Training:

I don’t want to bore everyone with a day by day account of my training experience, so I will try to generally explain my average day using a metaphor that I have come to see as more and more accurate each day. Peace Corps training is much like middle school. The similarities begin with the early morning wake up. As I recall I had to get up at 6:30 am every morning to go to middle school, which is comparable to the 5:30 am routine here. Though here my pre-dawn rising is accompanied by a ice cold bucket bath, which each time leaves me envious of my middle school self who had access to piping hot showers every morning (though on the plus side,I dont have to deal with being a fat middle school kid with braces now, so things could be worse). The comparison continues as i run to catch the bus to school with my friends. In fact, the bus here may very well be the same bus from my childhood, as all of the public transit busses here are derelict American schoolbusses that were deamed unfit for future use in the US. Though now they sport cool decals from brands like ¨No Fear¨ and ¨Orange County Choppers¨, and have bootlegged sterio systems.
Once I get to school... (crap i actually typed this when i meant to say training), I have Spanish classes in the morning until lunch at 11. Then at lunch we all check out the food our host moms packed us and trade for amongst ourselves to try to get the best lunches. Currently the highest value items are meat or fruits, with the lowest value items being tortillas (which are a constant part of the diet here, i would guess i average like 10 a day). We then have lectures on everthing from the dangers of assault, robbery and rape, to disentary and how hondurans do not understand or enjoy american sarcasm or sense of humor. Then we all pile on the bus for rides home.
Much like middleschool, the best part of the day is when i get home and play football with my friends, though here it is futbol rather than american football. Hillariously though my friends are still 12 year olds, because i seem to be a major hit with the adolecent boy demografic. We play futbol and they laugh at farts and burps so i feel like i can relate. Then when it gets dark our moms call us in and we all scamper home to be chided for getting muddy and eat dinner. I then hang out with the family and watch some tv (if my hw is done of course). My day ends at about 9 when i got to bed in order to get up for the next day of exciting traning.
The entire middle school experience is only hightened by the fact that we all live at home with parents once again and are not aloud to be out after 9, drink in the house, or have visitors of the oposite sex in our rooms. This last caviate, combined with the fact that we are a young PC class (average age about 24) has led to a high level of sexual tension/frustration... much like middle school.

ps. I appologize for the mirriade of spelling and grammer errors, but this computer does not have english spell check and i am in a hurry since the internet cafe is crowded.

Travel

So I began my journey to Honduras (my new home for the next 27 months) on June 22, 2010. I set forth on my new adventure with a solid 3 hrs of sleep under my belt and a hearty breakfast of cereal in my stomach. After arriving at National Airport at 4:30 am for my 6 am flight and going through all the necessary baggage checking measures, I bid farewell to my parents and passed through security (which was shockingly busy for 5 am on a Tuesday. I got to my gate with plenty of time and settled in to wait for the flight to begin boarding. Unfortunately right as they began the boarding process my name was said over the intercom, followed by a garbled message telling me to go somewhere and do something unintelligible. When I asked the agent at the gate he helpfully told me that he was not the one who had made the announcement, and thus it must have been one of three other places none of which he had a means of contacting… oh and that I had like ten minutes to figure out what it was a about and get on the plane. Luckily I then realized that my drivers licence was no longer in my pocket with my boarding pass and began running back to security. There I was informed that they had not been the ones who had made the announcement either but through persistently bothering them I was able to be directed to a cop who had a little stand near by preventing people from coming in the exit door, who they apparently have no coordination with. Thankfully he was in fact the person who had made the announcement and I was able to get my id and run to the plane right before they shut the gate. From there on out it was smooth sailing to Houston, and I even met some other PC volunteers in my layover in Chicago so was able to chat with them and share a cab from the airport to the hotel in Houston, where the PC was holding its staging event.

After an afternoon of protocol explanations and ice breakers I was treated to another 3 am wake up and a bus ride to the Houston airport. As a side note, if you have not been to Houston it is a city with no zoning laws, and thus a hot and humid expanse of urban sprawl (with an airport named after George Bush to boot). At 9 am Houston time we took off, leaving American soil behind for over 2 years. After a smooth flight, we got to experience a landing experience unique to Tegucigalpa airport. For those of you unfamiliar with this airport, it has one runway, which is just long enough to accommodate a modern jet, and is located in a city surrounded by mountains. Thus the landing involves an interesting decent pattern followed by a very abrupt landing. Luckily we had a very good pilot and we didn’t end up hitting any of the houses that line either side of the run way (like 20 feet off each wing). After landing we went through customs and were met at the gate by the PC Honduras staff and taken to our training facility in Zarabanda, in the mountains outside the capital.