It's February 29th. I've had a cold or something for 2 days...sneezy runny nose and cough...not terrible, but first real bit of unpleasantness. It's called El Gripe here. Gree-pay. As in, "estoy enfermo...tengo el gripe" / "i'm sick...i have El Gripe" So yeah, not really motivated to do anything, including writing up a blog. A cold front came through 2 days ago...apparently the pressure change or something is screwing me up. Or I caught a bug that's been floating around among the gringos. I call my peace corps crew The Gringos here because yeah, we're mostly white and individual ethnicities don't matter to me. I'm just here to mess with pipes. Glorified plumber, someone called me.

It's a bit after 10 here...did a lot of stargazing earlier this evening while the gringos waited around outside this one guy's house to buy cell phones. Got mine. We're all waiting until morning for the phones to hopefully activate...because we all put down a fair percentage of our cash for these things. not the wisest move in my opinion...but you can call me a lemming if you want. we'll see how it goes in the morning.

I have stories to tell from this week. big one is the trip to Tegucigalpa for a trial-by-fire survival spanish exercise. took a bus, a taxi, bought a melon, taxi, buses, taxi, peace corps hq, peace corps ride back home.

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It's definitely Thursday, and I think that makes it March 7, 2008

Um...so the trip to Tegus I mentioned earlier is pretty lame compared to the trip to Santa Barbara I made to visit a current PCV who has been there 9 months...but to sum it up, the open air markets are quite a trip. Well, the ones with butchers are, anyway. Think of a meat freezer...without the freezer. It woulda been considered hygenic back in the European middle ages. I'll definitely be heavy on the beans and rice and fruit when I start cooking for myself in many, many months. I was a little spooked about traveling around in cities...but that trip a week ago reminded me that all big cities are pretty much the same. Be aware, be smart, and you probably won't get messed with.

One quick note: I'd love to hear from anybody about global news. Simple stuff like "Hey, did you hear that Castro stepped down? Yeah, and Benazir Buto's party ousted the military in the most recent elections in Pakistan. AND (someone) beat (the other dem) in the Texas and Ohio primaries! (hint hint)" Don't need details...most of my attention isn't on global politics, but I don't want to be completely out of the loop either. How's the situation in Burma lately?

The good story is about my visit to the state of Santa Barbara to a PCV living in a small town there. He's also a WatSan technician (ie, no real engineering training), like me. Pretty good guy. The first night we just chatted about music (protopunk, mostly) and typical newbie-to-vet Q&A.

Had dinner at a typical restaurant. Family-owned, attached to the house, maybe 4 tables and 20 chairs. Small. Um...rustic. 4 walls, though. Not a bad place. I was and still am a bit sick, so I ordered some soup which turned out to be Honduran ramen noodles with chicken flavor (!) which was pretty good in my condition.

Went back, played with his half-doberman pet dog...it's amazing the difference between gringo-raised dogs and real dogs. Real dogs don't get pet much, and don't enter the house, and mostly just avoid the people that don't regularly feed them. Then his neighbor showed up while we were outside on his porch, and we got almost literally dragged to a closed restaurant where this guy procedes to ask for more beer in drunk campo spanish from the sleeping owner of the establishment.

Went back to the house and talked for 3 hours. I couldn't sleep because it would be rude, and I had to have a beer for the same reason. Best way to stave off dehydration? Beer. No really...Tyler Durden told me so. I'm not a big fan of Port Royale. Did listen to a couple entertaining conversations...cockfighting is totally legal and popular, so this guy was telling my PCV that all the best roosters are from the US, so next time he goes there for Christmas vacation, he should bring him back a fighting rooster. When we told him that airlines tend to frown upon livestock being transported across national borders, this man assures us that if he tells them the rooster is his pet (mascota) everything will be fine. A friend of his does it all the time.

The next morning we went to my PCV's office to meet up with a local engineer who wanted some help with a project...but he flaked out on us. So we went home in hopes of doing some work with the Excel spreadsheet that basically does all the number crunching for us after we do the surveying...tells us what kind of pipes, what sizes to use, and where we have issues with pressure along the line that we need to deal with, and most importantly, whether the system will work at all along the terrain we mapped. So we go home to work on the computer...and there's no electricity anymore. Hmm. So we take the computer to the local internet cafe/XBox arcade but they don't have power either. Se fue la luz / The light left. Learned that expression by heart. So...with nothing else to do, we took a bus to the capital and hit this A-MAZING internet cafe.

This place was brand new. My PCV said it's the best kept secret in town. unmarked doorway. No signs. you go up some stairs inside, pass some slum-like storage rooms that are apparently being renovated to be and currently are pigeon roosts with no doors...then you turn a corner, go through a glass door with well-oiled (normal by US standards) hydraulic damper, into an air-conditioned paradise of information technology. Soft lighting complemented by strip lights on the ceiling. First time I've been a wall-to-wall carpeted room in this country. Leather office chairs. Cozy. Pleasant. Relaxing. It was amazing. Only 6 computers, but they didn't have a ton of business, and they were the fastest I've used so far. I sat down and got busy. Hit up AIM, my chick happened to log in soon after so we talked for a good 2 hours. Read some blogs, talked to some other friends...shoulda read up on news and whatnot, but got distracted. Good times.

When we left to find lunch, I was quite literally taken aback when I set foot back onto the streets Santa Barbara. I had completely forgotten which country I was in while I was inside on the intarwebs. I'm not sure exactly what you call that sort of twilight zone moment...but it was easily the most significant kind of jarring moment I think I've ever had. Dust, heat, glare from the sun, noise...none of that inside that computar oasis. And the 2.5 hours only cost me like 40 limps. Cheap.

Oh yeah, the cell phone works. I will try to remember to put the number on my facebook so you can call me. It's free for me to receive calls, so feel free to call after 5 or 6. But I have a normal schedule now...so I try to get to sleep by 10 central.

Ate lunch at a typical bar/restaurant. Kinda cool. Walk through an open doorway, down a random hallway, then into a split level with an open wall to the outdoors. Crazy friendly staff guy. I had some french fries. They were good. I like the ketchup.

Went back to the house via the bus again and napped. Talked a bit...he has some good stories. 2 weeks ago he was surveying in a cow pasture...medium tall grasses...got 3/4 through and looked down and realized his pant legs and boots were crawling with ticks. Apparently ticks swarm. So he brushed them off as best he could and kept going. That night he took probably 100 of them off his legs, and maybe 50 more off his arms. He looks like he has chicken pox now as the bites all heal. Thankfully the ticks here don't carry any serious diseases, or so we're told.

I also pulled my first tick off my leg my last night in Santa Barbara. Was an interesting experience. Did it successfully...head was still attached to the tick and not to me.

The PCV also told me the story of his first visit to a work site. He told it well, and I don't have the energy to do it justice, but suffice it to say that spelunking through a subterranean water source full of bats to a hidden clean water source half a mile inside a mountain, and then surveying the cave, is not easy. And not all flashlights are as waterproof as the packaging claims.

Most insight I got was that it's totally possible for a liberal arts major to handle surveying, and even teach himself Excel and AutoCad. Yes, Dad, you read that right. AutoCad experience is a hot commodity in the water systems design arena of Honduras. You told me so. And WatSan workers don't usually experience the typical initial 3 months of drudgery and boredom searching for work and sitting around doing nothing. Everybody wants water, badly, so people tend to have you booked solid after the first month. And with work, for us, comes community integration. Also, the thing to do seems to be to hire a neighbor to do your laundry...because it's cost effective given the time it takes an American to do it, and we waste water, and soap, and can't rinse properly...or at least that's me.

Ended up doing some number crunching on the spreadsheet with him...so I now have experience with it. And I got some pointers on how to structure my data notebook while surveying. And found out exactly what a theadolite is. Theodolite? Spellcheck likes theodolite more, so I guess that's the right spelling. I can type much faster on this tiny keyboard now than when I first got it...even though my hands are almost on top of eachother they're so close together.

But yeah...had a good time. Traveled successfully...I can get a taxista to drive me where I want to go, I can haggle with reasonable success, I can get bus tickets to where I want to go, and I don't let my backpack out of my sight ever. I am never going to travel long distances with more than just a backpack. I'm still paranoid about theft...but it's a healthy paranoia.

I took some time off from school today and yesterday...two half days, basically, for me. Got it cleared through the proper channels. I should be sleeping, but meh, you guys get to profit with something to read. My nose is runny and I have a cough. Pretty sure I had a fever for a few hours while I was in Santa Barbara, but knocked it out with some aspirin. It definitely wasn't the climate change that screwed me up...I'm leaning more towards the flu vaccine they gave us last week. But vaccines haven't messed me up like this before...so I dunno for sure.

My host mom is awesome. She's given me soup and lots of tea. And even some Saltine crackers. I have to write up a report of my trip to Santa Barbara in Spanish for tomorrow...I dun wanna.

This Sunday I leave Santa Lucia for Field-Based Training (FBT) with just my WatSan group in a different city a bit south of Tegus. Supposed to be more rustic, with people not as used to catering to gringos. For example, hot milk with cereal, and tons of sugar with the coffee and tea is common here. But my family gives me cold milk and sugar in a small container on the side because they know Americans prefer it that way. The new family will probably be less understanding when I commit social faux pas, too. But we'll see. FBT is different because I'll be doing far more technical training than I have been, and less general CORE lectures about the goals and methods of Peace Corps in sustainable development (most of which is detailed explanations of why it's good to teach a man to fish, and why it's good to not tell him he's a moron for not knowing how to fish already).

That being said, I should mention that the main reason I'm learning how to build stuff and survey is so I can teach other people to build the same stuff and survey for themselves. Hence the importance of speaking Spanish well and being accepted by the locals. People don't want to attend lectures and workshops done by a stranger, but people here will definitely go if for no other reason than to support their friend and neighbor.

Again, as with any change of setting, I can't guarantee frequent computer use, but I do have a cell phone, and you can call me without charging me anything, and calls to the US are very cheap for me. But I have a pay-as-you-go plan so I still don't want to be making calls often. Texts are nice.

Take care, everybody.

Alex

PS: Justin, the singing career has stagnated. Havent been over to my neighbors to sing in awhile thanks to homework and sickness.