We have a home!

The wait is over, we finally know where we will be living for the next two years, and really we couldn´t be happier. Our new town is called San Francisco del Valle. It is a small town, of about 1,000 people located in the western part of the country. We may already be partial, but the western part of the country is the most beautiful. It is full of green rolling hills and semi-tropical vegetation. Our small town is also located close to the Mayan Ruins at Copán, which is nice because then anyone coming to visit us can also easily visit the ruins. We are about 4 hours south of the second largest city in the country, San Pedro Sula, though we don´t have much reason to go there anyways, it is pretty dangerous. Are town is pretty small and doesn´t have all the conveniences but it is only 2km from the neighboring town that is medium sized and has restaraunts, internet, and small-scale shopping.

It is quite a trip from the capital though, about 10 hours by bus. We are sandwiched in the western corner of the country, about 18 miles from both Guatemala and El Salvador. This region is very safe and the people here are very nice. Also, we were excited to discover that it is not blazing hot here. It is usually 70-85 degrees and there is a dry season and a wet season. A variety of fruits can also be found in this region- pineapples, watermelons, oranges, limes, lemons, and bananas can all be grown here. This area is also famous for its coffee farming. Yesterday as we travelled around the mountain towns with our coworkers we passed coffee farms all along the side of the road. Now to this point in our lives Emily and I haven´t been coffee drinkers. We are going to give it a try, though we aren´t sure if that´s a good idea or not.

Our host family here is very nice and quite well off. Obviously there are many views of the immigration problems in the U.S. but I feel that he did it the "right way." He worked long hours in the U.S. for four years so he could come home and open his own business and farm. He now has a coffee farm and a construction business here in Honduras. We were happy to see that because a lot of parents that leave Honduras for the U.S. never come back. Emily and I have both just finished reading a really good book about the journey of a young boy from Honduras to the U.S. in search of his mother who left him. We recommend it to anybody and everybody, regardless of your stance on the issue. It shows what the journey to the U.S. entails and the positive and negative consequences for the people involved. The book is titled "Enrique´s Journey."

The actual trip to our site was quite a journey within itself. We were lucky enough to get a ride with another volunteer who´s coworker brought a van and was going to a town near ours. Otherwise we would have had to pack 5 huge bags on a few different buses and hope not to lose any. We started at 5am, the first challenge was the lingering smell of gasoline (Emily says antifreeze and she´s from a farm so she´s probably right) that permeated the van the entire trip. At first it gave us a headache but letter we just started to think that everything was very funny. Our driver was very good but the rules of the road are different here. Double yellow on a corner means go faster when you pass and lay on the horn. We continued more or less without incident until we were only 5 miles from our town and we blew a tire in the crater sized holes in the road. This was on the highway, this stretch is full of BIG holes that are around 6 inches deep. The driver changed the tire in the dark and we made it to town, by this time it was 8pm. Then we couldn´t find our host family´s home so a couple local kids jumped in the back of the truck and took us there. Also, there was no electricity, but we made and we love it. In the center of town is a park with a 114 year old Ceiba tree, very cool.

We spent all day yesterday meeting our counterparts, coworkers, and kids at the school. Tonight we have a dinner with the mayor and a meeting with the 190 or so teachers in the district/county. Tomorrow we will go back to the capital on the 10 hour bus for one more week of training and then we will swear in as official volunteers on September 27. And then we get back on the bus and make the trip here again. We´ll tell you more about who we will be working with and what we will be doing in the next blog.