Nathan Reents in Honduras
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Nathan Reents in Honduras
Nathan Reents in Honduras
Nathan Reents in Honduras
Hi everyone! Thanks for visiting my page. I will be sending letters and pictures to my friend Raman who will be posting them on this site. I'm hoping this will help me to keep in touch with everyone in the U.S. and give people an idea of what I am doing over in Honduras. My address in Honduras is:
PCT Nathan Reents Cuerpo de Paz Apartado 3158 Tegucigalpa, Honduras C.A.
My e-mail is nreents@hotmail.com but I will probably not be able to check it often.
If you would like automatically be e-mailed a general letter every couple months, write to rgopalan@mtu.edu and include your name and email address.
Hey everyone!
Greetings from Honduras. How is everyone?
I've been in Honduras for a little over two weeks. I am with 47 other Peace Corps trainees in a little town in the mountains outside of Tegucigulpa. I am having a great time so far, I live with a really nice family who has had a bunch of volunteers in the past and really knows how to help me with my Spanish and explain things so I understand. I have a host mom, dad and three sisters and right next door an host aunt, uncle and and a bunch of cousins. I must have like 20 cousins in town. It's really fun to play with all the kids. It has especially helped me with my commands in Spanish as they are always ordering each other around. The youngest daughter is best. She seems to like teaching me things and likes the added attention I give her. My sisters are ages 10,14, and 17. The middle one is kind of interesting, she doesn't really want to have much to do with me. She is an amazing dancer. They do this dance here called the Punta that is really an incredible sight. I don't think I have ever seen hips move that fast before. The oldest daughter actually knows a lot of English because she is studying to be a bilingual secretary. We never speak in English though because all the families have to sign a contract not to speak English with us written by the PC training center. She is really friendly with me and we like to make fun of each other because we both like to sleep a lot. It's amazing the mileage you can get out of a simple joke when you don't know the language.
I am also really enjoying the other trainees. They are all so different and from all over the U.S.. We have trainees ages 21 - 60. The only tough thing is we hardly have any free time. I am at the training center Monday through Saturday from 7:30 - 5:00. In the morning we have spanish classes which are actually pretty good. Only three to a teacher and very focused on speaking, which is much different than the grammar based classes I took in College. This is definitely going to be my biggest challenge. The technical stuff has come pretty easy. In the afternoons we have technical and cultural training.
It seems like my job is going to be a lot different than I thought. I will be working in a large city, I will have my own office and computer and will be doing a lot of water system design work. There is a lot of water sanitary volunteers that don't have a technical background so part of my job will be to go out to there villages and help them out. I'm pretty sure I will either be in Nacaome or Choluteca, but I will also stay out in villages while I am working on projects. Anyway, I'm excited because it seems like these water systems are really needed around here, and Peace Corps has a lot of experience building them and teaching people how to maintain the systems.
Next week I have practicum and will be spending 4 days in Danli with another engineering volunteer to see what her job is like.
Well, I better let someone else use this computer. I hope everyone is doing well. I miss you. (I will probably be able to check my mail again in a couple weeks)
Love,
Nate or "Pablo" (in Honduras)
P.S.
Happy Fathers Day Dad!!!!! I wrote you a letter and will send it next week. I can't wait to hear about your trip!!! That is crazy that you missed your flight. I can just see you guys in the car looking at the tickets....
Life in HONDO
Hey, how is everyone?
Well, I am officially a Peace Corps volunteer as I swore in on August 25 (and officially shit my pants on September 13). Despite being sick from time to time while my stomach gets used to the food of the "campo", things are going great. I live with a family in Santa Barbara, Honduras, a city of about 30,000 people. My new address is:
ACPH Escuela Radiofonica Suyapa Bo Lleno del Conejo (a lado de la Eglesia Catolica) Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Honduras, CA
The city is beautiful and is situated in a valley with a national park on one side. I usually work three days in the office and two days in small towns in the area of Santa Barbara. When I am in the office I have been planning for work in the villages and studying spanish and reviewing technical information I learned during training about designing gravity flow water systems. After work we religiously go down by the river to an old beat up soccer field with erroded channels running through and play until it gets dark. This is probably my favorite part of the day. There is a great view of the mountains and the air finally cools off a bit. I play with the two brothers of the family that I live with and a bunch of mechanics who play in jeans and work boots, so we are not exactly world cup material but it's just about right for me.
On the two days that I am out in the villages, we leave really early in the morning. My boss is a little phsyco about this. The other day he said he was going to pick me up at 5 in the morning and he showed up at 4:30 honking his horn. This is not typical of Hondurans as normally things start pretty late. In general the guy is a piece of work, but he is perfect for the job that he does helping to organize small communities to improve health conditions. Everyone calls him viejo as he's an older fella. He walks around with his shirt open and his pot belly hanging out, joking around with the people in the street, (kind of like a little budda). He has a couple theories on like that I don't think have a lot of scientific backing but never-the -less are interesting. One is that Honduran women develop early and Hondurans reproduce rapidly because of the intense exposure to sunlight. Others I'll get into later....
Well I am out of time at the internet cafe. Thank you very much to everyone that has sent something to me. It feels great to read you letters.
Best regards,
Nate
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Story Source: Personal Web Site
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Honduras; PCVs in the Field - Honduras
PCOL4698
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By Rory@aol.com (cache-dtc-aa04.proxy.aol.com - 205.188.116.8) on Saturday, January 01, 2005 - 7:34 pm: Edit Post |
I think you could of put more pictures on the website. I am doing a report for my spanish class and i need something visual.But your website sucks!!
love ya you seem hot maybe i'll bang ya sometime
can't wait love,
Rory Gilmore
To view photographs by Peace Corps Volunteers, go to the Peace Gallery.
Best Regards,
Admin1
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By Anonymous (cpe-69-205-152-250.stny.res.rr.com - 69.205.152.250) on Friday, August 19, 2005 - 6:16 pm: Edit Post |
Dear Pablo,
I went to your web-site because it said Honduras. I was in Honduras in Feb. of this year to a villa named, San Francisco, a few miles out of Tegucigalpa. I was on a Mission Trip with my husband and 26 other people. Originally we supported an orphange with around 25 boys and have been going there every year to see the boys and to do whatever Pastor Roberto Ventura wanted to be done for the boys and the housing situation that we stay in while there. This year we had a Bible School for the Village Children, for the first time ever. Usually all the attention had been on the boys but now they are all getting older and graduating and starting families of their own. There is a young man in the Villa that is also in the Peace Corps, he is there as a teacher, his name is Lucas Wolfe. He would probably love to hear from someone from home. You might want to look him up??
WEll, it was really nice reading everything that you have been up to. Hope you get to the Villa de San Francisco because the water there is TERRIBLE, and it is no wonder the people there get sick. THey are the most beautiful in heart people I have ever met. I love them all, especially those beautiful children.
Good Luck in all that you are doing!
GOD Bless you too. Sandy
I am participating in a missionary trip to Honduras this July. As part of the prep for the up coming trip we each have been given a reserch topic. My topic is how Hondurans tradtional have fun. Can anyone help me I have serch high and low and only come up with what tourist do when visting.
Thank you
Jane
Hey Nathan.
Recently, I came across your a pdf file of your Master's Thesis ("DESIGN OF POTABLE WATER SUPPLY
SYSTEMS IN RURAL HONDURAS") regarding potable water systems in Honduras. In it, you had the CAD drawings available that were adopted from SANAA's "Normas de Diseño para Acueductos Rurales". In particular, I was wondering if you could e-mail me the CAD files of these drawings instead of the pdf forms of the drawings. The CADs I am interested in are located on the following pages of your report:
B-36 through B-39, B-42,B-43,B-45.
If you still have these CAD's available, could you please e-mail me them or direct to someone who may still have them available.
Thanx and keep up the good work.