Cheque

The title of this blog is “Total Cheque.” In case some of you were wondering, Cheque is slang in Honduras (not sure if other Latin American countries use it or not) and it is used as ‘cool’ or ‘chill’ would be used in America. For example, if someone asked how you are doing, you’d reply ‘Cheque’ if you were doing well. Or you might ask ‘Todo Cheque?’ if you wanted to ask ‘Everything OK/ Cool?’ It is pronounced Cheh-kay. So that was a little Honduran slang for you.
Additionally I’ll go over what I’ve been doing so far in the Peace Corps. Essentially, every day is divided into two parts – Spanish language classes and technical classes. Language classes are normally in the morning, followed by technical classes after lunch. Technical classes is where we learn business procedures in Honduras. Some of it is going over different business structures in Honduras as well as bringing everyone up to speed in business skills. Basic finance, accounting, marketing, information technology etc. is taught since everyone is at a different level here. We also learn about business specific to Honduras such as tourism and artisan craft. Other important subjects are how adults learn, how to affect behavior change, and most importantly for business volunteers, how to write a business plan. The latter is especially important as it is the bread and butter of what the business volunteers do here.
My group is HN-16. I’m sure we’re not the 16th class here as Honduras has one of the oldest programs in the Peace Corps, but our group comprises of Health, Water and Sanitation, and Business. The Peace Corps has two cycles annually in Honduras – the first cycle which is us, and the second cycle with PAM (Protected Areas Management), Municipal Development, and Youth Development. Right now the three groups in my cycle are all divided up by projects – Business in Ojojona, Health in La Paz, and Water and Sanitation in El Paraisio (the cities might be the other way around for Health and Wat/San) for field base training (FBT). This is where each project trains more in depth for their respective projects for 7 weeks. After this we will go back to Zarabanda (where we were for the first 3 weeks) for one more week all together and then we will be placed all over the country. Generally, I’m told that the last few weeks are really stressful because everyone is anxious about where they will be placed. This is important as it is where you will be for the next two years and can determine if your service will be enjoyable or not. Generally, PAM is placed in the rural areas without much development and Business is placed in areas with more infrastructures. I hope that I don’t get placed in a big city because generally there are more people that speak English there and it is easy to fall into a trap of not speaking Spanish. At the same time I don’t want to be placed in an area so small that I’ll be bored out of my mind and has no internet connection. We’ll see how it goes – one of the things I need to finish for next week is a questionnaire about placement.
Other than that, special thanks to Roger and Charlene for sending the first letter I received here (took almost 3 weeks!) and my sister for sending my first package (2 weeks! With candy!). I’m not sure why it takes packages shorter time to get here, but then again it is random. I’ve heard that sometimes packages g o all the way to Australia before they get here to Honduras, so who knows what goes on…This past week we went on a tourism trip and camped out at a beach. I’ll upload pictures and more information next time – don’t want to run out of things to write about…and if anyone has questions they would like to ask, feel free to ask in the comments section and I’ll either answer them there, or if it requires more detail I’ll perhaps blog about it…