May - August

* This was May and June*

On the left is a picture of Cesar trying to dunk me. We were in La Ceiba, at a nice resort, with the World Vision office.


On the right is a picture of Me and Cesar at the resort. Below that is me on the pier.

This is a picture of the rodeo that was during our town fair in May.

*July and August*


This is Cesar on his Birthday!






Group photo at a midwives training. I'm in the center.... (its a game of Where's Nicole!!)

Below is a pic of Zayda ( my counterpart) and her husband Rey.

This was at their wedding dinner.


At the right is a Cesar and I at the dinner!

This was a brief over view of what I have been up to thru my pictures. Dont have a picture from my birthday because I was at a training, but the group did surprise me with a flan cake! I am trying to find someone with the photo.

So I know that I am extremely behind in my posts but hey thats the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer!! I am sure that I am going to forget many things that have happened in the last few months, but I am going to do my best and try.... I have spent the majority of my time weighing and measuring kids in the local communities. For the week of Easter we had the entire week free so Cesar and I went one day to the beach in Tela just to hang out. And for the rest of the week I went with my neighbor and her family down south to see alittle bit more of the country.

This past month was the local fair and I was able to go to my very first rodeo which turned out to be a huge disappointment, but I have plans to go to many more so I am hoping that one will turn out truly good!!

My plans as of right now are to start a small group of girls to promote abstinence and also I am trying to set up a group of youth to write a story about a person infected with AIDS and then have another group do art work that pretty much tells the same story, but just through art.

I know I have for got a ton of stuff but I honestly can´t remeber right now.

Charlie Brown Christmas

I am horrible about updating this blog and there are no excuses. So here it goes, my life from November to now in a nutshell.

For Thanksgiving I went to Las Vegas, Santa Barbara and there a group of volunteers and I made a dinner to celebrate. It was alot of fun and really good food.

For World AIDS day we had an event in town but I ended up helping out a friend and was a God mother for a day at the 6th grade graduation of a girl in one of the villages. Its a long story but needless to say I missed the event that I had helped plan, but in the end I still did something good!

Before Christmas World Vision has a party to celebrate and this year they took everyone to Tela for the weekend. It was alot of fun. We stayed at a resort and ended up being like cabanas. Me and my site mate Anna shared what was appeared to be an apartment together. It was a good time and we got to plan on the beach. For Christmas this year I stayed in Morazan and spent the holiday with my old host family. It was a good time, I definately got a bit homesick but all in all it was nice. Hondurans celebrate Christmas a bit different here. It seems to be all about the food. We had oven roasted chicken, tomales, fruit cocktail and thats about it... but we ate if for a week straight. And the funny thing is that every house makes the exact same thing. So you spend the day getting ready for the night and no one eats until Midnight.. oh yeah and all of this happens on Christmas Eve, the 25th is actually not that celebrated. On the 25th I just ate and slept mostly.. haha!! For New Years I went to Yorito to spend that time with Cesar and his family. Again this holiday is not celebrated like we do in the states. It appears that everything here is about the food. We had tamales again and alot of homemade bread. At midnight some kids set of firecrackers but they were definately not the pretty kind and no one did a count down or anything. I actually didn't even realize it was midnight until 12:30 because there was nothing big. I ended up spending that whole week with him there and was able to get to know his family really well. One day we went up into the mountains into a community about 5 hours or so away. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, but of course dumb ole me forgot my camera because I just didn't realize what we were going to do.

In January everything started to get back to normal and slowly but surely the work is picking up. I am now working steadily trying to weigh and measure the children in eight commuunities but it is no easy task we are talking about a lot of kids for just me to handle.

Cesar and I also got two puppies and he decided to name them Hillary and Monica. It was too funny for me to change the names. Right now they are both at my house but I hope that this week he will take one with him to his house and the other will stay with me. When we first got them they were not well taken care of. They both had skin problems and patches of fur missing, along with ticks and fleas and worms... it was such a fun time those first few weeks. Now they are doing so much better, we bought special shampoo and medicine for parasites. The pot bellies have finally left and they are adorable.

Some sad news to report. One man that worked in my office had a stroke last week (at least that is what I understand to have happened) and he had to have brain surgery. The way I understand it, it is going to cost over 400,000 Lempiras or about $25,000, that might not sound like too much but we are talking about a third world country where the majority of people will never see that much in their entire life. Everyone is donating money to help pay for the bills and he had the surgery 2 days ago and the doctor said he should recover just fine.

Another Nicole moment happened last week. I fell off of my front steps on my way to clean up dog poop and ended up spraining my ankle. Needless to say it was not fun and my counterpart ended up taking me to some old guy and he "massaged" my foot and then began to twist it in ways that is just not right. I have never screamed so loud in my life. But after that Peace Corps sent me to a specialist and they took xrays. It is not fractured but definately a good story to tell!!!!

So that is all for me as of right now. Keep the emails coming.

BRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So alot has been going on in this last month. I am finally getting back to normal here and tying up loose ends with my house and issues of security. By the first of the year I hope to have all the problems behind me and able to move forward.

I am continuing to work with World Vision and this past month went to five communities meeting with people that will be helping me with my next project. I am planning to work in eight communities weighing and measuring the children to see what kind of problems in terms of nutrition they are facing. From there I will be able to evaluate what will be the best way to help and increase the health. I have also helped out a friend with a project of improved stoves in a number of communities. The stoves are called "fogones" and I plan on posting the pictures soon, if not today.

I have also updated the photos that I have and posted alot of Morazán and plan to put all that I have when I find the time, and remember to bring my camera.

The weather has been really bad lately. For the last week it has rained non stop here and I mean non stop. Alot of the buses are not running because of the amount of rain we have had. It has finally cooled down, but definately to the extreme. I did not think it was possible for Morazán to get this cold. In the days it is in the 60s and 70s but the problem and issue that is difficult to explain is the building structures. There is no real form of insulation and the windows are completely differe and never completely close they are like permanent blind; so in saying all of this it is very cold especially at night. And it has really affected me in terms of health because everyday I have a sore throat and problems with my nose. I hoping this will pass soon because I am tired of sneezing!!

So that is all for me now, until next time.

Time in the good ole` US of A

Alot has happened since the last time I was on here. I will do my best not to leave anything out.

First and foremost Erin and Ryan got married and it was a beautiful wedding. I was honored to be a part of it and it also gave me a great reason to go home for awhile and visit everyone. So I went home August 7 and was supposed to return on the 14th to Honduras. My stay of one week turned into almost 2 months. The day before returning I woke up and couldn´t walk on my right leg, I went to the doctor and come to find out had a superficial blood clot. Because of this traveling was out of the question. I was finally medically cleared on the 20th of September and returned to Honduras on the 21st!!!

Since I have been back I have been given a site mate. Her name is Ana, she´s from Missouri but has lived all over, and she is working with Youth Development. I am excited to have another volunteer in Morazán and hope that we are able to colaborate with our projects.

Things with my house are a continuous work in progress. I have decided to stay in the same house and hoping to be able to have all of the modifications required by Peace Corps, for security purposes, finished soon.

Work is finally starting to come in thankfully. I am going to start working in six communities helping with the nutrition programs and giving talks to parents about some of the better ways to help get nutrients to their childrens diets. I am looking forward to this program and it appears as though this six communities will be my responsibility solo. I have also been teaching english once a week at one of the World Vision offices. I must say it is not my favorite thing to do, but after the class starts I have alot of fun, its just all of the preparation that is no fun at all, and I never thought it would be so hard to teach a language that I am fluent in. It looks as though we might be starting an HIV/AIDS support group also, but that is a very very slow process and I am not sure if it will really take off or not during my time here.

Ok I think I might be done with the update, it didn´t even take as long as I thought it would. I hope everyone is well on the homefront. I am sure the weather there is alot better than here. We are in the middle of the rainy season so just about everyday it rains atleast once. Unfortunately I happen to live in one of the few humid areas in Honduras and because of that the rain doesn´t tend to help with the sweat. I sweat non-stop here. I bought an inside thermometer for my house while I was in the states and I have it in my kitchen, one of the coolest spots in my house, and it amazes me that I still have not seen it get below 75 and that is at the coolest time of the day. The funny part is that I am completely comftorable when it is 75 in my house to me that is cool and I look forward to it. Another volunteer told me that October and November are supposed to be the worst months for hurricanes and that people in her town said that we should expect 5 more before the season is over. Oh yeah and supposedly the department of Yoro is the only one in the country that has earthquakes!! Oh what luck I have. I have actually not felt anything although there are other parts of this area that have had a couple of house fall to the ground.

That is all for me right now. I love you all, keep me posted.

Almost at the 6 month mark!!!

It's been about a month since I last updated this site. Honestly alot has happened in a month so I will do my best to give a brief overview.

In the beginning of July I moved into my own place, which was wonderful! Its a cute little house with 2 bedrooms a bathroom, kitchen, dining area and living room.... definately not the exact thought of a peace corps volunteers life. Slowly but surely I have been filling it with the necesities. There is a lot more to go, but I will get there.

This month I also started working with a 5th grade class in one of the aldeas near by. I am giving classes once a week for an hour about self esteem, good decision making, sex education. A few weeks ago proved to be quite a challenge.... funny story: the teacher decided since I was there he would be able to go to the doctors, well he left me with 50 fifth graders and lets just say as soon as he left all hell broke loose. They all started going crazy. Between the fighting, screaming, running, etc... I thought I was going to have a nervous break down. I began screaming and when that had no affect I tried the opposite, I told them I would wait for everyone to quite down before we started.. well that never happened either, so I dismissed everyone early and I returned to Morazan to cool down. This was not an experience I hope to relive in the near future.

Another project that I have started helping with is distributing medical supplies in the local aldeas with one of the ladies I work with. This has proven to be very rewarding as well as sad. I have been able to see first hand a little of the poverty in this country and the amount of help that is truly needed. Many children are malnurished ( not sure if I spelled that right) and deprived of the basic necesities.. we see alot of childeren with skin problems from bathing in the rivers, the little things that each one of us takes for granted is what is most needed here.

English classes have begun.. :( I put it off as long as possible but it was inevitable. I have only had one class but it is going to be a once a week project.

Last weekend I got sick and ended up in the hospital for 2 nights. Turns out I had a bacterial infections. Not fun at all... puking uncontrollably on top of diarrhea (spell check). I am better at this point.

I have also had a security scare. A man got into my house and was hiding in my kitchen. Still don't know how he got in or how long he was there for. Apparently he is known in the town as the peeping Tom. I screamed when I saw him and he took off running. I called friends and they came to my rescue along with neighbors. And that brings us to the present. I am in Teguc (the capital) and have talked with the country director along with head of security, who also came to my site for two days to go over everything. I was given many options and have decided to stay in my site because I have truly grown to call it home. I plan on changing houses just for the sake of not having to reenact the event every time I enter the house. Peace Corps has been absolutely wonderful through everything. I do not want anyone to worry, I know that is a hard thing to do, but I really am well and am just thankful that nothing else happened.

I will be coming home Aug 7-14 so if anyone wants to see me let me know because I want to do as much as possible in this short period.

I believe you are all filled in on my life thus far!!!

WORK

So it appears as though I might end up doing something here after all. Everything is definately a process here and finding work is no exception. I am going to start working with a 5th grade class next friday and this week I started going to the aldeas (small communities) to help with the weighing of children and distribution of medicine. From this I think I am going to get alot more work, because there appears to be a real need for education of nutrition and hygene.

I am taking it all one day at a time. Every day is completely different in terms of my emotions. But I am pushing through it and the people that I work with have been great in supporting me. I move into my own place this weekend. This will be another big change for me, it is going to be great I know but going to take alot of getting used to because I only know how to live with families in this country.

I am good, I love you all and appreciate all the support that you have given me.