Goodbye, For Now

Our Group Parts Ways, Friday, September 23^rd

I woke up at 4AM, as our bus was arriving at 5. I had stayed up late packing, thus I didn’t really get any sleep. After packing my last couple of items in the morning, it was time to head out. My host brother, Mario, helped me carry all of my bags up the steep hill that leads to the street. Gloria also helped to carry my smallest bag. I clearly had the most stuff out of anyone in the entire group, and when our bus arrived I was worried there wouldn’t be enough space for everyone and all of our bags (it was a smaller kind of bus that they have around Honduras). We were able to stack all of our bags into a giant pile on the back of the bus, and there ended up being plenty of room.

I gave Gloria a hug goodbye, shook Mario’s hand, boarded the bus, and that was the last I saw of them (for now!). I really think I had the best host family of the entire group. I was sad to say goodbye, but I knew I would see them again soon. I’m invited back for Christmas, and it should be pretty easy to visit them more often than that. It’s only 60 Limpiras to take a bus to Teguz (about $3), and another 20 Limps to Valle De Angeles. Worst case scenario, I would have to take a taxi to the different bus stations, but at the worst that would only cost $4 or $5. Also, my counterpart in Teupasenti has a house in Teguz where his family stays. He lives with them on the weekends and offered to take me any time he goes, and even will let me stay at his house (and feed me!). This should make it even easier to visit them every once in a while.

Anyways, back to the story. I decided to sit in the back to keep an eye on the mountain of suitcases. However, just as I was sitting down, an alarm started going off. It was instantly recognizable as one of our portable safety alarms. You can stick it on the wall next to your bed and press the button for an alarm if some sort of emergency were to occur. I packed mine away somewhere the day I got it and didn’t really have any intention of setting it up. The sound it makes isn’t exactly what you want to hear at an emotional moment at 5AM. I started moving some bags around to figure out who the culprit was (I was hoping to give the culprit a really hard time). Moving the bags around, I realized the worst. It was coming from my own bag. It was at the very bottom of my large hiking backpack, tucked way down at the bottom. I fumbled through my bag for what felt like several minutes as the rest of the group started harassing me about it. Even though they were joking, the noise was so obnoxious that I was stressing to get it out as soon as possible. Finally, from the depths of my whale of a backpack, I pulled out the obstruction. About the size of a golf ball, I held it high for all to see and gently turned the switch to ‘off’.

Just after, the bus started to head towards Teguz. Someone joked about how we had better make the conversation a good one, and fast, as it was our last moment together as a group. However, simply stating that pressure was enough to get us started talking. I can’t remember what we talked about, probably Honduran snack foods or how our bodily functions had altered in our new country. No topic was taboo for our group, as we had all became very close very quickly. However, far too soon we would be separated.

When we arrived at the hotel I called my counterpart to have him come and pick me up. However, as I learned later, the number that I had was incorrect and I couldn’t get a hold of him. Although I wanted to just get to his house and rest, I was glad for the opportunity to lounge in the hotel lobby and continue to chat. Thirty minutes later my counterpart arrived and I loaded my bags into his pickup and gave everyone a hug goodbye. As was with my host family, I knew it was just goodbye for now.

From Teguz to Teupa

Most of the rest of the day is a blur, as I was half asleep the whole time. We stayed at my counterpart’s house in Teguz for a couple hours, where I had the chance to take a shower and then meet his family. They’re quite nice, and I look forward to hanging out with them on the weekends from time to time.

Instead of heading straight to Teupasenti, I followed my counterpart around the city as he went to visit former high school students of his to record their progress in some sort of internship program they were participating in. I felt very important walking tall through downtown Teguz and stopping by various office buildings and one of the universities. However, there were about ten different students to visit in ten separate locations. We had only visited half of them by lunch time, and we returned to his house to eat. He could tell I was really tired so he offered to let me stay and sleep at the house. His son (only a couple years younger than I) let me use his bed. The whole family ended up going out to run errands for the afternoon, thus I was left alone in the house. Perhaps I should have felt alone or afraid as I laid there by myself in a strange bed, in a strange house, in a strange city, in a strange country, and in the care of people that were basically strangers. But the truth is, I felt strangely fine. 

A few hours later my counterpart and I were ready to head to Teupa. We loaded his pickup truck with my suitcases again and hit the road. It was about a two-hour journey, packed with some breath-taking views of expansive valleys and accompanying mountain ranges. The feeling the scenery evokes is lost in a photograph, as even that medium fails to convey the grandeur of it all. It’s a kind of beauty that only exists in this region of the world, and I hope that any of you would have the opportunity to experience it for yourself someday.

We arrived in Teupa around 7:30, and it was already too dark to get a sense of what my new town looked like. We pulled into his house, where I spent the night. We figured it was a little too late to stop by the house of the family that I was actually assigned to live with. We talked in his living room very briefly, and then I went to bed early. Even with my afternoon nap, I was still overtired from all of the traveling.

More to come!

The End of the Beginning

Ok, so it’s been a while since my last post. A lot of things have happened since then, but I don’t have anywhere near enough time to go into all of it. There’s no point in recounting the excitement of us learning about our sites, as here I am, already in my new home. Independence day would be neat to write about, but it seems so long ago now. The weekend before we left the entire group went out for a party that we titled ‘Peace Corps Prom’, which was great. You can see the pictures to get an idea of how that went.

I guess I’ll just skip ahead to our swearing-in ceremony.

Ceremony at the U.S. Embassy, Thursday, September 22^nd.

The whole day is a blur now. In the morning we went to Tegucigalpa to meet our counterparts. I met the principal of the High School I will be working at, but we didn’t get much of a chance to really talk. As a group we sat through some charlas to discuss things such as expectations for our work in the future. Truth be told I was only half paying attention, as the anticipation of the approaching ceremony occupied my mind.

Early in the afternoon they shipped our entire group to the Embassy. The grounds were beautiful, and we spent a while just taking pictures. For some reason I decided to take a picture of myself in the reflection of the door that leads to the inner part of the complex. I never take those ‘myspace’ style photos (where you take a picture of yourself looking at a mirror), but for that split second it seemed like a good idea. Almost immediately after, one of the officials at the embassy asked me sternly but calmly if he could look through my photos. Turns out it’s a security risk to take pictures of the doorways in an embassy. All I had to do was delete the one photo, and after a slight moment of embarrassment I went back out to the grounds.

The ceremony itself was great. There were speeches by our directors, the ambassador, a youth that had a personal testimony about how his life was affected by a Peace Corps Volunteer, and of course a speech by one of our own volunteers, Constance. Her speech was great, and right after that all fifteen of our group of volunteers went on stage to sing ‘Peace Train’ by Cat Stevens. One of our group members, Chris (probably my best friend of all the volunteers, and an amazing guitar player) was asked by our director to prepare a musical event for the ceremony. He ended up playing guitar on stage, while the rest of our group sang the chorus as we stood behind him. The song went just as we practiced.

 

After the ceremony, we got to hang out and enjoy some refreshments. We took full advantage of our final opportunities to hang out and joke around as a group. Even on our way home (in our fully-loaded Peace Corps Land Rover) we continued to enjoy ourselves. Hotel California came on the radio, and we sang it out loud at the top of our lungs with the windows down through the streets of Teguz. None of us completely knew the words or could sing particularly well, but it didn’t matter. As much fun as I was having, inside I felt a little sad knowing that in 24 hours the world I had grown accustomed to in the past three months would completely change.

When we got back home, I was excited for dinner. Gloria asked me what I had wanted, and I told her pizza (of course). However, when I arrived they told me that they weren’t able to get all of the ingredients together in time, so they made tacos for me instead. Keep in mind they aren’t really like anything you would call a taco in the United States. Though I didn’t enjoy them anywhere near as much as I would have enjoyed pizza, I appreciated the gesture of them making a special meal for me all the same. When we were done eating I gave them a small parting gift. I ended up buying them a few mugs, as my host mother and I had a little bit of an inside joke. Three mugs had been broken during the span of one week during my stay. A couple of the times it was because I put a mug I had used on the edge of the counter, and Gloria then accidentally knocked them onto the floor. The third mug was broken entirely by Gloria and had absolutely nothing to do with me. Thus, I thought it would be a cute parting gift, and they liked it.

More coming soon! I was going to make one really long post, but I haven't finished writing everything, so I figure I'll just post this for now

Almost There... (Staying on Target)

I haven’t written on here lately, which is mostly due to the fact that I don’t feel I have too much out of the ordinary to share. Time has been flying since my visit to Reitoca, and my days of training have fallen into a very regular groove. All of my attention is focused towards the future, as we only have two more weeks before we move out to our sites. These permanent 2-year sites will be announced this Monday, and all of us are waiting patiently (more or less) for those announcements. I have a lot to look forward to.

So what’s new? I’ve lost 20 pounds, but apparently weight loss is quite normal for guys in Peace Corps. I feel healthy, haven’t been sick since the first week, have plenty of energy, and haven’t ever felt like I don’t get enough to eat. I think part of it is the fact that I am in fact eating less, since I don’t feel the need to indulge in food. To be blunt, Honduran cuisine isn’t all that amazing (am I repeating myself?), thus I don’t ever feel the need to eat as much as I would in the States. I think the majority of the weight I have lost has been muscle (which, as you all know, I had so much of), and my rate of weight loss is definitely starting to decrease. Nothing to be concerned about.

Another reason that I haven’t done much writing on here is due to the fact that I have been reading voraciously as of late. Since arriving here, I have finished ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by Salinger (third time reading it), ‘Bright Lights, Big City’ by Jay McIneray, and ‘I Know This Much is True’ by Wally Lamb. The latter was 900 pages, though overall they were all quick reads.

Let’s talk literature. 

Concerning On the Road, I have to say I was a little let down. It had been built up to be an American classic, but my personal opinion is that it didn’t live up to the hype. I struggled to get through it, as it felt like just a loose collection of descriptions of events that two selfish men experienced as they drove to various places around the country (as well as some of Mexico). I never reached a point where I cared about how drunk they got, how many prostitutes they slept with, or what kind of drugs they took. I never really connected with the main character, nor did I understand why he was so enamored with his friend Dean. The aspects of Dean’s character that made him ‘interesting’ only seemed to be a result of manic stages of bipolarity. Neither character has a genuine cathartic moment or seems to show some sort of fulfillment from their actions and adventures, but then again maybe that’s the point of the whole book (which I seem to have missed, if it exists). At the end I was left wondering if it’s popularity is only due to the shock value it held in 1950’s society (I believe it was first published in 1959), as well as the fact that scattered throughout are passages of beautiful prose and undeniably skillful writing here and there.

I don’t really have anything intellectual or groundbreaking to say about the rest of the books I read, so I won’t bother. All I can say is that I recommend the rest.

On Writing

I guess I’ll take this moment to say that I have been toying with the idea of writing for a little while now. Not having a writing background, I’ve been a little nervous to get started (this is where you can say ‘you can do it Peter! Your Blog writing is amazing already!). One of my fellow volunteers, Chris (who was an English major in college) suggested the idea of starting with a short story. His idea is that if you can write a good short story, then you probably have it in you to write a full novel. Instead of getting started with writing right away, I decided to procrastinate further. I downloaded a collection of Ernest Hemmingway short stories, both for my personal enjoyment as well as to give me some ideas on how short stories are structured (since I haven’t really read any since high school).

Hopefully I’ll get started within the next few months, as I have a lot of other stuff on my plate to worry about first. I’m always nervous about sharing ideas I have such as this (the idea of writing), as I worry that it won’t pan out or won’t be successful. I hate talking something up and then having it fall through, with my failure visible to everyone. One thing that encourages me is that this is exactly how I felt when I first started toying with the idea of applying for Peace Corps. I was careful about who I shared my ambition with, and was afraid to get too excited about it. I was worried I would either be too scared to go through with it, or that I wouldn’t be accepted. All the while I researched it quietly, and slowly took all the necessary steps to achieve that dream. After all that, look where I am now.