Site Announcement!

So sorry for the long delay in posting – a lot has happened in the last few weeks!

On Cinco de Mayo we found out our permanent sites.  At this point I was still in training with a bunch of the other people from my group – we were all really anxious to find out where we would be spending the next 2 years.  Basically during training there was a long process in which we told our bosses what we were interested in, had to offer, etc as well as personal preferences like small / large city, hot / less hot etc.  They had already laid the groundwork for about 25 sites before we even got into the country – so they matched the 18 of us and our interests with the 25 sites they had available.

So they assigned me to Lepaterique, Francisco Morazán.  On the off chance that you don’t know where this is, I’m about 25 miles southwest of the capital (Tegucigalpa).  Although its quite close I am up an unpaved mountain road – so it takes the bus 2.5 hours to make the trip. 

Lepaterique is a small town (about 2,200 people) within a larger municipal area of 13,400 people.  It’s cool and rainy relative to the rest of Honduras and very hilly – I think the town is at about 4,000 ft.  The area itself is split between farming (lots of produce sold in the capital is grown here) and pine forests.  The town itself is also a source of water for the cities of Tegucigalpa, Comayagua and Nacaome.  So basically they assigned me to Poland Spring.

My work is with an organization that concentrates in 4 areas: produce / farming, beekeeping, local water boards (think Monopoly not Dick Cheney) and women’s small businesses.  The water boards are focused on protecting forests and watersheds etc which is great for my tree hugging side and fits within some interests I had coming in.  And the beekeeping is a lot of fun – hopefully I can share some pictures and video soon.

So I’ve been here for just over a month – so far so good.  I’m living with host family #3 right now, but they are great people and I have some privacy here so its not that bad.  And my job here has been keeping me busy which is a good thing – sometimes Volunteers show up and there is not a lot to do.

Here is a picture of Lepaterique – I should be better about keeping in touch going forward because now I have a modem.