(Almost) Two Years in the Peace Corps in Review

Here I am with my host family celebrating Christmas Eve.
Can you spot the gringo?

Hoping that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and Hanukka. I was lucky enough to be invited to spend Christmas Eve with my host family, a silly and fun adventure in and of itself. My main goal nowadays is to enjoy the last few moments here in my community, amongst my friends and work partners.

I dare say that now that we are approaching the arrival of a new year, it is an appropriate moment to reflect on one's life. So that's what this post is all about.

Some of my favorite magazine editions are Time’s “Year in Review.” It has been a positive experience, amidst the current dramatic turmoil of PC-Honduras, to do something similar and try to recap the past 22 months I have spent as a Peace Corps Volunteer in this fascinating, generous country:

Work Related

Book your trip now!

Classes taught: 8

Manuals written: 3

Videos made: 1

Volunteer events hosted in my site: 2

Tourists who have

visited my community: 300

Kilometers of new trail built:  5

Gain in profit at my coffee co-op from 2010-2011: L2,000,000 ($100,000)

Cultural/Honduras specific    

 

Heading to my bathroom...

1: spider larger than a tennis ball found in my house

1500-1600 : cups of coffee drunk

4 : buckets of coffee picked

1:  number of times I have been shocked by faulty electric installations

1/4 : bowls of traditional tripe soup successfully/politely downed

Personal Time

Books read: 35... top five:                        

1. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
2. The Sex Lives of Cannibals (Maarten Troost)
3. The Gone Away World (Nick Harkaway)
4. American Gods (Neil Gaiman)
5. The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell)

Movies watched: 185 ... top five:

1. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
2. Death Proof (2007)
3. Sin Nombre (2009)
4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
5. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)    

                                                     
                                               Other

Quetzal.

    Number of months without a personal computer: 7.5

    Apx number of hours of television watched: 25
 
    New countries visited: 2     (El Salvador, Panamá)

    Hikes in the cloud forest: 15

    Quetzals seen: 7

    Shots of tequila taken / shots of tequila regretted: 5/5

    Pictures taken: 2279

    Illegitimate children: 0

Things I will miss…

                    Most

Plato típico = Standard fare

The natural beauty of the Santa Barbara Mountain

All things coffee

My friends and work partners, fellow PCVs

The Honduran plato tipico

The exercise I get on a daily basis

The quiet evenings

Getting piropo-ed (I don’t care if it was by 9^th graders)

Gallina = culprit 1

                    Least

The unease of travelling

Risks of being a gringo here in general

Milk products of Honduras

Gallinas  (chickens) and cohetes (firecrackers)

Cohetes = culprit 2

Riding buses in general

Having no cell phone coverage and being the last to hear about important news

The 60 year old female mayor of Santa Barbara winking at me and squeezing my elbow during meetings

Things I missed from the US… 

Most

Dr. Pepper

Dishwashers

Trash management

Being up to date on news and major events

Driving

Current movies

Ubiquitous Internet

Dave Letterman

Being paid in dollars

The comfort of public security

Being within my native culture

(Friends, family)

Least

"I make America look good."

The fast pace and pressure/stress connected with trying to become a successful adult in the United States

Facebook

Expensive consumer goods

Partisan politics

The economic crisis and not having a job

American television

Donald Trump

Will see everyone back home quite soon. Happy New Year's from San Luis Planes!

Celebrate Something New this Holiday Season

Report: month 22

 “Where is my Mind? Way out, in the water. See it swimmin’…”
-The Pixies

I came to a shocking realization the other night, quite out of the blue. What do the state of North Carolina and the Honduran department of Santa Barbara have in common? Well, there are at least two things that I can think of. They are both places that:

1. I, Alex Osteen, have lived in for longer than 1.583 years.
2. Celebrate the human foot in strange, mutated-morphological ways. North Carolina proudly displays the sole of its troublingly blue foot, stained with a viscous black substance and Santa Barbara’s famous symbol is a foot with a rainbow feather growing out of it. Weird, right?

Does this mean that there’s something horribly messed up with my sub-conscience, that I have somehow ended up living a vast portion of my life in Bizarre Foot World?! I don’t think I’ve done it intentionally, but that would just prove it’s my sub-conscience at work. Indeed, this is precisely the kind of thing that I ponder at nights here in the GRAND OLE United States Peace Corps.

I hope everyone has a happy holiday season 2011 and remember, celebrate your feet.

Celebrating New Year's in Rural Honduras

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!
My New Year’s celebration went as follows:

1. Host family invites me to a late dinner at their house to begin at 9pm.
2. Arrive at 7ish to a houseful of children, old people and a few of us in between—dinner preparations are just beginning to be considered.
3. Host father invites me to a drink outside with friends = passing the bottle of Jim Bean then Jose Cuervo then vodka in a circle around the pickup truck telling crude stories. Do not worry, I partook hardly any. (Host father had started at 2pm)
4. Go inside after a few short minutes to escape the cold breeze and the escalating debauchery. Get a general lecture about how not enough people save their money in San Luis Planes from host grandmother—an appropriate conversation for any PCV… always on duty (actually, go granny… I begged her to give a talk at my coop!).
5. Firecrackers are going off like crazy. A few bottle rockets, a few volcanoes, a few sparklers, a few poppers, but mostly just the loud ones that go BANG.
6. Dinner is served on time at around 11:15. Three types of meat and lots of beans. Welcoming in the new year with farts all around.
7. Piñata smashing committed by those of us between the ages of 17 and 30, the real children of the group, as it turned out.
8. Midnight: burning of an effigy representing the old year (naturally, loaded with firecrackers), down on the plaza; explosions everywhere; host dad and cohorts firing pistol into air; hugs and kisses (when not jumping from the bangs); and did I mention the firecrackers?
9. Music so loud you could taste it: ranchero, techno and Lady Gaga.
10. Dancing. Yes, I danced to it all. And they had never seen such moves. Of course I would never ever even think about dancing with my 17 year old host sister. Never.

Anyway, it was a fun night and I’m very glad that I decided to stay in my community for the big day. I am also grateful I’ve got such a great host family. My host dad, by the way, showed back up at their house sometime around noon the next day with something of a headache I’m sure.

To be good and cheesy, I hope that everyone has a healthy and productive 2011.
Finally, below are a handful of my choices for top bug sightings in Honduras in the year 2010:

1. Stick Bug

2. Earring cocoons

3. Pincer bug

4. One of the many non-descript spiders

in my house

5. Brown butterfly on door