Blogging during the 10 day tropical storm...

It has now been raining for more than 96 hours nonstop in El Salvador and I am starting to lose it a bit. So in order not to get adobe house fever, I decided to walk to my pueblo and update my blog. My house flooded the night after last but luckily I was able to contain it and nothing was damaged. I did however spend the entire night wringing out towels and sweeping water out of my house. My hands are red and welty but they are getting better. I also had to go out in the mud at night with a hoe (or alzadon as they are called here) and dig my canals deeper. They were blocked and filled with twigs and leaves which made the water block up and go into my house instead of down my hill and into our river. I became soaked and covered in mud, so much so that I had to shower with my raincoat on first to get the mud off and then get to my actual body. And yes I took pictures but I won´t put them up here yet ;) (pictures of me covered in mud, NOT showering mind you). I managed to get through the night sweeping and wringing until about 5 am when there was enough light outside to go and put trash bags around the bottle half of my house secured in the mud with bamboo sticks. Peace Corps has really taught me how to be spontaneous and efficient in hard situations, but this is through the throw us in the pool and make us learn how to swim by trying not to drown. They definitely should have trained us to fix our houses and prep them against the rain. But it makes for a great story anyway. 
But the rain has been kind of a blessing in the fact that it has forced me to relax, cook, sleep in, nap and study for the GRE which I have in two weeks. I never would have done that if it hadn´t been raining since I always have a pretty busy schedule. The only down side now that the water has stopped entering my house is that all my clothes are wet and covered in mud and I cant wash them!! Oh how I long for a laundry mat right about now. I dream about putting my clothes in the dryer and them taking them out when they are done and getting that warm, nicely scented experience. So if you have a laundry machine, count yourself lucky people, my underwear has been wet for three days and the only way to dry it is to wear it :). 
In other news, I have started the process of building a classroom out of bottles with my community. We haven´t actually started building yet but we are fund raising and getting the bottles filled by nine different elementary and high school schools in the area. We will need about 3,000 bottles for a 6 meter by 6 meter classroom and we will be using about 500,000 plastic bags to fill our bottles. Its an amazing project and I am so proud of my community members for being so open minded and excited about doing something completely new. I will include a video of what we will be doing in my community with a non profit based in the US called Hug it Forward. If you are interested in supporting my community raise funds (since I am not personally allowed to touch or receive any money being a PC volunteer), feel free to visit their fund raising web page. You will probably be hearing form me in the coming months asking for donations. Please donate, its an amazing project and a really important one.
Here is the link: http://www.stayclassy.org/fundraise?fcid=132423

One year down, one more to go!

So I realize I havent posted in a long time (aka since MAY) but I have been extremely busy and I wanted to post something so here are some photos I wanted to share with you all since photos speak a 1000 words.
My projects right now include working with two womens groups (one making bread which has been a delicious experience, and the other making recycled art items), teaching two english classes four times a week to my 4th, 5th and 6th graders, teaching an awesome art class to my lovely babies in 2nd and 3rd grade once a week, working with an NGO doing recycled art projects with youth in 4 different municipalities (about 95 youth in total), and promoting my bottle school project (for more info on the idea behind what is a boteel school, etc got to hugitforward.com) in different schools across my department. All in all, I am pretty busy in a good way. The new Youth Development group is finally here and the old Youthies just left or are leaving now which means that my group is the veteran group with YD which is a little intimidating and hilarious since we all are just trying to do our best to get by and there really arent any ¨veterans¨ in PC. Every day is a new experience, a new challenge and a new adventure. I love it here!

You Know You´re in the Campo When....

This is a funny compilation of insights by myself and fellow Peace Corps volunteers about living in the countryside, ¨way out there¨ or AKA the Campo. We all love it but there are always funny, memorable moments that we want to cherish forever. They all make the PC experience that more interesting and enjoyable (I think).

1. 1. The bugs are as big as your face

2. 2. Every conversation you have is like having déjà vu

3. 3. That sock that fell off the laundry line is totally still clean

4. 4. When you finally do get to the capital, you find that a trail of dirt has followed you

5. 5. The clean clothes you definitely washed still smell after they dry

6. 6. That 4 year old in your town drinks more coffee than you do

7. 7. When people smile some (or all) of their teeth are gone or silver

8. 8. You guard your peanut butter and oreos in your bedroom like it´s your crack

9. 9. You go into your ¨bathroom¨ only to find its already ocupado…by a chicken

10. 10. You are awoken by roosters like clockwork at 10pm, 2am, 5am, and then whenever they feel like

11. 11. Spiders are not afraid of you

12. 12. You shower only to find, less than five minutes later, dirt on your leg

13. 13. Children participate as riders in the jaripeos (rodeos)

14. 14. Yes you can make coffee out of corn

15. 15. You proudly tell your friends that you can cut open a coconut all by yourself with a machete (I can!!!)

16. 16. You look up from your reading to find your grandma walking by with an upside-down dead chicken dripping blood and it doesn’t seem that weird

17. 17. Your new favorite things to do in the morning are sweep and mop your bedroom and then go wash your clothes by hand

18. 18. You gasp when tomatoes are more expensive than diez por $1 (or 10 for a $1)

19. 19. Pues, Nombre, and Cabal have become key vocab words in your every day conversations (study these before you come to visit)

20. 20. Your neighbor brings over her live trapped mice to feed to your cats (circle of life and better than rat poison in my opinion)

Hope that didn´t scar anyone. Its a wonderful ride here in El Salvador and every day I think to myself how lucky I am to live here in this beautiful country with these amazing people I work with every day. I get paid to play with kids, gossip with old women, visit houses to play with babies and learn a lot about the real world and what its like for people to live in it. Makes me think sometimes that the US isnt really all that real at all. Or if it is, I think I prefer it here more.

Update on life here

Since I havent updated my blog since who knows when, I thought I would type up a Little update while my pictures load on facebook! I am now in my 7^th month, going on 8 months here in El Salvador with PC and it has been a wild ride. I am working on several project that involve the environment, one of which I am really excited about: bottle schools. Peace Corps Volunteers in Guatemala have been making classrooms out of cement columns, chicken wire and plastic bottles stuffed with plastic bags. So I am trying to break ground here in El Salvador by doing one of the first bottle schools here in the country. This classroom would be for 7^th grade (which we are also trying to get a teacher for) and will use about 2,00 bottles and about 300,000 plastic bags. It’s a pretty amazing idea and I can´t believe that it isn’t more popular around here and especially in the states. These buildings have been tested by engineers and are certifiably earthquake safe, which is a huge deal in a country the size of Massachusetts that has about 22 volcanoes. We have been gathering bottles in the community by doing trash pickups and I am doing a bottle drive at the school, which if we can collect and stuff 2,000 2.5L bottles I will be buying pizza hut for the kids, which is a big deal here. I will be posting pictures as the process continues.

I have also finished my adobe house and started a garden, protected by some heavy duty chicken wire to keep all the chickens from devouring my pretty flowers. It’s a nice little one room house that houses my bed, all my stuff, and my kitchen. I finally have my own pila where I wash my clothes and dishes. Basically life is good, my English classes are going well and its almost the rainy season which means that the rains will make the heat go away (I hope). I still need to put up gutters around my house so it doesn’t get washed away in the rain.

I had an environmental festival last week and it went REALLY well, I was even surprised at how well it went. We had a three fold agenda starting with a costume competition with the kids where they had to make costumes using either all natural OR recycled materials. I had 6 kids participate which was a huge number considering I was expecting only 3. The kids and their parents were so creative, it blew me away. After we crowned the king, queen, princesses, and princes of the environment, my fellow PC volunteers put on a play about recycling which my community LOVED. Finally, we finished off the day with an art class where about 30 kids got to make earrings using plastic chip bags as the main earring piece and it went super smoothly thanks to some girls who were visiting me through this organization called the Traveling School (its so cool, look it up!).

Enjoy the pictures and thanks for reading!

Art Day with the kids using recycled paper to make beads

Waterfall walk with my school!

Environmental festival making earrings using chip bags

Costume contest

Teaching English to Children and Other Fun Pastimes

So these past two weeks I have spent starting up various classes with the kids in my school. Since my school only goes up to 6^th grade, I kind of like to think that I have to be a little more creative than most Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) when it comes to making classes and doing things with my kids. I am the only PCV who is in my Youth Development group with a school that doesn’t go up to 9^th grade or high school. Luckily, my community made such a good impression that PC decided to make an exception and give them a PCV. I love my school. It is really small, only about 150 kids, and they are all at an age that I LOVE working with. They are old enough to do things like English and computer classes but not too old that they think I am too uncool to work with. I find that I am more comfortable with 6^th graders than I may ever be with El Salvadorean teens (or any teens for that matter). I am not hip or cool. I don’t wear makeup and tight clothes and accessories. The farthest I have ever gone in the ¨getting ready¨ department has been to put on some tasteful earrings. Women here tell me all the time that I look frumpy and need to either cut my hair or start wearing makeup or I´ll never find a husband. Little do they know that that is exactly what I want! Well, at least that’s what I want while I am in PC El Salvador. We PC women often joke that even if we wore burkas we would get cat called (or piropos) and it’s probably true as long as they could see some white skin or light colored hair. Sometimes in the morning to get milk for my tea from my neighbors cow I will be crossing the street in my pajamas, hair in total disarray, glasses on and still get someone to whistle at me in a passing truck. Sometimes it makes me feel kind of good, most of the time it just makes my blood boil.

ANYway, back on topic: So I have started English, computer, art and environment classes at my school the past two weeks. Most of the classes went fairly well although I have learned never to leave a stapler alone with a group of first graders. I have gone over colors, What is Your Name? My Name is…., Hello, Goodbye, Thank you, How Are You? I am Fine. And we have played twister which was interesting and way too complicated. I am really excited to do the Hokey pokey when we get around to body parts. My art classes have been isolated to making stuffed paper fish that the kids got to color and hang in the classroom window. It was a big hit although many kids here are still learning to ¨free color¨ so it was good to see them branch out from the typical all blue fish to ones with lots of colors. What do I mean by ¨free color¨ you may ask? It means that when you go to a group of kids in El Salvador (or a lot of countries outside Europe, the US, etc, and tell them to draw whatever they want, they look at you with a dazed, overwhelmed expression. Even with the fish, kids were asking me how many colors they could use and whether they had to draw the fish with vertical or horizontal lines. I just gave them my favorite Spanish phrase lo que sea (whatever). Computer classes have been a losing battle, not because of the students ironically but because of the computers. We technically have 4 but only two work. Only after today, we are now down to one. I don’t know what this country does to computers but it is not kind to them. Must be all the heat and dust. Environmental ed is going fairly well but it’s hard to start from zero and work your way up. We did have a great game of blob tag as a metaphor for how water washes away all trash and other contaminants on the street or near river banks. Other than that, I still visit houses (there has recently been a new addition to my neighbor´s house and I love visiting and holding the tiny baby), walk every morning and have even started running. I am contemplating trying to ride my host dad´s horses but I really don’t want to end up with a cast in El Salvador again. Overall, life is good although the hottest month of all is approaching in March so I may just spend a lot of time up North visiting my friend Nacho in Apaneca where it is nice and cold.

First Womens Group Meeting!

Last Saturday I had my very first official women´s group meeting where I taught a group of 8 women from my community how to monederos (or change purses) out of plastic chip bags. Trash is a major problem everywhere in the world and no less so in my site. People either throw trash onto the ground or they collect it and burn it. Recycling is basically unheard of although there are some NGOs in my pueblo that are trying to focus on environmental education and recycling programs in the schools. So since there are tons of chip bags of every color imaginable, it makes it super easy for people to do recycled art. Recycled art is my new passion. It´s easy, cheap or free to make since you can basically pick your materials off the street and it´s great for the environment. I have made a couple of change purses and one clutch (women´s big wallet) out of churro bags as we call them here and everyone I have showed them to wants to buy one. So hopefully my women´s group will also be able to sell all the monederos we make. My womens group is small, about 8 women altogether and sometimes they bring their kids as well. They started off the group wanting to start a savings account of sorts and it has turned into a twice monthly get together for them to have some time away from their husbands and do fun things together. They are of all ages, one women being almost 80 years old and another member is a younger girl, probably no older than 18 with a kid of her own. They also save a lot of money over the year, putting in about $1 every 15 days and they don’t touch the money until the year is over. The first meeting I went to, just as a guest, they were splitting up the funds for the year and each woman had saved over $20. They also have an emergency fund that they put $.20 into every meeting which they can use if someone in the community or in their group gets sick, etc. They are a really fun group to hang out with. They love to joke around and make things together. The monederos were a big hit and the next meeting we will be putting together a gift basket that we are selling raffle tickets for for Valentine´s Day in order to raise enough money to buy materials to make shampoo next. It felt really awesome to be able to teach them how to do something so basic and fun so that they can make more money for their group and eventually for each other as well. I can´t wait to make shampoo with them and start selling it in the community. Later we will be making jewelry at one meeting and bread at the next. Usually I enjoy hanging out with younger kids, youth and in the states I have a lot of guy friends. Being in El Salvador has been the first time that I have really spent so much quality time with women and it´s actually really fun. When they are just together in their own little group, they open up a lot more and you get to see them more as the individuals they are instead of their husband´s wives, as society tends to define all women here (in my community) from the time they are born.