Week 8 of training...where it starts getting more fun :)

Hondurans love to dance. So do I. Our group of Peace Corps trainees danced the Waka Waka twice this week, and our community neighbors danced some slightly more traditional danzas in exchange. The Peace Corps likes to do cultural exchange events, so we took these opportunities to also share Red Rover, watermelon seed spitting, and the electric slide. Definitely the best parts of US culture :)

Images from Rio Negro, a small community near the top of Montaña Comayagua. We visited a women´s cooperative which makes purses out of chip bags and bracelts out of magazine paper. The co-op was super lucky to find a buyer in the US, and they now export all of their products. We also hiked up into the national park which is where the waterfall-fern tree picture came from. I saw a flock of 20 oropendulas there, and I was hoping to see a Tucan, but I never found one. The fruit in my hand is cardimum. One of the local coffee farms tried to diversify into spice production. They haven´t yet found a buyer in Honduras however.

Adios amigos. Hope you are all doing well where ever you currently find yourselves. Come visit me in Honduras soon!

More exciting pictures!

Tree Planting Adventures: Last week we went to ESNACIFOR, the forestry school here in Honduras. We spent the morning planting two types of multi-use trees up on the deforested hillsides surrounding the school. The sapling here is a Nim tree, which repels mosquitoes, fixes nitrogen, and can be used for forage and firewood. The back side of the hill we are on had been replanted with trees three years earlier. This part of Honduras is pretty dry, so those trees were only about four feet tall. We planted our trees in the middle of the rainy season, so we are hoping for pretty good survival.

Family garden project: Part of our Field Based Training includes starting a family garden with at our homestay. Last Sunday the kids and I ran around the neighborhood to borrow a pick mattock and a hoe, tore up the front yard, and made three little raised beds. Tomorrow we are building a psuedo-fence out of spiny branches to keep the chicken out. We planted carrots, tomatoes, chiles, lettuce, and beans.


Other random adventures:

This was after I got caught on the mountain in a huge storm and collected charred firewood. Dirty and soaked.

The friend of my homestay brother shot a White-Vented Euphonia with a sling shot, and tried to make it his pet. Here it is in my hand going into shock. It died the next day :( 

Dona Angela bought one of our chickens this morning to make soup. I'm so glad she killed this one. He crowed right outside my window every morning starting at 4 am. Maybe now I'll get some more sleep :)