hn41.

as i sit right now, in one of the two offices at my cooperative, small wisps of cloud float by the vibrant green peaks of the nearby mountains, slowly but persistently streaming towards the west. the peaks look spectacular today, with every shade of green blanketing the whole surface, with even the summits exuding life. its amazing that even after 7 months of being here, the landscape amazes me. i wake up every morning, walk down hilly roads of my town, and every time i stop to look and my mouth gapes at the sight. i wish i could take panoramic pictures every day, and post them somewhere so that maybe some of you may feel the same wonderment i do. anyway, thats some observation for you guys, and now a short account of whats been going on, what may happen in the future, and basically what is up in general.

1. my mom came and went. we spent an amazing time here in honduras. we visited the ruins of Copan, which are absolutely incredible, and I reccomend to all. the town itself is made for tourists, and provides a pleasant lodging point for the days you spend exploring. the ruins are immense, elaborate, and stunning. walking the land between them one feels almost a part of the era, as if you can imagine the Maya going about their daily rutines. You can see where they had their ceremonies, where they lived, played, its just...amazing. On the other side of town we visited an aviary, and got to see close up toucans, parakeets, and all sorts of different colorful birds. check out the photos if youre interested.

after we left, i brought her to my home town, and over the span of a week we rode horses, visited families, went up into the mountains, and well, kept busy. everyone loved my mom, and she hit it off with them as well, even tho the language barrier made conversation sometimes taxing. but the the fact remains, when you put good people in a room together, no matter what language they speak, they can understand each other and learn to respect and love each other. my family still sends hellos to her every day, and she calls and does the same.

2. as for work, everything is getting totally rediculous, exciting, and overwhelming at the same time. the worms are doing well, and we are about to begin collecting our first fertilizer. this week we will be working hard on bringing as much bagged pulp into the working area in order to insure that we have enough organic matter for the worms to work with.

the hydroelectric project is also going extremely well, with meetings planned with different organizations, and what seems to be like significant support from GTZ, PRORENA, MAPANCE, and la Hermandad de Honduras. Of course, everything is still in the initial stages, and nothing ever goes according to plan, but at least it's looking more and more possible every day.

the cooperative is also slowly but surely starting the home gardens project and looking into the financial aid/school fund project, so it seems that all of the many parts of the puzzle are slowly fitting into place.

and last but not least, it seems that MAPANCE, which is an organization that controls the national park of Celaque, is interested in collaborating with Peace Corps and ICF (Instituto de Conservacion Forestal) in managing the park as a permanent partnership. which means, we may have gotten ourselves a really awesome local couterpart for a long time. now its all up to us peace corpsers to get together and meet with their representatives, and see what we can do. basically this is an amazing opportunity, so if youre in celaque, and in peace corps, call me. like now.

ok, thats basically it. the horse is awesome, life is awesome, and semana santa is almost upon us so that means the beach for a couple of days. oh yeah.