Getting In

We all met at the lobby of the hotel at 4:30 am with our bags to take a shuttle to the airport. Max and I had 2 big duffle bags each with no wheels, a backpack each (with lots of books in them) and the laptop bag. It was hard to take all that stuff anywhere. In the morning there was a huge mountain of luggage from the 30 volunteers and we all made our way as best we could with our stuff to the shuttle and then on to the airport. We couldn’t fit all of the luggage in the shuttle and had to divide the group into two trips. I went on the first one with some of our luggage and Max took the second with the rest. It was an adventure just to get to the airport.

The trip to Miami was uneventful, and we ate lunch while we waited for the flight to Tegucigalpa. On the trip to Honduras we flew over Cuba and one of the Bay Islands… both great views. Landing in Tegucigalpa was like riding a rollercoaster… a lot of ups and downs and quick turns as we made our way through the mountains and onto the landing strip with a bounce and a thud. You could hear people in the plane ohhhing and ahhing and everybody clapped when we landed safely. I have to admit I felt a little sick to my stomach during the landing. More amazing than the ups and downs of the landing was the view of Tegucigalpa. It is a huge vibrant city filled with a sea of wood, brick, or adobe houses all with tin roofs. Only a few of the buildings in the parts of the town we could see were above two or three stories. Once at the airport we were greeted by a Peace Corps team that helped us get our luggage, go through immigration and customs, collected medical forms from us, gave us name tags, fed us sandwiches (ham & cheese or peanut butter and jelly) with fruit and drinks, and loaded us in a yellow, green, red, and blue bus to Siguatepeque, our training town. The ride from Teguc to Sigu was a great opportunity to see some of Honduras and get our first impressions of the country. We will tell you more of that next time.

Getting to Know Our New Friends

On Wednesday, May 23rd we started our staging event in Washington, DC. Staging is a series of talks and team building events, not really much new information, but it was great to meet the rest of the group; 28 other people that, like us, are headed to Honduras to learn and serve.

The group is an eclectic bunch. Not necessarily what you would expect for Peace Corps volunteers (I guess that could be said about us). There are two project groups together: Business/IT and Protected Area Management (PAM). It’s an interesting mix, PAM volunteers focus mostly on environmental protection and agriculture, whereas business people focus on financing, IT, tourism, and education. As you could imagine the two groups have very different backgrounds and yet there’s such a powerful link among all.

To give you all an idea of who they are there’s a farmer from Pennsylvania, an archeologist from Idaho, people that left corporate America, someone who graduated college last weekend, four married couples, a gymnast, computer programmers, people who owned their own businesses, girly girls, tomboys. Some are very liberal, some are very conservative. All are so different in many ways, yet also similar in many others.

It’s definitely been a great time with these people and a great comfort to know we now have a network of people to count as friends from such different walks of life.

We're Heading Out

Dear all:

It is 10pm on Sunday night before we head out to Washington, DC for pre-orientation and then to Honduras on Wednesday. It is a moment of mixed feelings. There's a lot of excitement for what lies ahead, but there's also anxiety for the unknown. I mainly worry about the people I'll miss. I am sad of not being able to see my mom a dad more before leaving; but I also remind myself of all the adventure ahead. I also think of what a great privilege that Max and I get to do this together.

Packing has been a great ordeal and has kept us really busy the last couple of weeks. We'll write more about that a little latter.

Take care all and stay in touch. Let us know that you're reading. Got to go to bed soon since we have to wake up at 4:30am tomorrow morning to catch our plane to DC.

Love to all,
-Lynnette