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