First Days in Site

I’ve been in site for a week now and so far, so good. I got here last weekend after our swearing-in ceremony at the US embassy. The swearing-in ceremony was a nice event and it was great to see everyone dressed up for the first, and probably last, time. The training director spoke as well as one of our fellow trainees and we got to hear from a representative of the Ambassador as well. After having lunch at the embassy we went to the Ambassador’s house way up in the hills above Tegucigalpa. We had access to the pool, tennis courts, basketball courts, and volleyball courts, but I didn’t get out of the pool the whole time since who knows when I will even see a pool again. It was a really fun afternoon and great to spend it all together.

After making the long trip yet again I made it to my site and started at the health clinic on Monday. They were just finishing the vaccination campaign so I got to go with a couple nurses to an aldea about 45 minutes away from the clinic by car. I will probably be working in the aldea during my two years here so it was nice to meet the health volunteers in the community as well as some of the community members. I really like the people at the clinic and am looking forward to working with them. I spent a lot of the rest of the week getting familiar with community and meeting people at other organizations that I could work with. It looks like I’m going to have some interesting work to do especially once I get a little more familiar with how everything works here in the health system. Last week I did get the opportunity to go to a vaccination event in El Salvador and that’s one of the neat things about being by two international borders, that I may actually have some work-related events that are in either El Salvador or Guatemala. It was an event to promote the MMR vaccine for adolescents from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and all adolescents that individual organizations brought to the event or were from the area got vaccinated for free. There were speakers as well who addressed vaccination and other health concerns shared by the three countries. It was a well put together event and fun for me to go to since I’m still learning about the health issues faced here and the steps currently in place to address these issues.

It’s going to take some time to adjust to the life of a volunteer after being in training for almost three months. During training our schedules were packed from 7:30 to 5. Here I pretty much decide my own schedule and once I start projects I will work on them outside of my time at the clinic, but for now I have a lot of free time. I’ve been taking advantage of my free time to try and meet people in the community and on Sunday I actually spend a lot of the day with the woman who works in the house I’m staying in. She has Sundays off so we walked around for a while, went to the park, and went to lunch. It was really fun to talk with her outside of the house because we could actually talk more since she didn’t have work to do. It’s been fun meeting people here and although a lot of these introductory conversations are a bit repetitive in time I will hopefully have a few closer friends. I’m pleased with my site and am really looking forward to getting more involved with my work.

New Address

I´m finally here in my site and I´m really excited about meeting more people and getting to know the area better. I´m going to write a more detailed update soon about our swearing in ceremony and first few days in site but I wanted to post my new address as it will be for the next two years:

Sarah West

Barrio San José

Recomendado al Correo de Ocotepeque

Honduras

América Central

I hope everyone is doing well and please keep me updated!