long time no post

hey, thanks so much to everyone for all the birthday wishes, it was really great to hear from all of you. i am really missing each and everyone of you. but everything is going really well here. i just moved houses and am now living in the the middle of the forest in a co0mmunity of 8 or 9 houses. it is absolutley beauitful. there is no electricity so i go to bed at 8 and wake up at 5, its a little different but im loving it, there also is not too much cell phone service so if you have called and i have not answered thats why. i have also been working in some communities in the mountains, which are at least 2 hours walking from my house, uphill. i am finally starting to organize projects and i think we will start with a letrine project as well as constructing a school and working to improve farming practices. i really feel like i am starting to fit in here. i am slowly becoming more and more of a cowboy, yet i still havent found a horse. other than that its pretty much same old same old, visiting ´houses holding meetings to organize projects and doing a lot of walking. i am really enjoying myself and feel like i am part of the community. they know how to get to my heart, they are feeding me all the time, and i think i eat an average of 20 tortillas a day haha. for thanksgiving we had a party at other volunteers house in catacamas and it was great seeing all the other volunteers and it felt like i was back home, and the food was unbelievable. now we can visit other volunteers so it will be nice to go see other peoples sites and explore honduras a little. hope all is well and ill try post more often but i have had some trouble getting to the internet as i have been very busy.

o i almost forgot the highlight of my week was catching a snake. it wasnt too big but it was a little posinouis, luckily i didnt get bitten. but when i come back i will be able to have my own snake show on tv. also sorry if the grammar isnt to good, i think i translating from spanish, the other night i even was sleep talking in spanish hahah

Gooooolllllll

We made it to the world cup!!!!! I still cant believe it. We watched the game on a big projected screen but the signal was very weak for the first half. After the game everyone was pretty upset, and then i recieved a call from my dad, which at first i thought was some sort of sick joke and told everyone that the US had tied it up and we were going to the world cup. otherwise everything is going well i am just meeting people going to farms and thinking of new projects to do. i also thought about getting a monkey as a pet but decided it was cruel to the monkey. other than that things are pretty tranquil and i am having a great time. i also found a house that i want to rent for the next two years but ill have to put some work into the house before. hope everyone is doing well

my new home for the next two years.

i finnaly made it! i arrived the 1st of the month in la union, catacamas, olancho. it is a small town of about 100 peopl located about 30 minutes from a town of 30,000, catacamas. the town is very poor and the only real economy is agriculture which is almost more for sustance than profit. but the people are extremely nice and helpful. the town is surrounded by beautiful mountains and a national park. there is a national park called the caves of talgua right near my site where the oldest human remains in central america were found. there is a nice american style lodge and guest center in this part. further up there are smaller villages and the farms where most people work. i plan to live in this village whith no electricty bt surrounded by majestic views. my counterpart lives there and he is unbelievable. the other day he caught a snake and in the process got but. he told me the snake was poisonois because his hand was numb but did not make a big deal about it, turns out the snake was very poisonous according to a snake book.
for the next three months i am supposed to get to know the community and think of and plan projects. so right now i am going house to house meetting peopel and have a town hall meeting scheduled for later today, which i am a little nervous for. i have about 10 cups of coffee or soda a day as everyone offers me a cup when i come visit.i have also been playing a lot of soccer, we bet 50 cents eacha nd the winners get their money back as well as, you guessed it a free soda. there was also a small fiesta the other night, which was like a high school dance, but it was a lot of fun.
i have been living witha host family wjo have been great, they arre really jolly and show me around, take me on hikes ¨spear¨fishing and have been feeding me tons of beans rice and of course tortillas.
I plan on doing a number of projects in the community. such as improving agriculture practices, building bridges, school that ¨fell¨down , paths, work on water shed problems, enviro ed, clean up the community and also strat mini businesses like crafts, start a coop and get them certified organically as well as other projects like improves stoves and latrines. i hope to accomplish some of these goals but know it will be a long and hard proccess. i also feart hat some may be hard or impossible to accomplish as they require alot of funding which is hard to come by as well as community participation. i am optomistic and hope that i will be able to realize a few of these projects in the future, yet i know it is almost impossible to do them all.
the last few days have been quite trying as i have left all my friends from training and have been in a new place. yet i am making new friends althought he cultural driffirence have made it hard to completely relate to people and not have people feeling the smae theings i am feeling, like the other volunteers. yet there is another peace corper, juancito close by which is great and we met the other volunteer around the area who all seem really nice. i am very happy and feeling more and more comfortable everyday. i also cant wait for the soccer game tomorrow whcih we plan to watch on a giant projected screen. missing you all but having a great time

love
josue

ps ¡GO HONDURAS!

hey

hi, i am in a town called zarabanda now. we were supposed to leave for our sites yesterday but mel zelaya came back and thus there have been curfews the last week where we were not allowed to leave our houses for two days straight. now the curfews are only at night and we are confident that we will be able to go to our sites. my site is in olancho and the town is called la union, it is near these caves where the oldest human remains in central america were found. i will probably working with eco tourism here as well as enviro ed, sustainable farming, and many other projects. mty counter part seems amazing and everyione raves about him. olancho is also supposed to be a rough and tumble place so i am really excited to go. life here is pretty relaxing we ussually just chat play soccer and go on hikes. yet we have had a few parties which were really fun. i also went to a synangoge in teguz for rosh hashana which was fun but there were only a 15 ppl there and the key for the arc arrived a little late, but the ppl there were really nice and it was fun to go to a synagoge. hope you all are doing well, missing you all. i hope you all have a happy and healthy new year

love
josh

site!!!

i finally got my site. it is in olancho which is like the wild wild west of honduras but it is in the center. i am really excited to go there as the people are pretyy open and they are known as the cowboys of honduras and all the ones i met i really like. i am a little disapointed as my site will have 1000 people and electricity. i am not exactly sure what i will be doing and will have to wait until i get there. all is well

josh

Long time no blog

hi its been a while...so much has hapened since i last wrote... we have been continuing w classe and i have been learning so much. but more importantly we are having a lot of fun too. i went to a quinceñera which was a mixture betweeen a bar mitzvah and a wedding, extremely over the top but a ton of fun. i also went to this waterfall that filtered inot three pools each one getting progreseivley dirtier but it was a blast. my host sister also had a birthday with a piñata and one of the best cakes i have ever seen. we are also doin a lot of activities with our group like a pancake dinner and movies. we have really become close and it will be sad to leave them.
the food here is also really good, sugary and fried, but good. there is an underground frozen treat trade where random houses will put signs outside there house and sellfrozen juice/popsicles in bags and frozen chocolate bananas for the equivalent of five cents. i am addicted
yet i think these may have put me in the hospital. this weekend i spent two days in the hospital being pumped with ivs becuase i had a bacterail infection and ameobas. but it wasnt too bad and i got to take a warm shower and watch soccer all day and i am doing great nopw
all of honduras has soccer feverand our team is doing really well. we plan to project the game were we will beat mexcio onto a huge wall and all watch together but who knows if we can do it, never the less i cant wait.
yet my time here is coming to a end. on the 15th i go back to zarabanda and the 17th i findout where i will be for the next two years and what ill be doing and then go there on the 25th. i cannot wia tot get to my site and start working!!!!
sorry i havent been able to updat this blog more often but get used to it cuz it hard to get to the internet. hope everyone is doing well and i miss you all

josue (my new name, with an acent on the e)

Honuras Final

I finally arrived in honduras! it is an amazing country extremely beautiful with amazing people. we are now doing field based training in a small town called la cuesta. It is semi rural but we are having a great time. we are learnign different technical and administrative skills that we will be implimenting during our service as well as learning spanish. i live on top of a hill in a magnificent house with a giant flat screen tv. my friends call me the princess. we are a really close group which has made everything so much easier. the other day we got caught in a huge storm during a hike but no one complained and we all throughly enjoyed it. The political sitution still continue sbut there are few direct effects. I am tying to fit into the cultures as much as possible and my spanish is improving, i have also started to try and grow a mustache (when in rome) but it is not going so well. but i do have two whole years to work on it. in the upcoming weeks we will be working with farmers and learning how to build stoves among other things so i am extremely excited because everything is hands on and aplicable to what we may be doing in the future. I also got a phone and the number from the us is 011 504 9750 5493 and you can go to the tigo website (in spanish) and send free text messages from there for free. missing you all and hope everything is going well

So a few things have happened since my last post. i organized a softball game in the dominican republic against some dominicans, which turned out to be a legitimate game with umpires, floodlights, and a scoreboard. I basically kicked a bunch of dominican ass, I ball out pretty hard, what can I say. We left Honduras on Sunday, but our flight was delayed so we missed our connecting flight, so me stayed in a hotel in miami where they decided they would wait longer to send us to honduras. so now we are relaxing in miami waiting for the green light to head to honduras. never did i expect that my peace corps experience would consist of me relaxing at a pool in miami but i have come to terms with it and have been enjoying this little vacation. yet i cannot wait to get to honduras. other than that everything is great.

hi,
still in the DR. Everything is great we have really been having a lot of fun. We have been going to spanish and cultral classes then coming home and relaxing with fellow pc volunteers and our hcn(host country nationals). we are hoping to honduras in a frew days, buit who knows what will happen. my host family here is amazing they are the nicest people ever, and everyone comes over to my house to drink eat and play dominos. We also have been visiting voluteers here and all the prohjest look great and i cant wait to get out into the field and start working. Last night was one of my friends birthdays so we made a big fuss got pinatas and decorations and dressed him up in a tiarra and then went to the bars, it was a fun night. I am having a great time but cant wait to leave the city and go to a more rural place. Missing you all greatly!!!!!! I tried to upload pictures onto facebook so hope you can find them.

Dominican Republic

So I am in the Dominican Rep because of the political coup in Honduras. I love it here and am having an amazing time. But, we hope t go back to Honduras on the 22nd assuming all is safe and everything subsides. They are optimistic but they have no idea what is going to happen.
So for now we are learning spanish and about both the honduran and dominican culture. We go to school for most of the day but it is rather fun as we play games and it is mostly interactive. All the Peac Corps volunteers are great and I have been having a great time with them. We are mostly hippies but everyone is very down to earth. We are all very similar yet extremely different at the same time, so there is a great dynamic. We have been going out to the ¨car wash¨which is a bar next to car wash with really loud music (the first time we went we sat in front of a regulr car wash which was really funny). It is a lot of fun and i have been dancing merengue, bochata, and reggaeton. We also play a lot of hacky sack and frisbee, the two hippiest sports.
My host family is also great!!! There is my host mom, two sisters, a brother, and a grandson in my house, but there are always neighbors popping by for a drink or a conversation. My spanish has been pretty good as i can get around and have conversations with everyone. they say I am a ¨tiguere¨which means i am kinda like a hustler/quick person, which is really funny. We sit on the porch all night talking drinking and playing dominos. Dominos is a great game and i am getting better and better each day. The food is also great, we eat rice beans, plantians, chicken, steak, cassava, etc. and every single juice imagibnable. I also have been walking around meeting neighbors and finding fellow peace corps volunteers in the streets. everything is very relaxed and the people are extremely friendly.
Everything is great here and i am having the time of my life, sorry for the lenght of this and the spelling as i cant type on this computer


these are me opinions and not of the pece corps

The Journey Begins

Hi,
I don't really know how this blog thing is supposed to work, but I'll give it a shot. I leave for Honduras in two days!! I have been waiting to go for a few months now and the excitement keeps on building. My bags are packed and ready to go and before I know it I will be in Honduras. First, I go to Miami for a couple of days of orientation, then to Santa Lucia, a small town in Honduras for training. I have heard that training is intense and probably the worst part of most former peace corps volunteers' experience, but I am ready to make the best out of it. I really have no clue what to expect but I am thrilled to go and believe that whatever happens I will have an amazing experience in which I will learn a lot about myself and the world. As excited as I am I know my departure will be bitter sweet as I will miss my friends and family terribly. That being said I hope to keep in contact with all of you. If you would like to send me a message you can email ( lazarus.joshua@gmail.com ) facebook me, or send me a letter at Josh Lazarus, PCT, Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz, Apartado Postal 3158, Tegucigalpa D.C 11102, Honduras.

Thank you for all the support and I will miss you all

PS I will try and update this blog but I don't know if there will be internet so I apologize in advance if I cannot update it regularly