Beanland Diary #2 - Training
Saludos a todos desde El Paraiso, Honduras! Wow it's been a long time since I emailed the whole crew...we've been so busy and time just kinda sliiiiiides by here like a boiled egg on a plate of hot mantequilla. Two weeks ago we left the comforts (well, the familiarity at least) of our training center in Santa Lucia to spend a month training "in the field" and arrived here, El Paraiso. This is the coffee capital of the country located a stones throw from the Nicaraguan border. It is beautiful here, green rolling hills in every direction.
I'm living with yet another host family and they're awesome. A single mom and her 16 year old son Jose, plus "Goku" the dog. If you thought George and Humphrey were pampered, think again. Goku eats warm milk, tortillas and ground beef twice a day and gets an occasional hard candy or sugar-fried platano, not to mention constant attention from Conchita, my host mom.
Although this 3 month training period is long and tiring, we are having a blast here in El Paraiso. There is a ton of musical talent in the group, and we get together 3 or 4 times a week to drink beer and play guitars in D'Palo, the local hang. The owner, Carlos, is incredibly tolerante of our ugly gringo ways...he lets us play Jimmy Buffett and Johnny Cash (RIP) songs without a single complaint, even though he is a professionally trained musician and opera singer(!) and blows us out of the water when we manage to convince him to play for us. No one wants to get on the stage after him. The few songs I learned in Spanish before coming are a big hit. I end up playing some of them 2 or 3 times a night! Scrambling to learn new ones ASAP.
So while I have been here for almost 2 months, I am still A) not an official Peace Corps volunteer and B) do not know where I will be spending the remaining 2 years. While they have probably decided already where they are going to send us, they intentionally keep it secret till closer to the end of training. We find out in two weeks and everyone is a little on edge. I do have a few details. While I had assumed that a Business/IT position would probably mean placement in a bigger city, I was wrong. Those of us with a tech focus are being sent to remote rural locations where we will be setting up computer education centers in towns that might not even have phones. Not what I had expected, but I'm super psyched. I will be working with a govt. org that is setting up these centers (which btw have high speed satellite internet connections, so cool) by helping to set up the network, design the curriculum and teach classes, as well as manage some of the business aspects of the center (which need to become economically self-sustainable in 2-3 years). There is an overwhelming level of interest here in Honduras in regards to computers, internet, web pages, databases, etc, and everyone is really enthusiastic about our projects. Even if some of these campesinos don't know how to use the mouse, I'm gonna have them writing SQL stored procedures and cranking out Java applets by the end of my two years, mark my word!
What else...food? Beans and tortillas are the base of nearly every meal (yes even breakfast). But shit I can't complain, there is an avocado tree in the yard and we just pulled off 35 whoppers (see photo on Snapper)! On Sunday I had a whole avocado with each meal. Oh, we also just toured a cigar factory, one that produces a really high percentage of the world's cigar tobacco (high like 60%). It was incredible. See photos also. Que mas...we killed a chicken on monday morning and then had it for lunch, that was a new experience.
OK I'll stop here, lest I cross the Susman threshold with the length of this email. If you're still reading, congratulations! I hope everyone is living large. I miss the hell out of you bastards (even you Deko). Drop me a line and let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods.
Besos y abrazos,
Your Correspondent
ps. my email list is a little unorganized...sorry if you didn't get my first email. i'm sure I've forgotten people again...oh well.
pps. CONGRATS MUDGE! He just won a MILLION dollars to make his first feature film!
I'm living with yet another host family and they're awesome. A single mom and her 16 year old son Jose, plus "Goku" the dog. If you thought George and Humphrey were pampered, think again. Goku eats warm milk, tortillas and ground beef twice a day and gets an occasional hard candy or sugar-fried platano, not to mention constant attention from Conchita, my host mom.
Although this 3 month training period is long and tiring, we are having a blast here in El Paraiso. There is a ton of musical talent in the group, and we get together 3 or 4 times a week to drink beer and play guitars in D'Palo, the local hang. The owner, Carlos, is incredibly tolerante of our ugly gringo ways...he lets us play Jimmy Buffett and Johnny Cash (RIP) songs without a single complaint, even though he is a professionally trained musician and opera singer(!) and blows us out of the water when we manage to convince him to play for us. No one wants to get on the stage after him. The few songs I learned in Spanish before coming are a big hit. I end up playing some of them 2 or 3 times a night! Scrambling to learn new ones ASAP.
So while I have been here for almost 2 months, I am still A) not an official Peace Corps volunteer and B) do not know where I will be spending the remaining 2 years. While they have probably decided already where they are going to send us, they intentionally keep it secret till closer to the end of training. We find out in two weeks and everyone is a little on edge. I do have a few details. While I had assumed that a Business/IT position would probably mean placement in a bigger city, I was wrong. Those of us with a tech focus are being sent to remote rural locations where we will be setting up computer education centers in towns that might not even have phones. Not what I had expected, but I'm super psyched. I will be working with a govt. org that is setting up these centers (which btw have high speed satellite internet connections, so cool) by helping to set up the network, design the curriculum and teach classes, as well as manage some of the business aspects of the center (which need to become economically self-sustainable in 2-3 years). There is an overwhelming level of interest here in Honduras in regards to computers, internet, web pages, databases, etc, and everyone is really enthusiastic about our projects. Even if some of these campesinos don't know how to use the mouse, I'm gonna have them writing SQL stored procedures and cranking out Java applets by the end of my two years, mark my word!
What else...food? Beans and tortillas are the base of nearly every meal (yes even breakfast). But shit I can't complain, there is an avocado tree in the yard and we just pulled off 35 whoppers (see photo on Snapper)! On Sunday I had a whole avocado with each meal. Oh, we also just toured a cigar factory, one that produces a really high percentage of the world's cigar tobacco (high like 60%). It was incredible. See photos also. Que mas...we killed a chicken on monday morning and then had it for lunch, that was a new experience.
OK I'll stop here, lest I cross the Susman threshold with the length of this email. If you're still reading, congratulations! I hope everyone is living large. I miss the hell out of you bastards (even you Deko). Drop me a line and let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods.
Besos y abrazos,
Your Correspondent
ps. my email list is a little unorganized...sorry if you didn't get my first email. i'm sure I've forgotten people again...oh well.
pps. CONGRATS MUDGE! He just won a MILLION dollars to make his first feature film!
Labels: beanland
posted by Dan at
4:48 AM
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