On to La Paz

So, my time here in Santa Lucia is coming to an end. Tomorrow, all of us in the Health project are moving on to the city of La Paz. This is a much bigger city (it has a movie theater!!!) and the weather is a bit warmer than our current location. I will be living with a family who has a mom, dad, and 2 kids. I can't remember the ages, but my mom runs a restaurant, which I'm excited about. I will also be living with a JICA volunteer, which is the equivalent of the Peace Corps, pretty much, but from Japan (and they make A LOT more money than us)...so it should be quite an interesting cultural exchange. Initially, we were going to have to take all our stuff (for me, this would mean carrying my laptop, a giant medical kit we received, my yoga mat, my large backback, and a giant duffel bag) on the bus to Tegucigalpa, then get to the bus station to take us to La Paz, hop on that bus, and then we were expected to find our host families given only a map of the town and no addresses. My training class found this rather interesting, seeing as how we are not allowed to travel to Teguc for the day, yet were encouraged to go there as a giant pack of gringos carrying all our belongings. Needless to say, we rented a bus so we'll have less of a hassel with the traveling, but are still expected to find our families given only a hand-drawn map of the town. I'll let you all know how that works out...

I had my second language interview this week. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but you have to test into an Intermediate-Medium level of Spanish in order to swear in. When I got here, I tested in at Intermediate-Low (+), and now I'm at Intermediate-High. I'm glad I don't have to worry about the swearing in, but now am aiming to get much more fluid in my speaking. Friday, during our Health training, we learned about Respiratory Infections in children (the leading cause of child death here in Honduras). Afterward, we divided into small groups and were supposed to give charlas (basically just a general talk) about a topic of our choice. My group decided to talk about diarrhea (a popular topic amongst us trainees), and we had some great posters. I finally got my camera cards, and have some pretty sweet pictures, so I'll get them up ASAP. As I preview, I'll just share that the posters included the terms ¿Tiene pupu explosiva? and ¿Sangre en su mierda? Our trainers got a kick out of them, but unfortunately they will not be appropriate to use in the campo.

Oh yeah, I sprained my ankle the other day...turns out running on slippery, uneven cobblestone when the sun hasn't come up isn't such a good idea. It's not too bad though, a few days rest and I should be fine.