I have made it through week one of Field Based Training.  The pictures above are of my first three weeks in Santa Lucia.  My first host family´s home is up the long dirt road to your left from the main highway.  The second picture is from across the street of my host family´s home which is visible third in line and then there I am at the Campo Zarabanda Peace Corps Training Facility.  I wanted to include these first pictures before I integrate myself into the La Paz community.  La Paz is a city of 20 to 30 thousand folk surrounded by a number of small aldeas, rural villages.  I live right in the city center, near the internet sites and restaurants and bars.  There´s even a disco in town, which I will probably never frequent, although I have been invited.  Our Field Based Training is very intense, 8 hours a day with a lot of homework every night.  In addition we have hands on field experiences that are designed to inculcate a community development educational experience that we will eventually take with us to our permanent assignments.  I have had no contact with news from the USA and I have no idea what is happening back in the states.  It is kind of refreshing to not read of the small mindedness of American politics.  From this perspective in Central America (It´s America, too) it is most refreshing to live a life unencumbered by the arrogant self importance of the U.S body politic that is filtered down to much of the population.  My host mother told me this morning that President Obama has lifted the travel restriction to Cuba.  If so, I plan to travel there this year after I finish training.  Of course, I will take pics.

That´s me to the right in Yarumela, a small town about 10 kilometers from La Paz where I and two other advanced Spanish aspirantes have Spanish language classes every morning for the next two weeks, then once a week for 5 weeks.  We´re picked up at 7 am and returned to La Paz at noon for lunch, then have other classes at the Hotel Villa Livia in the afternoon.  Today it will be ´Yo Meresco´an abstinence class for teaching the dangers of STDs and unwanted pregnancy to young girls to prevent HIV/AIDS and encourage education.  The picture above of the south end of the horse (actually the west end of the horse looking east) is the road I take to my host family´s home visible at the end of the block (click on the picture).  Most of the streets are paved in La Paz.  None of the streets are paved in Yarumela.  The picture to the left is me in Juticalpa before I got sick.  Again, few paved roads there.  I´m on lunch break.  More this weekend.

A couple of scenes above from my training site and the road to my host family´s home.  A bus picks me and four other Peace Corps Trainees up every morning (except Sunday) and drives us to the training site about three miles away.  We spend a lot of time in Spanish classes as well as other classes about Honduran culture and our proyectos.  Tomorrow (Sunday) I leave for a town called Juticalpa in El Departamento de Olancho, which is about three hours east of Tegus to stay three days with a Peace Corps volunteer assigned to that area.  It is designed to be a taste of what the life of a volunteer is like for when we finally finish training in May.  Every afternoon at about five o´clock we five PCTs are deposited at the entrance to the dirt road to begin the climb to our host familys´ homes and dinner.  More studying after dinner and then I´m in bed by 8 p.m. to begin the day anew at 5 a.m.  There is so much more to say but I´m beat.  I´m in Santa Lucia this Saturday afternoon using an internet site about as big as a large closet with three computers where the neighborhood kids play computer games.  I´m going to have a late lunch and walk to my host family´s home about ten miles away.  I leave early in the morning.

Hola a todos quienes estan leyendo este mensaje.  As you can see my life is transforming into one that will be lived exclusively in Spanish.  My host family is a couple about my age and they gently correct my Spanish when I screw up.  They, of course, speak only Spanish.  The food they prepare for me is great!  I fear I´m gaining weight!! Our training compound is located in the mountains outside of Tegucigalpa (Tegus) in a beautiful area surrounded by pine-covered forest.  I have taken lots of pictures and will post some when I locate a wireless internet facility.  I´m sitting in a tiny 5-person internet spot in a small town called Valle de Angeles that is about 20 minutes from Santa Lucia where my host family lives.  We have this afternoon (Saturday) off as well as tomorrow, Sunday.  I´m going to return tomorrow and see if I can locate a wireless cafe.  I will be in this area for 3 weeks and then our Health Project team moves to a place called La Paz a couple of hours away for 7 weeks, then it´s back here for 1 week before we graduate and receive our permanent assignments.

The young lady walked up to the check-in counter pulling two large heifer-patterned suitcases, big black splotchy spots on white, a black backpack with large black Mickey Mouse ears framing the back of her head.  “You must be with the Peace Corps,” the attendant said.  “How can you tell?” she replied.  I had just finished dinner and proceeded up to my room.  As my taxi drove to the Georgetown Holiday Inn from the airport we had passed by the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial and The Kennnedy Center.  I can see the Washington Monument from my room window (click on the picture).  I settled into my room and went to bed about 10 p.m. and was just dropping off to sleep when my previously unkown roommate arrived, took one look at me and said he must have the wrong room.  I left the door standing open and went back to bed.  The young man promptly went to the bathroom where he remained for the next hour or so.  I dropped off to sleep.  This is going to be an interesting sojourn.  After ‘staging’ we leave for Honduras early Wednesday morning.  I may not be able to post or email for the first few weeks, so please dear readers, be patient.  We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.  Or maybe we are.

I’m packed.  All my belongings safely stored: lunches and dinners and going-away parties properly acknowledged and enjoyed.  Commiserating and bonding, laughter and past happy events duly re-experienced; promises made to reconnect in the not too distant future.  For what is life but a continuum of interconnecting experiences and interactions.  The purpose of life is to nurture a love for life, to treasure family connections, maintain friendships … and to pursue personal growth.  Tomorrow I leave for Washington D.C. and ‘staging.’  Staging being a two-day experience designed to propel us greenbean PCVTs (Peace Corps Volunteer Trainees) into another culture.  Stifling a choking lump in my throat I stand poised to leap into a different world.

Four weeks to go.  I am in process of squeezing my life into two check-in bags and one carry-on bag.  Moving day is February 14th: all my belongings to be shoe-horned into a 10 x 12-foot storage locker.  Departure date is February 24, 2009.

On this, my new president’s inauguration day, I give thanks that the forces of reason, intellect, integrity and competence have prevailed over the past eight years of small-minded, ignorant, mendacious and self-serving pseudo-patriots who have plunged my country down a reckless path of economic uncertainty, disrespect for the rule of law and our constitutional heritage, abrogation of human rights, and downright corruption of the political process in an effort to pursue their nefarious ends.  With a long-forgotten sense of pride I will reach my new posting in Honduras motivated to promote those ideals for which our country has served as the vanguard of liberty and democracy and as a multi-racial beacon to the law-abiding world.  Let freedom ring!

My initial plans for posting in-country may be complicated by erratic internet service.  I have learned that ATT Worldwide Gobal Satellite Wireless Internet provision (the only provider available from within the U.S.) excludes the country of Honduras.  That leaves me with the options of relying on WiFi internet cafes or other WiFi sites, and pay-per-use internet sites.  I have traveled in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula several times and pay-per-use sites were all over the place for very nominal fees.  Everything depends, of course, on where my permanent posting will be.  If my assignment is in a rural, outlying area where the Peace Corps tells me they will provide me with a horse or a donkey to see clients, my posts may not be weekly.  There is, however, another possibility.  I may be able to locate an ISP after I arrive in Honduras.  Our training class of 50 new volunteers will be stationed in Tegucigalpa, the capital, for three months to prepare us for language training and the transition to a new culture and environment.  This is definitely a challenge I will address as soon as I hit the ground.

Learning how to maintain my new website under my daughter Andrea’s tutelage is an exercise that will require much instruction over the five weeks before I leave Seattle for my assignment.  It will be necessary for me to absorb all this new info in small chunks.  All my resource persons will be here and I will be there so I must learn to be as self-reliant as possible.  Today – writing posts and transferring all the info in my old computer onto my new Lenovo X60 ThinkPad.  My next lesson will be learning how to post photos from my new digital camera.  This Peace Corps assignment is definitely an enhanced learning curve in more ways than one.  Just what the doctor ordered.  Thanks Dr. Menzies, thanks Dr. Simpson, for helping me through the rigorous physical and dental examination processes.  The Peace Corps’ qualification and selection process is demanding.  Only about one in three applicants becomes a trainee; and 9 out of 10 trainees successfully complete pre-service training and are sworn-in as Volunteers.