Update from the past two months!

Already I have two tortilla-filled months without hot showers in this relatively untraveled paradise called Honduras. I have ached for home often, knowing that all the Kolars were together for a reunion over the fourth, missing all my families birthdays in July and August, and thinking about the smell of sweet clover soaked by a brief August thunderstorm. However, I have not had a chance to be bored enough to think too much.
Training
These first two months have been a small scale representing the two years I will spend in my actual volunteer site after training is completed. And that's exactly how field based training is set up. When we moved to La Cuesta, a ~2,000 person town outside of Comayagua, we were assigned with tasks to get to know the community. For example, we drew a map of the community including amenities, services and resources; we walked around the community with a list of tree names and asked people to help us find the trees on our list; and we walked around giving small interviews on topics such as the cultural perspective of using fertilizer from a composting latrine (an outhouse above two large vats that fill with feces, ash, sawdust, and other organic matter to create sterile compost). Now I know the difference between a acacia, mango and indio desnudo (naked indian - named for the smooth red bark) trees, as well as the ballpark price for constructing a latrine. Latrines are important in the coffee fincas (farms) here because in order to meet criteria to sell to large exporters, coffee farmers usually have to show that they're not just going to the bathroom in their fincas – a tradition for farmers even in the U.S. It also helps to prevent water contamination for the cities who live at lower elevations, since much of the fresh water in Honduras is surface water.
For training we continue to work in three groups: environmental education, income generation and natural resource management, representative of the goals of the Protected Areas Management project, on small-scale projects here in the community. I am in the environmental education group, and after our first community meeting, we found that there is a large consensus that litter is a leading concern here. So, we have given a class in the high school on the types of garbage and how they decompose at different rates (paper: a few months, a shoe: 30-50 years, plastic: indefinitely, glass: only shatters and does not decompose). We have planned a second talk on reasons for not burning certain types of trash (inhaling fumes from burning plastics, styrofoams, etc... can cause lung diseases and asthma), and not throwing batteries, paint and such in the garbage piles because there are enough heavy metals in batteries to contaminate hundreds to thousands of liters of water, which is horrible for the pregnant mothers and toddlers who drink the water that runs off from the town up the mountain. However, we don't think that talk will happen because the teachers in Honduras have been on strike for a few weeks with no promising end in sight. We are going to try to hold one more meeting with the health center because much of their garbage should be considered bio-hazardous, and we think it'd be beneficial for them to dig a mini-landfill that could be lined and covered. Otherwise, the garbage that is collected goes to a large, open-air dump in Comayagua.
We've also been receiving hours of informative information on forestry, environmental education, watershed management, biodiversity management, ecotourism, coffee farming, ect... as well as our daily Spanish classes. The Peace Corps recognizes 10 stages of speaking Spanish, three levels (low, medium and high) for novice, intermediate and advanced, and a superior/native stage. I am happy that I've reached the minimum requirement for Honduras (Intermediate-mid: I can hold basic conversations, respond directly to questions, describe events in the past, present and future, and use basic transitions to add some fluency to narrations); however, I still have a long way to go in order to increase my comprehension and to speak more naturally using pronouns, hypothetical topics, with increased vocabulary.
Adventure
We've also had amazing field trips during training. We just returned from a two-day trip to visit a volunteer, Gabriel, in the Rio Negro National Protected Area. We stayed in tents in a local guide's yard and ate amazing food while there. The guide, Avilio gave us a tour of his organic, shade-grown coffee finca. We also visited a women's group that makes impressively stylish purses and jewelry out of recycled bags from chips, magazines, etc... On the second day, after a morning of good coffee and extraordinary bird-watching opportunities, we took off for a trailhead where six students who have been studying English with Gabriel led us up through the cloud forest to an amazing waterfall. They had ~15 stations where they stopped and gave us information over the history of the land, trees, birds, and wildlife in the park, ALL IN ENGLISH! It was the first time they'd led trips in English, and although not perfect, they had very impressive speaking abilities, and did a wonderful job.
We also toured the historical district of Comayagua, the original capital of Honduras. We visited a cathedral that seemed to transport us straight to Spain, and we climbed the bell tower to see the machinery of the 2nd oldest working clock in the world. We also went to a cultural museum of anthropology in a house that used to house the president. They had fossils of giant sloths that stood over 20 feet tall, pottery and beads from Lencan and Mayan tribes, as well as rusted colt revolvers from much later in history.
We've also toured a local experiment station/nursery, participated in a Peace Corps olympics (soccer, ultimate frisbee, sack races, three-legged races, and water balloon toss, all on a muddy field) with ~75 other serving volunteers. Last Tuesday we had a laid-back culture swap day where we danced Shakira's Waka Waka as well as the electric slide, and had a watermelon-seed-spitting contest. Last weekend, my neighboring trainee Ruth and I went with her host brothers and sisters on a hike up the mountain to a spring, and then we followed a beautiful stream down the mountain back to La Cuesta. I think we might pack lunches tomorrow and do the same hike over with a few other people.
Oh, and I'll post another link for pictures in a second!