Volunteer site visits

This Sunday I´m heading over to San Lorenzo to visit another health volunteer for three nights. From what I´ve read, San Lorenzo is a progressive town with a bunch of tourist attractions, but I´m sure i´llbe seeing a very different side of the city. My host mom has told me that San Lorenzo is one of the hottest places in Honduras, which sounds great for me and my overactive sweat glands! The city itself is located on the pacific coast of Honduras, which is actually a very small gulf on the southwest corner of the country. Total travel time should be about 4 hours from Teguc, so not that bad. Im really excited about the trip. While training has been fun and all, it seems like a bunch of volunteers have been pretty anxious to get out there and see what we will actually be doing.

This past week we took our first visits into Tegucigalpa. I was expecting to see something similar to Lima (since its really my only frame of reference), but in actuality the city is much more underdevloped and dangerous. Im getting the impression that most volunteers avoid going into Teguc unless traveling or going to the PC office. As we took the bus downtown everyone seemed pretty nervous about what the city had to offer. From the bus station we split up into groups of three and hailed cabs for our next destination. The first stop we made was at the open air market for some family grocery shopping. Upon arrival we met up with our instructors and off we went. In all honesty, the market looked like a dimly lit farmers market with a lot more meat and chorizo hanging from random corners and kiosks. It was really interesting to see, except for the overabundance of flies, but thats expected.

From there we went to the bus terminals to figure out how to get to different parts of the country. Apparentally, the infomation we wrote down at the stations will be passed onto everyone for our volunteer site visits this sunday. I´m praying that people actually paid attention.

From the bus station we went to the peace corps HQ in Teguc for a short tour and relaxation session. The office seriously looked like a high security prison from the outside. There are no signs and a huge wall with barbed wire surrounding the office. But inside, there is AC!!!! and INTERNET WITH WIFI. On the way back we took peace corps vehicles which looked suspicously like the white ford explorers used in the movie Clear and Present Danger, where Harrison Ford and enterouge were corned in an alley by narco-trafficers with missle launchers. It was all very surreal.

For now thats all I got. Thanks again for all the comments, they are really fun to read.

Love
J

PS-(for Eva) The derivation of Beethoven´s name is not as cool as I had hoped it would be. Apparentally, he comes from a long line of Beethoven´s which loosely refers to that movie with the St. Bernard-Beethoven and Beethoven´s second...boo