current life

I have been home for about 2 months or so. This summer has been busy! I went back to Starbucks and started something at my store called "Fair Trade Fridays" . On Fridays we we brew our certified fair trade coffee and connect customers with the workers in other countries. One thing I learned from Honduras is that bring awareness to issues is important. THis has been going on for about a month and so we are selling pounds of coffee and talking about how buying our Cafe Estima ensures that workers are being treated fairly and with respect.

I also am still really involved with my church Mosaic. It has been such a blessing this summer come home to my church and group of friends. We have done tons of fun stuff like beach days, hiking, BBQs and loving life.

The biggest news this summer is that I was asked to help start a health and wellness program at an organization called MEND. (Meeting Each Need with Dignity). This is a non-profit organization in Los Angeles area which provides different services like a food center, clothing center, a clinic and job training skills- They meet the basic human needs of individuals and they do it while promoting self-reliance.

This is such a huge opportunity and I am so thrilled to work with them in starting this. I would love to do this internship through senior year and ideally work with them after I graduated as the director of the department. I am looking to have nutritionists and dietitians come and talk to clients, have exercises classes once a month, have seminars on prevention of obesity and diabetes and also have a program geared to kids and teens.

Classes start in the end of Aug and I am so excited to live in my house with my six other amazing roomies and then grad in May. EKKKKK.


This is the last update prob in my blog. If you want to keep in contact and hear updates on my life or about the health program I am helping start email me!


carapurgason@gmail.com

Love,
Cara

im home

I'M HOMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEe

the flight was good. it was sad saying goodbye (to my family and my calvin friends)
Jeremy and I had about 45 min to get through immigration and customs but we made our flight back to LA fine.

love ya'll mucho!

foto shoot

me and my friend kenya were playing around and taking photos the other day. enjoyyyyyyyyy. (thanks photoshop) lol.

Highlights from this week

- Tuesday we talked about micro enterprise and loans and if this helps the poor or not. I think it does and I am excited to learn more about this topic. Basically, private donors give a loan and get paid back with interest months or years later. Way cool. Then with the money you donate, poor people are giving loans and are given a chance to get out of poverty. We visited an organization IDH and got to talk with two ladies about their loans and their businesses. It was really cool. I liked the work they were doing because they were also having classes teaching values. The class we sat on they focused on forgiveness. One lady took her loan which usually about 500- 1000 dollars and started a tortilla business and the other cosmetics like Avon products.

-Café Paradiso (this cute coffee shop which we all love because of the people and wireless internet) showed the movie Trade (http://www.tradethemovie.com/) which is about sex trafficking and was amazing. I strongly recommend watching it.

-Wednesday we visit a prison to learn about literacy. At the prison, most of the inmates have only completed up till 6th grade. The program seems like a great success and it was very interesting to see how the imamates have responded. They are eager and grateful. The prison its self was interesting. It is like a mini village. It was all men; there was a cement soccer field where the guys can play. There are little restaurants which are run my inmates to earn money. Some guys make hammocks, have garden and sell vegetables, they have their own kitchens so they can cook. The only food they are given are rice and beans which come in a huge bucket- something you would feed an animal. They don’t have a uniform. Visitors can come and go when they please, and women can stay overnight. They have a pretty big area where they are able to roam around. Then we went to the ex gang members part. This was as big as a normal house. They hardly have any space to walk around. One thing else I notice was that they get treated without a lot of respect. They are looked down upon because they are ex-gang members. They were so friendly though. A lot of them knew English, or street English because of being in gangs in the States. One guy lived in Anaheim and Jeremy and I told him we go to school in La Mirada and he was so excited and like oh cool we are like neighbors. Haha. It was funny. They showed us their rooms which consisted of two bunk beds, so like four guys on top of each other. Some had TV’s and cell phones which aren’t technically allowed but they still had them. They aren’t allowed to leave, ever. A lot had tattoos, like this photo. At first, it was a little intimating but once you talk, they are people just like you and me. They just have made diff choices with their lives, it doesn’t mean they should be treated worse, I think.

- Thursday night was Brian’s birthday so we went to this amazing pizza place and hung out for a while. It was such good pizza. Almost everyone was there too, minus four girls, so we had a blast. I love our group. We walked around downtown Tegus and got ice cream afterwards.

-Because we had a four day weekend, we thought about traveling to the beach (Almapala) but since we didn’t plan ahead all the hotels were full. It turned out it was feriado there that weekend which is kinda like celebrating the town or a town fiesta. Por eso, everything was packed. I was disappointed but it was ok.

-On Saturday Karen and Anna and I wanted to go a hike so we decided to head towards the mountains and hike for the day. We packed PB and J sandwiches and had an adventure. It was really fun but I so sore today. Haha. It was a long day, we left at 7am and got home around 4pm. We prob spent 3 hours total the bus but we differently walked and hiked for a good 4 hours.

-Saturday night, Lauren and I had a date at Chiles. HAHA. I know! We talked about going there, all cute for a girls night out before we leave and we did it. It was a lot of fun. I got the most amazing BBQ chicken salad ever. Hah. I miss salads…. We hung out and watched ESPN and had a blast. It was interesting to see though, the other families who were there diff upper class. Even though our bill was super cheap compared to a Chiles in the States, it still in expensive for Honduras. We also saw a couple other Americans, we think they worked for the Embassy or on business because they didn’t look like tourists.


We have a little more than a week left. I know it is going to fly by....I love it here but I am ready to come home. My semester here has been so different than in Ecuador and I think I keep comparing them and thats not good. I miss Ecuador though....

carrizal

Ok so after like 2 weeks I know you all are dying to know how my week in the “country” went. (MOM!) Hehe. We went to a little pueblito called Carrizal to spend five days there researching a certain theme and learning how life is in a poor community. I choose to research about health with two other girls. We have been learning about different methods of investigation like surveys and observations. This community just got running water about four years and they were planning on getting electricity in a few months. We decided to research how the utilities have and will affect health. We spent a few days around the community talking to people about food and diseases. We also spend two days in the local clinic which was about a 45 min walk down the hill, observing (and helping) the nurse. To spare you all the details we found that there were no cases of malaria or any other major problem. The most common things were the cold and also cuts from machetes. I will attach my power point I made for the presentation so you can look at more details.
One thing that was cool was to be able to be in the clinic. The nurse was very nice (see the pic below) and we got to help out. One man came in with a really bad cut on his leg from working in the fields and I got to help clean the wound and the nurse stitched it up. She showed me how to give shots; mainly women came in for the birth control shot (which was free). I had a great time and learned that I love helping people get healthy (I got to give out multi-vitamins and prenatal vitamins) but I realized that I do not want to be a nurse.
Other than our investigation, we got to live with a family and learn about life in campo. It was intense but so good. I was really nervous at first- not going to lie. I was going to live without showing, without lights, in a dirt house with lots of animals. We lived in pairs and I got to stay with Jessica which was amazing. She was so rad. We had baby chickens in our room at night, cows outside mooing and pigs wondering around. I was so thankful I didn’t get sick. We ate a lot of beans and tortillas. I learned how to make tortillas, so cool! Other cool things were 1. one of chickens like to lay eggs and I so we would collect them and eat them for breakfast. 2. I got to watch a cow being milked 3. I lost weight that week! 3. It was a group bonding experience 4. I was able to hike around the hills and see the beauty in God’s creation 5. They grow coffee and so I got to roast coffee, grind it and drink it. SOO good! (way better than starbucks. Hehe)
Overall, it was a good week. Hard but good. I was glad to come back home to Tegus and to take a shower. I gave my presentation and my teachers loved it. It was great! I was very proud of myself after all.

water project

There is a small town called Nueva Suyapa, where water only comes through the faucet about once every 7 to 10 days. We each have a buddy who lives there and we spend Weds up there with them hanging out, playing soccer or just chatting. If you're very poor, you don't usually have anywhere to store that water, so on the day the water comes you fill up every container you have--barrels, buckets and in what is usually the only option for the very poorest--scores of 2 liter Coke bottles you've stored up. Most poor women dream of having a real pila--a cement water tank with a washing board attached that lets you store water to do your wash, take a bath, do the dishes and clean your home. But pilas cost about $200 to build, and when you're making less than $100 a month, it might as well be $2,000. Pilas improve women's lives in so many ways. They make storing water feasible so they don't have to drag their clothes down to the dirty river to wash them, it allows them to bathe their children and themselves regularly and to keep their homes and dishes cleaner which improves health. Pilas are a great investment in the lives of these hard-working women who have so few luxuries in their lives.

One thing I have learned being here is how important water is. (Something happen to our water tank last week and we didn’t have water from the faucet for 4 days). I had to take bucket showers, we couldn’t wash clothes or our dishes- it was just stressful. I am really excited to have this tangible opportunity to help some women out.

There are 14 women on a list waiting to receive a pila. In a couple weeks we are hoping to raise about $1,400. (Each pila costs about $200 and there are 14 women waiting to receive one).

So, I am posting this and asking if anything you can give will be fabulous and put to immediate good use!! They can send a check earmarked PILA PROJECT to:

Stewardship of Christian Ministries
10310 E. Jewell Ave #54
Denver, CO 80247


If you guys do send a check (so we can keep track of our goal) or want more information about this project we are doing shoot me and email. caramissesyou@yahoo.com



love, Cara

hi friends

This past week has been crazy and busy. We have a 15 page development paper due on Friday which I finished and was very proud of myself. We had to choose a topic to research and I learned all about gangs and violence in Honduras and Central America. Very interesting! If anyone wants to learn more I have lots of info but the bottom line is that there are two main gangs. 18th Street and MS-13 who dominate everything. Both of these originated in LA too….

There is a cute little coffee shop that on Tuesdays shows foreign films and on Thursdays local poets come and read their poetry. Lauren and I have been going and it is so nice to meet locals and I have totally learned to appreciate art more- which leads me to this weekend. Saturday, Katie, Karen, Jill and I went to a local museum and it was really cool to see local artists and their different styles. On Sunday Lauren and Kenya and I went to another museum where there was a Frida Kahlo exhibit. It was really interesting.

This week we are going to Olcancho for the week to do research. I and two other girls are going to be researching health. I’m very excited!

The weather here has been so weird! Really hot during the day and then kinda raining at night.

Less than a month left! Ahhhhhhhhhhh