Getting into Training

So far in training we’ve been doing a lot of interesting activities and I’ve been learning a lot. Every day we have a few hours of Spanish then either work with our projects or have CORE training where we have been talking about sustainable development and activities we can do when we first get to our communities to assess their needs. My Spanish class has been really interesting so far. I placed into the Advanced group and we’ve been spending this week on debates. I discussed the death penalty and it’s great practice for me because giving and defending my opinion is something that’s a little harder for me to do in Spanish. In my group we only have four days of class per week and the fifth day we use to do research for community projects we’re working on. My topic is women’s groups in Honduras and their history and I will be presenting my research to at least some if not all of the other volunteers next Friday.

The highlight of this week was going into Tegucigalpa on Monday. All of the Spanish classes went this week to go to the market and to practice navigating the Honduran transportation system on our own. We had to catch the bus from the town center and take it to our stop in Tegus, take taxis from there to the market, and then meet our teacher there. The bus ride was amazing. All the buses here are old yellow school buses from the US and seventies disco music was blasting the whole way to the city. It was also pretty packed with a lot of people standing in the aisles and hanging out the door. Once we got off the bus the taxis that were supposed to be there for us weren’t there so we hailed some other cabs and were able to bargain the price and save a little money. The market we went to was pretty small and we all had grocery lists from our host mothers of things to buy. We also had an assignment to find out the prices of a lot of products which was hard because it isn’t culturally acceptable to ask a price without at least an interest of buying whatever it is you’re asking about. Although I learned the hard way, I found it was a lot easier to get people to talk to me about prices if I explained first what I was doing and why I needed the price information. After the market we all got to go to the Peace Corps office in Tegus before heading back up to Santa Lucía. It was really fun to see a little of the city since it was the first time going since we got here.

This Sunday we’re leaving Santa Lucía for a few days to visit volunteers. Each trainee is going to a different site to visit a volunteer working in their same project area so I’m visiting a health volunteer working in the mountains towards the El Salvadorian border. I’m really looking forward to going. She works with an HIV/AIDS support group and does a lot of work with maternal/child health as well. I’ll be there until Wednesday when I come back to Santa Lucía. I think it will be a great opportunity to see what kind of work and project options are available as well as talk to a volunteer about her experience and what kind of advice she may have.

After getting back to Santa Lucía we only have a few days before we leave for field based training (FBT). All the groups leave for FBT the next Sunday and I’m heading off to La Paz with the rest of the health group. We’ll be there for six weeks getting more in-depth information about our projects and as part of my language class I will be doing a lot more community research and community-based projects. I’m really looking forward to these next few weeks because we have a lot of interesting activities planned.