Touch the Hem of His Garment

December means I have already been in Honduras for six months. The idea of six months before seemed like so much time. I mean, that's half a year. More than a semester of college. Too many days. However, it flew by like nothing. Maybe time goes by faster in spanish? That must be it. Luckily, despite missing home and the fam I was able to celebrate Thanksgiving in true American fashion: surrounded by gringo friends and eating the tgiving staples. As much as I am starting to feel a part of my community, there really is no sense of community like us volunteers.

As far as work goes, another month brought a few accomplishments. Since all rural communities, well all communities for that matter, dont have a public water system like us in the states and instead receive all their water from the nearest mountain spring source, all towns are required to have a junta de agua, or water board, to oversee the water. My board wants to convert the old water tank and system to be used as an irrigation system to its beneficiaries. This would help out a lot during the dry season (which is quickly approaching!) when Honduras hardly gets any rain. We are only in the beginning stages of this however hopefully we can get that accomplished and I can piggyback some improved agricultural practices lessons. My environmental club is going strong, with us meeting every wednesday and thursday still. In Gracias, I am writing protocols and developing plans to monitor four focal species in the park: ocelots, quetzals, salamandra, and an endemic tree species. Hopefully these can provide baseline data for future researchers to come and develop these projects more as well as inspire Hondurans to develop monitoring plans for other species. My work with MAPANCE could be a full time job, however since Gracias is not my site (Catulaca!) I have to fairly share my time between the two places. Its an ever growing guilt trip I put myself through but I always remind myself part of my job is to leave and work in another town so I shouldnt feel guilty about leaving my community.

Besides working, I spend most of my free time fighting the frigid cold (its gotta be high 40s here), playing lots of dominoes (courtesy of Dona Judy), and still drinking lots of coffee. I plan to spend Christmas with my host family but I may try and have a very gringo new years to mix it up. Ive earned some English, right? And of course, I am so excited to have my dad come visit in the new year. In true campesino fashion I am going to take him around my town and country and, you guessed it, drink lots of coffee.