Turtle release at the Barra de Santiago

The Little Things that Keep you from Pushing the ET Button

During Peace Corps service there are a lot of ups and downs. For example, just dealing with cultural differences can really make you long for the organized, reliable system we have back in the states. The biggest challenge for me has been adjusting to the concept of El Salvador time and the Dios Permite statement.

The El Salvador time is usually gringo time mas half an hour to an hour and a half (say the meeting was scheduled to happen at 1. That means you need to stick around to start your meeting until at least 1:30 but 2 is better). I am not trying to say that this happens only in El Salvador because it doesn’t, and there are times when I am ¨running late¨ and then don’t have to stress because I will arrive on time no matter what time I actually get there. The other phrase that I love here is Si dios permite which basically means, God Willing. This is used all the time for any engagement that requires a commitment. This is a sort of safety net to have just in case something comes up and you can´t make it to a meeting, etc. OR sometimes it is used just in case you don’t actually want to go to something as well. I hope I never use this phrase and it makes me want to grind my teeth every time I hear it.

BUT it is also helping me realize that as a people, United Stateseans are very very hung up on time. The clock controls our everyday activities and we are constantly trying to run around trying to do everything at the exact time it needs to be done. In this respect, I respect the El Salvadorean hora and I am coming to enjoy it and the way of life here much more than that in the states where you constantly have to be checking the time. Sometimes I don’t even know what day of the week it is, let alone what time. I think I am in for a rude awakening when I get back to the states in two years….

So like I was saying in the beginning, it’s the little things you have to focus on to keep going during Peace Corps. Sometimes its noticing how amazingly beautiful all the views are here on my walks around my community. Other times it is hanging out with my best friend (who happens to be 3 years old) and getting her to do our ¨secret handshake.¨ But every day I am able to find at least a couple things that make me stop and say ¨wow I can´t believe I get to live here for two some years¨ and ¨how crazy lucky I am to be here and have this experience.¨ This gets me through the 5 am wakeup call by the roosters, the constant mosquito bites and acne, the smell of burning trash, and other little things that can really tick me off when I am down. SO if you are thinking about joining Peace Corps, just know that you really need to hang on to the moments that take your breath away so you don’t ET (Early Termination) when you feel like you just can´t take it any longer.

Dia en la Vida, Ode to a Pila

So I realized the other day that I haven´t written a whole lot about what life is actually like here in El Salvador, or at least what my daily routines are. So here we go:
I wake up about 6:30 to 7am every day to the sound of those horrible roosters crowing, a Peace Corps volunteer´s worst nightmare. There are some volunteers who were vegetarians when they came to El Salvador but they are leaving the country as proud chicken eaters for this and many other reasons. Chickens here are not like they are in the states at the tiny family farms and petting zoos. They are dirty, loud creatures that like to eat, poo and make a lot of noise. The only thing I remotely like about them is the fact that they have to sleep in high places at night and thus climb our one pine tree in my front yard…But I digress…
After waking up I feed my 3 cats which if I didn’t feed them they would probably still be living off tortillas like most domesticated animals here do although I am not quite sure how. They wait outside my door every morning and start to meow when they hear me undoing the locks to open the door. Then my host grandma/mom (she´s old and a grandmotherly figure so I really just saw she´s my grandma) asks me if I want her to heat me up a tortilla, which is Salvi code for do you want to have breakfast, because it is a literal sin to eat a meal without a tortilla. Even spaghetti has to be eaten with a tortilla. When I say yes, she brings out my holey (because she uses a twig to heat it over our wood fire), old, burnt tortilla (which I actually do like because it´s crispy) and my corn coffee. Yes, corn coffee. Even though I am surrounded by coffee plantations I drink ¨coffee¨ made from ground up toasted corn. Saying it´s coffee is like says tobacco leaves soaked in hot water is black tea. But it´s ok.
Then if it isn’t freezing and I have no immediate work to do I go and shower. Now showers here are not like the fancy shmanzy showers people have in the states or in Europe; I get to shower using a large sink and a bucket (thus the term used frequently in Peace Corps ¨bucket bath or shower¨). I dip my bucket into the large sink known here as a pila and then dump that water on my head. You fill the pila up with a faucet that sticks out over it and you have to twist the knob just right so it doesn’t squirt all over the place and get you, your towel and shower tote sopping wet. As risqué as this may sound, I and many volunteers actually prefer the bucket bath because when it is really cold here and raining as it is from about June to November, it´s nice to be able to take a breather between ice cold dumpings of water on your body. A regular shower would probably shock your body and give you brain freeze. I do have to admit though, on hot days there is nothing like a good, cold bucket bath to make you feel sane again.
I would like to take this time to give a sort of ode to the pila if you will bear with me for a moment. The pila here is probably the best invention since Coca cola and electricity (yes, in that order). The pila can come in many shapes and sizes from being a huge water tank that a whole community uses to a small sink-like thing that I use for my bucket showers. I have a pila for showering and then a different pila which is bigger for washing clothes and dishes. The bigger pila is like having a large, cement tub with really high sides and which is in between two slabs of concrete where you can scrub things by hand like clothes, sheets and god forbid, sleeping bags. That’s right, I wash all my clothes by hand and I´m proud of it. It´s actually kind of relaxing and I kind of look forward to having a nice load of dirty clothes to scrub and then throw on an old electrical wire to dry in the sun. I think that when I do move back to the states I will have a pila made for me for my house because I really can´t imagine living without one. And they´re super ecofriendly! It´s like a clothes washer and a dishwasher all in one and uses zero electricity and it´s meditative. I really don’t know why more people don’t have them.
After bathing or washing my clothes or sweeping and mopping my room (yes mom, I know you´re shocked) if school is in session, I usually make the five minute walk to school which usually takes me twice as long because I have to stop and say hi to everyone on the way. This is another thing I love about El Salvador, everyone loves to greet one another and it´s actually kind of rude if you pass someone without saying hello here. At the school I so far have just observed the teachers and done little ice breakers with the kids to get to know them better. Soon I will hopefully be teaching English and computer classes, and doing some art and environmental projects. I can´t wait for school to start in January because right now I don’t have that much to do. During vacation I usually just do house visits which are exactly like they sound: I go up to people´s front doors and they let me into their home and then we talk for at least 20 min about the weather, the harvest, their family, my family, religion, and the fact that I am not married yet and why is that? Then we go on to talk about the future: me with the work I´ll be doing in the schools and they telling me that I am going to marry an El Salvadorean and stay here forever. Then they give me free food (awesome) and I go on to the next house and the whole process is repeated. I seriously am not joking when I say I LOVE house visits. They´re like a confidence booster wrapped up with love in the form of food.
In the afternoon I have ¨gringa¨ time which can be nap time, reading or resting in the hammock, but either way its time just for me. Then I chill with my host family until dinner and then we (all 6 of us) watch our two favorite telenovelas (Llena de Amor and Soy tu Dueña) until it´s time for bed around 9pm. And that’s one day in a nutshell until I wake up to do it all over again!

The Beauty of a Hot Bath

So PST2 (training session part 2 of Peace Corps) ended last week and it was a stress filled (in a good way) week. We learned a lot of technical things to bring back to our sites but I also felt really overwhelmed and maybe my Spanish has regressed a little. It definitely gave me a new spring of energy and confidence about some projects in my community. It was also great to go back to my site afterwards and be really happy to be back. I am starting to feel like my community is more and more like my home. I actually missed my host family and the sounds of the campo. I even missed the stating the obvious conversations that we have in the campo every day.
And a week later, here I am, back in the capital for the celebration of Thanksgiving. A lot of the volunteers (myself included of course) are staying with embassy families for the holiday and so far we have been having a great time. I am staying with my friends Anna and David with a great family. The wife is actual a RPCV ((Returned Peace Corps Vol) from Africa and we have been having a great time talking and exchanging stories. They made us a fabulous lunch of spinach salad and we just had lasagna for dinner with warm apple pie and vanilla hagendas ice cream! I definitely ate way too much but it was so worth it. They even have a dog that the wife brought back with her from Africa. That makes me think that I should definitely adopt that puppy that my neighbor is saving for me!
The best part of the night, so far at least, has been the bathtub. They have a jacuzzi tub in their embassy house and I soaked away about two months of dirt and grim and it was AMAZING!! Thats one of the things I have missed the most about the states: soaking in a hot bath while reading a book. Tomorrow we will be hanging out at the embassy, swimming, and then joining some other embassy families for a good ol fashioned American Thanksgiving dinner! SO excited!

Back in Black

Hey everyone! So sorry to have kind of fallen off the face of the earth but I have been kind of busy. My new site is awesome. I am really enjoying living in the campo in the mountains with my host family, chickens, dogs, cats, and a horse. I have already had tons of fun at the school and have just arrived in the capital, San Salvador, to hang out with some friends before starting training (second round). But before I go into that, what have I been up to that has made me so busy? Well...

I have had a lot of meetings to get started on a couple of projects in the community. Who knows if any of them will actually work out but what we are hoping to do is: 1) build three more classrooms for my school so that kids can go to school up to 9th grade and 2) buy land for a cancha (soccer field).

The first project is really needed in the community because as of right now the kid in my community can only afford to go to school up to 6th grade. The nearest school is about 5 min bus ride away or a half an hour walk. The problem with taking the bus is that the kids have to pay about 70 cents a day for a round trip. This might not seem like a lot to people in the states but when youre family only makes about $100 a month, its a huge expense, especially if the parents are sending more than one kid to school (the average family here is about 3 to 4 kids!). Also, the nearby schools dont have enough room to accept the kids from my community so a lot of kids, especially girls, are made to stay home after 6th grade, do household work and then get pregnant and start families without any higher education opportunities.

The second project is equally important. A cancha is the central meeting spot and play center for any community here. It is where all recreational activities happen from festivals to soccer games. My kids right now play on the highway which is extremely dangerous but they have no other option. The only problem is that land is very expensive and soccer fields are big! I am currently working with community members on project planning skills and how to write grants so hopefully we will have some success with this project as well. It would be an incredibly great resource for the community, especially since El Salvador has one of the highest crime rates in Central America and I want to keep my kids from joining gangs.

Other than getting our foot in the door with projects I have been going to festivals including day of the dead celebrations which were awesome. Its like a huge party where people decorate the gravesites of loved ones and get together with their living members of the family. I wish we had something like that in the states. I also participated in a youth festival in my pueblo, a cancer awareness walk, and went swimming in the river! So far I love love love my site and living in the campo in El Salvador.

Did you know that chickens can climb trees?

I finally made it to my site in Ahuachapan! I think I am probably the envy of my group since I live in tropical paradise :). But in all seriousness: I am in a little farming community right near a little pueblo and about an hour to 45 min from the nearest Super Selectos. I live with a little abuelita, her husband, their son and their son's wife. And there's also the wife's mother who lives with us as well. They are the sweetest abuelo and abuela I could have asked for. I get along really well with the son and daughter as they are younger, about 30, and I have already played Battleship, Cribbage and UNO with them. They are helping me learn a lot of caliche and get the "lay of the land" in the community. My community is also super organized which makes everything a lot easier, especially since I showed up with a cast on my leg (which I JUST got off yesterday and it feels amazing! But more about that later). As such I have spent a lot of time observing, people watching and animal watching. This is how I found out that chickens are actually really adept tree climbers!
So while I have been trying to hobble to the nearest houses, the community has really rallied together and set up numerous reuniones so that I would be able to meet people in the community and visa versa. Already I have met leaders of the community, all the teachers and children in the school (the school director brought the entire school to my house :) ) and I have gone to misa and culto (culto is evangelical mass and if you've never been to one, I will take you. Its an experience).
The campo language was a little hard to get around at first but now I have become a little more fluent. Simply put: it is stating the obvious and affirming it. For example: I was washing my clothes yesterday next to my abuelita when she turned to me and said: "You are washing your clothes!" to which the only response could be, "yes, yes I am". It is hilarious and frustrating at times but I have come to love it and now I can say "ya estuvo" which means it is "done" and when asked how's its going, I now respond in the tradicional "por aqui" which loosely translates to "about, around, by here." I love my community and my host family and have already been involved in several cultural activities, one of which was killing a chicken yesterday. I felt that since I eat chicken almost every day and it comes fresh from my front yard/patio/whereever the chickens feel like grazing, that I should tke a moment to experience the whole process of how my food is made. So I watched my host sister select the fattest chicken, tie it upside down to a tree and slit its throat. Sorry if this is too graphic but that is how its done in El Sal which I think frankly is more humane than in the states. The only thing I would say is that it took THIS particular chicken a llooonnng time to die. But without going into details of it flopping around on the ground because we thought it was dead and thus cut it down from the tree, I watched a chicken killing. Then I helped to clean all the feathers off and cut it up into bits for soup. It was delicious.

Juramentacion!

Today I officially get sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer! I am really excited to finally be considered a real volunteer and not simply an aspirante. The swearing in ceremony is an official event where members from the embassy come and make us swear our loyalty to Peace Corps and the US of A. Then we get to have a fun party with our host families with a dinner including various comidas tipicas, etc. After the family dinner all the newly sworn in volunteers get to hang out at the Peace Corps office and then later at the hotel. Then, bright and early we get to get on a bus and head out to San Salvador to meet our guias communitarias or community guides who will help us negotiate and meet people in the community where we will be living for two years! My community guides are the school Director and my host dad :). I will really miss all my good friends in Peace Corps: Anna, Katherine, Esther, Jamie, Amy, David, and Jeff.

Peace Corps Haiku

By Sarah Sterling, Nicole Wooten and Katherine Plotnick

Sharing cultures; good.
Peace Corps homework, not so good.
Rice and beans and cheese.

Entonces, va pues.
Waking up to rooster calls.
Telenovelas.

Oh dios mio!
Gang members are on my bus!
Chichontepec, wow!

Playing with children,
Teaching English at my school,
and making shampoo.

Bring it back with me
These lessons learned in Peace Corps
Already miss it.

My Site

Yesterday I was assigned to be a Youth Development volunteer in the municipio de Ahuachapan which is in the Southwest region of El Salvador. It is one of the centers of artesenia in the country as well as the home of the Parque Nacional El Imposible. I am about 1.5 hours from the beach where I went for my free weekend. I will be in a small community living with a small host family and helping out in the local school. My site is a town of about 600 people and the school is grades Kinder to 6th with 150 students and 3 teachers. I am super excited and can't wait to get started! I will write more when I get there but so far this is what I know: in nearby Guaymango and Ataco there are ecological parks, a french restaurante where I can buy whole wheat bread and basil as well as a place that sells goat cheese!!!! Thus, I am psyched to be going to one of the most beautiful municipios in the country to work, play and live!

Free Weekend Pictures - Ahuachapan

Livin La Vida Loca

So I have been here in El Salvador for almost two months now and find out where I will be sent for my permanent post in just a little over a week! I have had so many touching, amazing experiences here so far and cant wait to experience more when I move to my site.
Last weekend we went to an amazing municipality called Ahuachapan to Barrio Santiago where there is a charming little hostel right on the beach. I went with 6 other PCV and we had a great time. The beach was gorgeous and we had it all to ourselves! We went body surfing, turtle watching at night and just an overall chill, fun time. I am continuously surprised by how different each part of El Salvador is. Two weekends ago I went to Morazan for an immersion day visit. There it was mountanious and filled with coffee plantations and pine trees. It reminded me a little of home with the pine trees and the air was so cool and fresh. I got to hike to a waterfall and visit a PCV who is in the end of his first year there. It was definitely an experience but overall a really great one. I learned a lot about the real life of a PCV and what the day to day activities are. Its not always glamarous but the people make it worth it. Every time I meet someone new or play with kids here, I am reminded again and again why I am here and why I ultimately want to do international development.
I am really excited to be going in three weeks to my site but also a little nervous. I dont know what the community will be like or where it will be. But I think the biggest thing is that I dont want to leave the host family I have in La Mascota. They have been overwhelmingly welcoming, warm and loving. I definitely feel like an adopted part of the family. Its not even just the host family I dont want to leave either - everyone in the community is just starting to get to know me and open up to me. I feel like I am leaving right when I am starting to settle in just a little and its frustrating - but it also gives me hope that in two months in my new site I will hopefully have connections and friends that I wont want to leave either and that will be great as well since I will be there for TWO years!!!
Overall, I feel (as most El Salvadoreans would say I believe) blessed to have been chosen to be a volunteer in El Salvador. Its an amazing country so far with so much history both recent and past and I still have so much to explore and discover.

Randomness of El Salvador

My puppy La Muneca and a birthday party at Lilah's house! Feliz Cumpleanos Marcos!

More Pictures

La Mascota (or La Mascote)

This volcano is the centerpiece of our landscape here

Bus crash near San Vicente

San Vicente!

Torrential downpour on my front patio!

This is El Salvador

These are various pictures from my travels so far in El Salvador. The pictures of the children are from my house and they are my little amigos :). The drawings and photos are of Archbishop Romeo who was assasinated during the civil war for preaching peace - he has since become a national iconic figure and you can see quotes and drawings of his face everywhere. The bus is from our trip to San Salvador yesterday, which was an experience in of its own. San Salvador is very crowded, noisy and polluted but it has a great selection of museums and the biggest mall in Central America!

Man vs Food

I just wanted to put up a post for my little brother about the food here: Every meal, and I mean every meal, makes me feel like I am in an episode of Man vs Food and I am the person that has to finish everything on my plate. The portions here are not huge but the tortillas really fill you up. Usually my daily meals consist of: breakfast: fried egg with refried beans and queso fresco with bread or a tortilla, Lunch: refried beans, cheese, tortilla and chicken, and then for dinner: refried beans, maybe some rice, tortilla, and maybe some veggies. And the cycle continues day after day. All of it is really good and freshly made every day, so thats a great aspect. So far, I am not sick of it yet but I definitely am excited to move to my site and be able to cook my own food!

La Mascota

So I dont have too much time to write as I am using teh Peace Corps (PC) office computer but I wanted to give a brief update on my trip in El Salvador. We have now all moved in with our host families in various towns throughout San Vicente. Mine includes an AMAZING abuelita, her daughter, a cousin and an uncle. They have all been amazingly welcome and warm towards me and I havent really felt lonely or sad the entire time I have been living with them. The storms here (since it is winter here) are amazing and tremendous. Imagine a sort of waterfall sound of rain hitting a tin roof with bright lightning, booming thunder...for HOURS!! This aint no east coast weather where it rains and then stops after five minutes. My family sees to it that I eat way more than I ever have been in my life. Other than that, I get a nice wake up call every morning around 3 am from the gallos (roosters), chompipes (turkeys) and the perros. More later!!

Flying out

So staging has officially begun and its actually almost over! I have met my team of 15 "youthies" (aka youth development volunteers) as well as some agriculture/environmental education volunteers. Everyone seems really excited and prepared for the Peace Corps experience and we have all been getting along really well. We all went out last night for dinner and walked along the pier in LA. I think the mutual nervousness and excitement about the upcoming two years of our lives makes us all the best of friends. It makes it a lot easier to deal with the idea of living in a foreign country when you have others who are going through the same experience. So, for now, Adios! I will write and post pictures when I can in El Salvador!

Adios, Hasta Luego, Ciao!

Well it is THE big day. I am leaving home and setting out on part one of a very long journey. I elave for LA today and basically all I have to do is step on and off a plane and check in at the hotel. I am, needless to say, close to nausea but I want to attribute at least half of that to being sooooo excited that I have no idea what to do with myself. So I am going to try and just take one day at a time so I dont get overwhelmed by looking at the whole next two years all at once. Thank you to all of my friends and family for sending me so much support and love during my last month here. I will really miss all of you. I want to say keep in touch but I feel like thats such a lame way of saying: I am going to miss you so friggin bad, PLEASE write me, email me, VISIT! I think my biggest fear overall, the one that I havent voiced to anyone, is that I dont want this amazing experience to be a reason to lose contact with everyone that I hold near and dear in the U.S. So when I say, keep in touch, I guess I really mean, dont fade out of my life and/or dont let me fade out of yours!
Ciao!

Two more days?!

I wanted to take the time to say how freaked out and excited I am at the thought of leaving in two days to live in El Salvador for the next TWO YEARS!! My brother Jason and I were talking yesterday about how this is a major crossroads in my life and looking back, I want to always remember how I felt at this moment in time. Right now, I feel as if I am standing at the edge of something, although I don't know what it is yet (besides the whole leaving thing). I hope I can live up to all the expectations I have of myself and at the same time, try not to have any expectations at all! It's a very conflicting sort of feeling. It's also really new and weird for me because I am, by nature, a planner. I love to plan everything and for this trip, not being able to plan for anything besides maybe the weather, is really hard for me. Basically, I hope you all who read this blog are keeping your fingers crossed for me and thinking encouraging thoughts because the looming next two years are starting to look very daunting now that my time here in the US is drawing to a close. I am fairly sure that once I have said my goodbyes, cried a little (more like bawling like a baby at the airport and then trying to get the red out of my eyes before going through security) I will be ecstatic and wont be able to wait to get down there. I know I will be meeting amazing people, making tons of friends, having lots of fun, and sharing it all with you!

Leaving in two weeks!!!

So I really cant believe that its only two more weeks until I leave the United States for El Salvador! Its really starting to sink in....The fact that I am going to live in an entirely different culture for the next two years of my life, speaking in a language that I did not grow up with and eating food that may be completely different than anything I have ever had before. I guess I am excited with a side of paranoid nervousness. I am crossing my fingers that this is the right decision to make and that this will keep leading me down the road I want to take in life.
All I want is for the experience to be what I see in my dreams: laughing children, smiling matriarchs, friends of all backgrounds and cultures, and really really good FOOD! I know there will be ups and a lot of downs but I am hoping that the overall arching theme will be bliss :).
I did get a somewhat stressful email from Peace Corps basically telling me that I will no longer be able to wear my flip flops outside of my house. Anyone that knows me even a little will know what a tragedy that is for me! But I think I will manage.
More later when the departure date gets closer!

The Invitation and Preparation

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

I just received my actual invitation inviting me to serve for two years with the Peace Corps in EL Salvador. This will be the first posts of many throughout my journey as a Peace Corps volunteer. Obviously right now I have a mixture of emotions running through me varying from pure joy at having job security in a section of the world that I LOVE and pure terror at the thought of what have I gotten myself into?? But mostly its excitement and getting yet another stack of paperwork done for Peace Corps.

When you are accepted into the Peace Corps they give you a huge folder full of legal documents, insurance, personal essays to write, etc. Basically it is a package that contains relief as well as a whole lot of stress. I think I am pretty much done with most of the paperwork, and the hardest stuff that I have to fill out will be filled out when I go to Staging. Staging is where I fly out the day before I leave for El Salvador to some unknown (for now) city in the U.S. and meet up with all of the other volunteers (vols) who are also going to El Salvador. Then we get all of our vaccinations, meds, loans papers, life insurance forms filled out and they send them all away for us. Then the following day(s) they fly all of the vols out to El Salvador together. And here I was thinking I would have to fly to El Salvador, find a cab, and make my way through San Salvador (the capital) all on my lonesome. The latter version sounds so much more fun and adventurous than group travel. But I guess I better get used to Peace Corps being there to hold my hand for a long while to come.

But for right now I am focused on getting the proper attire for El Salvador (apparently they value professionalism when it comes to their shoes and overall appearance, so no dirty hippies or backpackers allowed ;) ). Usually I have only backpacked through Latin America and volunteered, so I have never had to have dress shoes, skirts, nice pants, to go to work and be respected. So naturally, its something I am stressing about and need to just let go of and work through as I go along.

Anyway, right now, I am just relieved that I got in, that I am going to what sounds to be an amazing country, and cant wait to jump into the Peace Corps experience.