passes and passing cars, semis, etc. in no passing zones. That´s going to take some getting used to. When we got to SL, our host mother, Gladys and our host brother, Dario who´s 21, met us and drove us in a little pickup up to their house which is on the top of a hill. Actually, the whole town of SL is on a mountain that overlooks the capital, Tegucigalpa. We talked a little while our host family including the dad, Melvin, and then ate dinner with them (fried chicken, rice, and sauteed vegetables, corn tortillas very good). We sat around the table a bit longer then unpacked our stuff and went to bed. We have our own room and a bathroom that´s connected. Our shower is¨warm¨ at best but was more than we were expecting! The family is very nice and willing to talk with us. I´m working on Luke to do more of the talking. This morning we got up at 6 am, had breakfast with the family (we told the mom we like something light so we ate banana, watermelon, oatmeal with milk, and coffee while the dad and brother had beans, eggs, tortillas, and cheese. We might start liking bigger breakfasts soon!). We then left for the training center which is about 30 min from our house. Our host mom walked us there today and then walked us up our hot lunch at 11:30. All volunteers eat their lunch at the training center. Today mostly involved getting to know the staff, getting some shots, and talking about diversity and how the language training will go. Luke seems to be sick with a sinus infection so they brought him some anitbiotics from Teguc which will hopefully get rid of whatever he has. So far, so good. Oh, it´s way colder here than we thought and I´m kicking myself for not bringing a few more sweaters, socks, and a jean jacket but oh well. It feels like September in Iowa here, cool in the shade but warm/hot in the direct sun. I guess a lot of sites where volunteers end up are really hot and then others are cooler than Santa Lucia so we´ll just have to wait and see if we need more clothes shipped. SL is a small, safe town with lots of birds, chickens, dogs, flowers, etc. all over and the roads are cobblestone. People are friendly and say ¨hola¨a lot. Current volunteers who came to talk to us today said that ¨SL is NOT Honduras¨...we´re not sure yet what that means. Our family has a dog who´s 4 months old names Peluchin, he´s definitely a puppy and gets super excited when you pet him and then you can´t get rid of him. We hope to write more soon!

February 16, 2007

Mailing addresses

There are two different addresses for sending us mail and packages:

(PLEASE EMAIL US FIRST BEFORE SENDING ANYTHING FEDEX, UPS, OR DHL AS WE HAVE TO ASK SOMEONE IN THE OFFICE IN TEGUC TO SIGN FOR THE PACKAGE WHICH SHOULD BE ADDRESSED IN THEIR NAME):

For postal service (USPS) mail/packages:
Luke or Annie Gingerich, PCT
Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz
Apartado Postal 3158
Tegucigalpa, Honduras, America Central

For FedEx, UPS, or DHL mail/packages:
Luke or Annie Gingerich, PCT
Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz
Atención: Gustavo Nuñez
Avenida Republica de Chile #401
Colonia Palmira
Tegucigalpa, Honduras, America Central


Other mailing tips:
Do not send any electrical device or appliances via FedEx, UPS, or DHL, as a customs clearence process is required which will cost around $90. Try to use padded envelopes if possible and Peace Corps recommends asking for shipment tracking numbers so you can track packages through the carriers' websites. As an additional preventative measure, write "Articulos Religiosos" (Religious articles) or "Materiales de la educacion" (Education material) on the outer packaging so prospective thieves have less desire to open packages to begin with. (Anna, another PCV volunteer suggested that last bit).

Pics from last night in Iowa

Here are pictures from our last night in Iowa (Sunday, Feb. 11) with Luke's parents and our dog Moose (above) and with my grandparents, mom, my brothers Josh and Chad and Sarah, Chad's girlfriend.





February 15, 2007

We'll get out of here...soon


First I want to give a "shout-out" to Bob. (Bob is the dad of Kate who's married to Sean who is the couple we've been haning out with. He randomly found out about our flight cancellation on Wed. through our blog which he found while searching on the internet before Kate called him and then asked Kate if she happened to know this "Luke and Annie").

So today was filled with metro rides around DC. We went to the National Museum of the American Indian which was pretty cool and then tried to go to the Aquarium but couldn't because Luke was carrying his pocket knife and they wouldn't let us in (way to go Luke!). It was a pretty funny situation because we watched this 15-year-old in front of us try to go through the metal dector like 5 times, taking more things out of his pocket each time, then his belt off until he finally made it through. Then Luke, knowing he had the knife in his pocket (which I didn't know about), tried to go through with it still in his pocket even though we'd just watch the kid empty every last thing per instructions by the security officer. So Luke backed up, sheepishly took off his belt and then pulled out his pocket knife to which the security officer looked at with a "what the hell" look and told us to leave. Oops. It was time to go back to the hotel after that as we were both tired of walking around in the frigid cold which has followed us from Colorado to Iowa and then to DC.

We got back to the hotel took a quick nap and then met up with the entire group at 5 to hear the instructions for the weekend flight plans. We're leaving on Sunday with about 20 others. The rest are leaving on 2 flights on Sat. and meeting up at a connection flight before heading to Honduras.

Tonight (Thurs) we met up with Simon Halder (friend of Luke's from home) and a friend of his for drinks along with about 10 other volunteers at a pub near our hotel. Had a good time. Again, I can't say how lucky we are to be hanging out with such a cool group of people. Tomorrow morning we have structured stuff run by Peace Corps staff from 9 am - 4 pm. I think they figure they have to keep some sort of tabs on us until they ship us out.

February 14, 2007

delays

welp, we will get to see the capital city, our capital city that is. We will be in DC until this weekend and head down to Honduras in a number of groups on Saturday and Sunday. Finding 50 seats to Honduras on short notice is tough I guess. So everyone gets to read more blogs from us. Annie did a good job of explaining what the our time will be like in country at first. I am hoping they don't cut short our training though, I am looking forward to the technical training, and I need all the spanish instruction I can get. We are going to take in the sites tommorow and visit a few museums and tonight grab a beer with a few of the other volunteers. Should be just fine really. The delay also gives me a little time to recover from a cold I can't quite shake, we also will be flying into San Pedro Sula now and not Teguc, and we will get a 3 hour bus ride to orient ourselves to the Honduran countryside (lookin on the bright side).

Stay tuned,

Luke

Moose


So, during staging yesterday they actually recommended we get a dog while in Honduras to help combat loneliness and for safety issues....hmmm.....


We had to say good-bye to Moose on Monday morning when we left for the airport and wow, that was hard. I'm so happy my mom/brother are taking care of him while we're gone because he seems really happy there. He's got a giant fenced back yard and people to pet him so he'll be just fine. It's Luke and I that I worry about! Anyway, we said our good-byes to him and tried not to cry in front of him because we didn't want to worry him about what was going on. Anyway, as Luke and I both got into the car teary-eyed to head to the airport, we backed out of the drive way and looked at the house and sure enough he had run to the window that faces the road and was sitting there, with his long sad face, watching us as we drove off. A very sad moment for sure! Luke swears that Moose knew what he was doing and was trying to pull a guilt-trip on us. Either way, we'll miss that dog for sure! We already heard that he went sledding yesterday (Tues) with my brother Josh since school had been canceled due to the snow and when I talked to my mom last night, he was too exhuasted to even get up on the couch to sleep. Sounds like he'll be just fine!

Downright delirious

Happy Valentine's Day!

Some of you may be wondering how I'm blogging when I'm supposed to be on the plane to Teguc right now. Well...let me explain...

We did get to DC (finally) after 1 cancellation and 2 flight delays. We checked into our room and then went downstairs to the conference room to find a buzzing room of 49 other Honduras volunteers plus 3 facilitators. Most of the volunteers looked to be near our age (the average age of Honduras volunteers is 26). Luke and I were happy to discover that there are 3 other married couples around our age and they all seem really nice. So we finished up orientation on Monday evening, found some dinner then went to bed. Tuesday orientation started at 8:30 and finished at 6:00 and this included more team-building exercises, get-to-know-each-other games and open forums to ask specific questions about Peace Corps Honduras. It was very reassuring to be in a roomful of people that have one giant thing in common - they just left their family, friends and pets to head to Honduras for 2 1/2 years to work either in WatSan (what they call the water sanitation people), health, or business/IT. Based on first impressions only, there are a lot of really interesting and nice people.

After we finished with last night's session, Luke and I took a shuttle and then the metro to a mall to stop at DSW to get Luke some new shoes. After listening to all the talk about what people are expected to wear, he decided he couldn't wear his sandals to work meetings and I decided I needed a pair of dressier flats. So, off we went and luckily found what we were looking for and made it back in time to re-pack our suitcases (we need an overnight bag as we won't see our luggage in Santa Lucia for a day after our arrival) and get a few hours of sleep. One of the facilitors explained it well...she said the last night in the US she was obsessed with weighing her suitcases and kept packing, unpacking, and repacking even though at worst, she may have to pay $25 for the extra weight. She said looking back, she was freaking out about her luggage only because at that point, that was the only thing she had control over. Luke and I felt a little like that running around a mall looking for shoes last night and a couple of other things I deemed absolutely essential which I later decided not to get.

Last night/this morning we woke up at 1:40 am and made it down to the lobby to check out by 2 am. Buses left for the airport at 3:00 am and we sat at the airport until they told us our flight to Miami had been canceled. Apparently DC absolutely freaks out when it comes to weather and because it snowed a few inches yesterday, 400+ flights were canceled, including ours. We then proceeded to wait about 2 1/2 hours before we could contact the shuttle company to return us to our hotel and back into the same rooms we checked out of hours earlier. During those 2 1/2 hours, we sat and played cards with one of the married couples and became so delirious due to lack of sleep that almost everything was hilarious. The buses finally came, we loaded up the luggage AGAIN and unloaded it AGAIN. It's currently 1 pm (just finished napping for several hours) and we're waiting to hear when our meeting is to figure out the plan. So, maybe tomorrow we'll get to Miami??? Who knows.

Once we do get to Teguc, the plan is to be shuttled to Santa Lucia, (a town of about 2500 about 30 minutes from the capital), where we'll meet with our country directors and other Peace Corps staff for brief introductions and then onto meeting our host families with whom we'll live for the first 4 weeks. From weeks 5-10, I'll be living in La Paz (northwest of Teguc) with the other health volunteers and Luke will be living in Sabanagrande (south of Teguc) with the WatSan people. That, obviously, is not ideal but I'm hoping Luke will really get to develop his language skills during this time and Peace Corps (I believe) will pay for our hotel on weekends so that we can meet inbetween our cities (which would be in Teguc). During these 5-6 weeks, we'll both be living with another host family and then I think we go back to Santa Lucia for another week to finish up orientation and be sworn in as volunteers. After that, we're off to our sites (we will be living together again) to live with yet another family for the first 3 months and then we can make the decision to move out on our own or continue to live with our family.

February 12, 2007

still here

well, we are still in CR, the plane has arrived, or a plane has arrived. Then the lady told us everything in Chicago is delayed an hour anyway, which may work out to our advantage if we can catch the earlier flight from Chicago to DC that we were anticipating being too late for. Someone may also develope a teleporter machine to "beam" us to DC before we can get there via airplane.

So we had to go through security here at the airport, and a funny thing happened. Annie was understandibly a little stressed (she teared up when the ticket lady asked for our drivers licenses) and when we got to the front of the line to go throught the x-ray machine the security guy looked in her purse, pulled out her 1 liter water bottle and said "ma'am, you will have to go dump this out, you can't take liquids on the plane." So annie looked at the guy with a stare that was a combination of stress and annoyance, and without saying a word grabbed the bottle from the guy unscrewed the lid and proceeded to drink the entire liter of water without a taking a breath.

-Luke

and they're off!!

Well we have left for Honduras. More accurately DC and then Honduras, and by left I mean we are currently sitting in Cedar Rapids and will be here for a "delayed" period of time. We received a call last night at 1 in the morning saying our 7 am flight was cancelled and we were placed on a 9:49 flight instead. Upon arrival we were informed the 9:49 flight was "delayed". It is 9:15 right now and there is no plane outside. We will also miss our flight from Chicago to DC, but luckily there is another one heading out that will get us there at 3:55, so I think if we can get to our hotel by midight tonight the day will be a success. Hopefully the only thing we will miss at orientation is the awkward "get to know each other" games I am sure new volunteers have to partake in the first afternoon.

It is nice to be on the road, we will miss everyone, and if we didn't get to say a formal "see ya later"...see ya later, It was good to spend a little time in Iowa, and the cold weather we will look back on fondly I am sure.

stay tuned I may have plenty of down time to "blog" today....our plane still isn't here and it is starting to snow.


-Luke

February 2, 2007

Update in plans

So, we finally got our "staging kits" in the mail (after a minor hassle with mine being sent to my mom's physical address, not her mailing address even though it was supposed to go to Luke's parent's address to begin with...just another bump in the long, long road of making this whole thing happen). Anyway, we found out several things...one, that we won't be in Tegucigalpa for the first 3 months, we'll be in Santa Lucia instead which is a town not far to the northeast of the capital. We also found out some more details about our trip...we leave Cedar Rapids, IA on Monday, Feb. 12 at 7 am and head to D.C. to have general Peace Corps orientation in the afternoon and the following day. They put us up in a hotel and pay for our food so it's not so bad. However, the night of the 13th at 2:30 in the morning we have to check out of our hotel to leave for the airport to catch our flight to Tegucigalpa at 6 am on Valentine's day. I think our only stop is in Miami. We're in Honduras by noonish. That should be one interesting night/day!