Sunday, November 27, 2011

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