Training in Santa Lucia

Hey sorry it has been a couple of weeks since my last post, I am going to try and keep this more updated but I have been a little busy and I do not want to spend my time in the internet cafe. Anyways everything is still going great training has been a lot of fun but spending bascially 8 hours in a classroom every day is starting to get a little old. But it is all necessary because we are getting a lot of important information.

As a business project we have actually gotten to go on a couple of pretty cool trips to surrounding areas. We went for a hike/team building activity in La Tigra national park and there were a lot of amazing vistas along with some sad stories about the history of the mining industry in Honduras. We have also visited some of the local businesses in Santa Lucia as well as neighboring Valle de Angeles to see what their businesses practices are and to basically get a sense of what kind of situtation we will be working with. Aside from the business trips it has been a steady dose of at least 4 hours of language classes a day, lots of vaccinations, safety issues and CORE training, which is basically learning about Honduran culture and issues beyond work related we will be dealing with. There have been various current volunteers in to talk to us about what the experience is like and while it is nice to hear from people who are out in the field the recurring trend is that every site and every situation is different. We will not find out which site we are assigned to until week 10 of the training or around the end of April.

Right now I am actually on a site visit to see a current PCV and kind of get a sense of what a day in the life of a volunteer might look like. The town is a community of around 2000 people and its called Ojos de Agua in the Comayagua district. It was around a 5 hour trip from Santa Lucia and the first time taking the public transportation on my own so it was a bit of an adventure. Two of us took a bus into Teguc grabbed a taxi to another bus station where we caught a bus to Comayagua, the city, where my buddy was meeting up with his volunteer. From there I took a cab to the busitos to La Libetad, basically a mini-van, then took another busito to Ojos de Agua. On the busito from La Libertad to Ojos de Agua I had the experience of crossing a hanging bridge, pretty terrifying the first time around. I met up with the volunteer, Brian another business volunteer, no problem and when went to a local chicked groups meeting last night.

Right now we are in his office, an NGO called Ayuda en Accion, and I return to Santa Lucia on Wednesday for 4 days before heading off to the second part of training, Field Based Training, which should be very interesting and much more interactive. The 3 projects are spliting up for FBT and we, the business project, are heading to a town called Ojojona for the next 5-6 weeks. Anyways Im starting to ramble and this is getting long I will try to update more often so this is not as long. Hope everyone is safe and happy, and to all the people about to enjoy spring term please live it up and send me stories.

Much Love