September/October-The Time of Endings

This time has been CRAZY!!! I have finished so many large projects-COLGATE, Yo Merezco and Yo Tambien Merezco, and TEAM 3. It feels good to be ending!

COLGATE finally ended after 6 months of teaching a whole elementary school of 100 kids each week about dental hygiene. It was so lovely to end that project even though it wasn’t an overwhelming amount of work because I got help from the other 5 teachers. And now, that it is over, I have formed really close friendships with many of the kids and the teachers. I still get invited to attend many of the school activities. Also, next year, I think they want me to come back and do something else, so I will see about having a reading program there since Peace Corps has given us a large box with over 100 books to use in our communities.

Yo Merezco and Yo Tambien Merezco is about abstinence, self-esteem, making good choices, preventing HIV/AIDS, learning the responsibilities of having children and being married, etc. This project we did with a high school class of 28 students for their fieldwork. There were 10 groups that went out into 9 different villages or communities throughout my town and taught the 2 programs to either a group of girls or boys. OMG…I got a lot of exercise during these 3 months going to each of these groups to supervise them in all the villages, give them suggestions on how to improve the classes, etc. In the end, around 193 children participated!

TEAM 3 is an English Class that we teach to teachers who then use what they learn to go into the classroom and teach their students. So, I have been teaching them techniques to improve their class, grammar rules, vocabulary, etc. for 6 months.

So, this information is brought to you just because I thought you might be interested or at the least curious to know of my work here in Honduras…not just my travels and cultural insights. Lol.

AND NOW??…I am ready to TRAVEL!!! I can’t wait to see Tiffany, and Wiatta as we travel in 2 weeks! YAY for a vacation! :)
Victoria

Whadaya have-COFFEE!!

These are the rosquillas in coffee in a normal cup of coffee. This is SO delicious!



These are some of the bread varieties that are offered in the stores.

This is a coffee plant with a ripe coffee bean (the red one).


Coffee in a tin

Living in my town, a coffee town that grows tons of coffee, I have come to respect the art of growing, collecting, processing, and of course drinking the oh so common, but luxurious beverage that is coffee.

Just so you know how awesome our coffee is…and so you can be jealous that I get tons of this coffee…in a worldwide competition, our coffee (in the region) was voted number 1 or 3 or something crazy like that. Meaning? OUR COFFEE IS GOOD.

You may be wondering…I thought Victoria didn’t drink coffee…well, when I first arrived to my town, they couldn’t believe it either and so began the slow assimilation that was basically mandatory to live in my town. Even the babies…yes, the babies drink coffee!!! There is a little baby in my house who just turned 1 years old and has been drinking coffee for awhile already…not sure this is good for the little guy, but it’s the reality. This is to give you the context that coffee is definitely the beverage of choice.

Everywhere you will go, you will be offered coffee. It is served for breakfast, sometimes after breakfast but before lunch, at 3-4p.m., and at dinner. This is a LOT of coffee. Right, now, I try to drink only 1-2 cups a day. The one good thing I will say about this is that the cups really are cups…they aren’t huge mugs or anything like that…they are like tea cups.

Also, on the way to my town and throughout my town, you will see coffee plants! People have them in separated farms and even in their back yard. Right now, they’ve actually started picking the coffee as the coffee season is upon us!

So, how is coffee processed? (In my words)
1. Grow it in little small bags.
2. Move the plant once it’s bigger to a field so it can grow to full maturity in around a year.
3. Pick the red coffee fruit/bean. Take off outer shell.
4. Dry the red coffee fruit/bean.
5. Grind this dried fruit/bean to make the coffee grinds that then make the beverage.

Other fast facts about coffee:
COST -L3 for a cup of coffee ($.15)
-L45 per pound of ground coffee (~$2.50)
What do we have with our coffee-normally fresh bread, a tortilla, or rosquillas (corn meal and cheese donut shaped cookie) that are delicious when you put them inside the cup of coffee and the inflate and it’s glorious!

Hope this was fun and informative to read! :)
Victoria