Amor, amor, amor

Today is one of those days where I think and I wonder too much. I woke up this morning, itched my eyes clean of morning eye boogers and immediately questioned my place in life. I fought the green mosquito netting, and stumbled to begin my conscious battle of the unbearable heat. Clearly this is not my homeland of Michigan where the winds still bring a chill until late April. Here the heat never stops and it only gets worse in April as they say. So what am I doing in this dusty hot country of Honduras? It all stemmed from a conversation over coffee one evening. I sat looking into the deep brown eyes of the love of my life while sipping a sweet chocolate mocha and together we talked the night to its end, sharing dreams, ideas, hopes, building our lives together. In those never ending nights of coffee with just a little bit of sugar, the idea of joining the peace corps stirred and then it was only a distant dream. We filled out papers, wrote essays, read books, but most of the effort to join was the pushing desire to help people. God knows I want to badly to help others in need, to really change something. I feel that life, god, other people, have given me so very much that I never even deserved. I have a wonderful family. I have the opportunity of education. I have real love. I have a best friend and friends that really love me. I have everything that I need. I want to share all that warmth that I have inside me. And so somehow those words over coffee stirred into a reality. On August 16, 2004, I cried my eyes out as I saw my Mother and Father, my sister, my family, my friends just one last time before boarding the airplane. But at the same time, I felt an unexplainable whirl of excitment. I thought to myself...I am going...I dont know where! I am going to live...I dont know where! My job will be...I dont know what! I was just going..and the unknown was so exciting to me! So we were off to Miami to start Peace Corps training for our two years service in Honduras. But the adventures then were a mystery. Now I am well into the novel of my adventures here in Honduras. We survived months of extensive language training, four to six hours a day of classes. We lived with two host families that were absolutely amazing! On November six, we arrived to our site, a little pueblo called Moroceli. And here we are still with such a broad mission---to help the people. The big question is HOW? Well, the people here want to learn English, they want to learn how to use computers. So for the first three months, we offered lots of English and computer classes for all ages. We had a graduation ceremony with diplomas for all our students on the last day of February. My personal problem is that I dont think teaching English is really changing the world. And just like joining the peace corps itself grew from a seed in the mind over coffee, every idea has its seed. And I have so many seeds in my mind now...what can I do? I was thinking on the long bus ride the other day... I am always thinking... But here are some ideas that I will try to impliment in the next couple of weeks. A community newspaper written by the highschool students Nutrition, Health, Sexual education on Aids talks in the highschool gym class Teaching the older highschool students elementary English and having them teach my elementary students. Giving more talks on developing relationships (what do you want in a relationship?) I will see how things go in the coming weeks. We took our first step towards these goals today and we marched our butts in the scorching heat down to the highschool to talk to the directora. We shared with her our ideas of the newspaper and the English classes. The Spanish teacher agreed to form a group of ten students for us and help us with the grammar revision of their articles. We will see where it goes. Our idea of joining peace corps led us here. Maybe one of my corny ideas one day will lead somebody to change. I am lacking the motivation to keep a consistant journal and so today with a fan blowing on my back in the computer center I thought keeping an internet journal might encourage me to write more often--- One more post notice--we are looking for a new house because our current house has no windows and is extremely dreary and HOT! Today the teachers in the highschool showed us one house that MIGHT be up for rent. We absoluetly loved it because it has more windows and four rooms instead of just two, it also has a porch! I will keep you posted. I really miss you and love you all--- Teresa y Steve