People need to understand that no one is playing with marked cards;

sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Don’t expect to get anything back, don’t expect recognition for your efforts, don’t expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Complete the circle. Not out of pride, inability or arrogance, but simply because whatever it is no longer fits in your life. Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust. Stop being who you were and become who you are. ~Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Naci en los estuches...

Pictures from Dia Cultural, we preformed "Born in the USA" for our families and teachers...
at the end the boys riped off their shirts to reveal USA on their chests...
I think it was well appreciated!!

Thursday, July 20, 2006

En la boca de un dragón

I feel like this is a place that even if I could take out my camera and document it all without fear of having my camera stolen, people still wouldn’t believe it all. Everyone would glance at Gen and I sitting literally on the front windshield of the bus from Cholutecha back to San Lorenzo, wondering why we are dripping with sweat (because apparently, this is where the devil himself resides), and why the bus would allow so many people on (because they work on commission), and why on earth we would subject ourselves to such a ride (we ourselves are not sure), but they still wouldn’t understand.

We spent the last four days in the mouth of a dragon. San Lorenzo is a larger town on the southern coast of Honduras. Mom asked if she could snorkel down there, and I told her if she did she is braver than I, and to let me know what the hell is in that water. For a costal town, the heat is unlike anything I had ever expected. The wind has long stopped visiting San Lorenzo and so the dreadful heat and the water have formed a stench and a warmth reserved solely for this town. And here reside three Peace Corps volunteers. Gen and I, for reasons still unapparent to us, and even after our last night there when our casita flooded and we had no water, and the electricity turned off for no evident reason and we had no fans, want this site for our own. We have no control over our fate, neither of us will be sent here, but we are fighting over it even as I write.

In the midst of the stares we elicit just by being on a bus, and the questions we receive just for having a sun burn, and cat calls we accept and divert just because we are women in a county that believes we serve very few purposes, I have found an exciting independence, and the promise of a sense of self yet to come. After these four days it will be hard to return to the hand holding, lunch being made for me life that training holds, but at least I know and now have seen the light at the end of the tunnel…or rather, what the inside of the mouth of a dragon contains.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Pictures

4th of July Party

Raul
Our house in Santa Lucia, and the Campo

Diego, my host brother

Saturday, July 01, 2006

The internet is working!

And for my first post in country.

Sorry to everyone, I dont write and I dont call because it isnt very easy. We live in Santa Lucia, a realy small town outside of Tegus, and most days the phones and the internet are down. We are not yet alowed to travel into the capital...or really travel at all. Turns out I have no phone or access to the outside world. Two weeks have felt like months. Not in a bad way though. In a way that for some reason I am accustom the the norm already. I am okay after an 8 hour day of language and tech classes to go back to my host family and have dinner, talk as best we can, and go to bed when it gets dark, listening to the rain for the rest of the night.

Training is fun (most days) and everyone is still in high spirits and encouraged even through the constant lack of information. There are 50 other trainees here, about 15 in my program and for some reason, we all still get along great. Although in two months we will be split up around the country, knowing we are here right now makes the training seem more like camp rather than...well, i guess boot camp.

I wish I could share more...I wish I knew where I will be living and what I will be doing, when I will be able to get a phone, or visit home, or get a package...but thats not what I signed on for. For now, I know that it will rain today, and that come next week we will have yet another round of shots (and not the fun ones). I know there will be a soccer game to watch at the campo down the street from my house and that I will take a cold shower tonight...and Im okay with all of that.

I hope everyone is well. I know when training is over I will have more time to myself, to write and to call and to visit, but until then, I hope everyone is doing well...and that you all appreciate your warm showers and not having to take malaria pills every week!!

xoxox