From Bed Sharing to Queen Sized Bed

Sooooo I´m here. In Morazan. The past 5 days have been hectic and a blur...kinda. Some vivid moments. Such as my first experience in an outdoor latrine without toilet paper. Or sleeping on what is best known as a cardboard box bed in a dirt floor house. But nonetheless, it has all been amazing.

I arrived here Saturday evening after a very long night and goodbye party with all the volunteers, a sad morning of goodbyes and a very very very long 5 hour bus ride from the capital to my small rural town in Morazan.

I met my 2 counterparts, amazing ladies who I will be working along side for the next 2 years. Nina Dora is this little but extremely independent and strong lady who owns a store in front of her house. I crashed at her place the first 2 nights. I was welcomed by a group of men playing guitars out front, singing to me. I even sang along to Guantanamera. It was pretty awesome. ... Until they all got drunk. Being a drunk, or bolo, as they would say here, is kinda common. You either are a drunk. Or you dont drink. Hence, I won´t be drinking for the next 2 years. One beer can quickly tarnish your reputation. And even so, chambre, or gossip, spreads very quickly here. Anyway, I love my first counterpart because when the bolos say something inappropriate to me she gives them the dirtiest looks. Or if I say ¨buenas¨to someone and they dont respond she says ¨SHE SAID buenas¨. shes awesome.

Those nights I shared the house with my counter part, her daugher, her grand daughters and 2 friends. The little girl even climbed into bed with me. Thats called having confianza. It means you have a good relationships pretty much. I guess thats a good thing, but I wouldnt have minded sleeping alone.... if you don´t count the giant cockroaches next to my head. Although I did wake up to the girl gone and just her diaper on my pillow.........

The next night I stayed with my other counterpart. Its a run for the money which one I like more. This lady is just adorable. Shes a little older and also very strong but a little gentler. She has outlived 2 husbands and 4 children. Many of whom died in the war. Please read about it.

Nina Otinia is very poor and lives in a mud hut dirt floor tiny house with her daughter and grand son. She is STILL fighting to get me to live with her even though I have my own house. She LOVES volunteers, company and sharing her awesomeness with people. She´s not happy I moved into a house thats a little farther away, but she told me that whatever makes me happy. She even got upset when I slept at my other counterparts house. She said ¨nina dora has more money and better food, but I have a lot of heart to give¨. I love her already. There is a voluteer in the town nearby who is finishing his 2 years of service next week so we had a goodbye lunch for him at her house. She borrowed plates and a table from the neighbor and even made us chicken. I felt bad eating it because she usually just has beans and eggs and that food is precious to her. But she was so happy to share. She is really amazing. It would be more offensive not to eat it.

Sooo finally, I moved into my own house. Its a cute little cement block tin roof 2 room house on a little hill. It has complementary orange borders and green grouting... bars on windows and metal doors so I feel safe. No window panes, but I think only spiders, rats and bats can get through. I spent a good 4 hours sweeping it today, since the polvo, or dust i guess, is sooooooo dominant in this town. But besides for that, its absolutely beautiful. As I round the corner, I have an amazing view of the mountains. I´m a 2 foot walk from the futbol field and 20 mins from a lovely little waterfall. Of which I bathed in on Sunday.

My house has an outdoor latrine, but its never been used so its pretty nice still. I even have a plastic seat and urinal in there. Unfortunately, the cell service is bad and I have no bathing area...but My landlord is awesome and he said he will bulid me one outside soon. He also brought me a queen sized bed, fridge and table my first day. Kinda sweet. Kinda not peace corps... but hey, I pee outside.

My next goals are: get dog. buy bird. and fix up house. I have lots of shopping to do and desperately need somewhere to put my clothes. and clean them. I wore the same outfit for 2 days and Nina Dora was like ¨are you gonna change¨. i felt bad. The reason was, I was meeting her circulo.

She works with an NGO called Intervida. She teaches classes to illiterate adults, she works with children, environmental classes, sports groups, etc. shes pretty awesome and I´m excited I´ll get to work with them and her.

The next 2 months are all about getting confianza with the town. Everyone has been really excited to meet me for the most part so I´m excited. Building relationships is the most important part to having a successful service here. Plus, the better I know the people, the better I´ll know they´re needs and wants and so I can work with them to achieve them. I´m excited.

Right now I´m tired and kinda excited to get back to my place and relax a little. I had a long day thinking in spanish, but I actually got most of my words out today. Some days are better than others...

Tomorrow we have our Morazan Mafia meeting. All the volunteers in the deparment of Morazan will get together for lunch, to discuss ideas and relax a little. I´m excited for it. I get to reunite with my buddies Daniel and KC from training, my new fried Brian who has been a big help in the transition, David who is leaving my site but has also been amazing, and lots of others.

I love and miss everyone from home! If there´s anything you want to hear about, post a comment or email me or facebook.

From Aspirante to Voluntaria

Today is our last day as trainees. Tomorrow afternoon we have our Swearing In ceremony at the US Embassy in San Salvador. In the morning I will meet my 2 female counterparts who will be traveling by bus to meet me in the city. I'm really excited. Then we have a big party to celebrate...and try not to be hungover when we leave in the morning for our sites. Hopefully I'm not since I have about a 5 hour bus journey to manage. Anndd supposedly I'm supposed to bring my luggage myself ... which will be a disaster if the case since I'm pretty sure they both weigh 100lbs. And that's after I removed 1/2 my clothing and asked my host mom to guard it for me until I can come back and get it.

Packing last night was even harder than packing to come down here. I didn't realize how much stuff I had accumulated between the purchases at the market and 4 packages I have received since being here. I probably shoudn't have bought the ceramic pot or giant painting...but I couldn't resist.

So we will be in our new sites from March 27 to June 1. Tentatively. And then we return here to San Vicente for technical training for 3 weeks. We are basically building relationships in our community for 2 months and assessing the needs and then come back here to learn more.

There are many volunteers who live in Morazan around neighboring areas so I should be able to see them when needed. But I will be the only one in my little canton. I think life will be busy at first meeting everyone and stumbling through spanish but I will write about what my site is like when things calm down. Plus we're showing up there the week of Semana Santa so it's gonna be kinda hectic.

Thanks for all the comments :) I get excited to read them. Amanda, I liked the chips story. I laughed out loud when I read it. I remember that.... I think there was even dip involved. I don't know whats worse, that you were sleeping in my bed or that I came home at 3am and was eating at that time.... I love you and I miss you sooo much.

And that goes for everyone. xoxo

Weekend in San Salvador

Sooo, I just wanted to start by saying I have a typo in my last entry that says "here" instead of "hear" and it bothered me...but I'm blaming it on trying to think in 2 different languages.

That being said, I'm a little frustrated on how much trouble I'm still having with the Spanish. When I first arrived, I tested as an Intermediate Low Level and now I'm Intermediate Mid. I guess thats good that I rose a level but I would have liked to be high.....But now that I'm moving and will be without any other gringos, I'm hoping my language skills will improve fast.

Anyway, Saturday we had our Family Fiesta. All of the volunteers' host families came to our training center for a day of fun activities. It was a last goodbye and thank you for all of the help they provided during these 2 months of training. My Mom and 2 brothers came and I think they had fun...although Gerardo was torturing me a little as usual.

After the party we headed to San Salv where we did a little shopping. I needed a dress for Swearing In. Our "graduation" ceremony is held Friday in the US Embassy so we need to look all perty. Then we all headed out for the night...our SECOND night of fun since we've been here :D We found a really awesome bar that had a Red Hot Chili Peppers cover band and they were really good. It was a fun time. But as I'm usually in bed and asleep by 9 and we were out until 2 ish... I was exhausted. Not to mention I woke up at 5:30 because we were playing our soccer game at 7.

That brings me to the games. It was awesome. We got to play in The National Futbol Stadium- Cuscutlan. It's known as the best stadium in Central America and it was really really cool that we got to play in it. It was really fun and beautiful. We played against JICA, the Japanese 'peace corps' and it was cool to meet them too. I had a lot of fun playing, even if on 2 hours of sleep, and ended the day with a nice sun burn. Now I'm home and exhausted and a little melancholy about the fact that I only have 4 nights left here.

Time has really flown. And while I'm itching to get to my site, I can't believe how much has happened and how much I've been through already. I've been here for 2 months and it feels like yesterday that I was crying at the airport. I actually had a dream the other night that I hadn't left yet and I woke up really confused as to where I was. I think I'm a little homesick... I dont think that part will ever get easier. But I'm having an amazing amazing time.


Things I've Grown to Love
-Cold Showers
-Refried Beans
-Fried Platanos
-My dog (with or without fleas)
-Telenovelas
-Sweating
-Soccer on a dirt field

Things I Am Now Able to Deal With
-Spiders and Ants, everywhere and in my room
-Sweating
-Packed Chicken Buses
-Rats on my roof and chickens and dogs squawking at all hours of the night
-Walking through cow poop on the street

Things that Still Aren't My Fav
-Hand Washing Clothes
-Scorpions in my room
-Really slow internet, esp when posting pics
-Piropos (cat calls)
-Dirty feet all the time
-People asking "how much did that cost" for everything you own/buy
-Sweating
-Clowns coming on the buses
-The Predominance of Gangs

Another Goodbye

We found out yesterday where we will be living for the next two years. My site is in northern Morazan, which is the North Eastern region of El Salvador. It's arguably the friendlist, safest, most beautiful. Its about 30 mins south of Perquin which is a big tourist spot.

I am going to have my own house for the first 2 months and then move to a new (bigger :) ) house after that. The issue is the bigger house doesn't have electricity yet but I can talk to the landlord and try to get him to hook it up for a decent price. That's where my excellence of the spanish language is giong to have to kick in...

The first house is going to be nice too but has a latrine. I guess I should suffer somewhat... And my house will be full furnished...with 1 bed. The rest is up to me :/ Hopefully my neighborhas a pick-up to help me get some stuff.

My canton will be small and dusty but apparently with beautiful views and is close to the cleanest river in El Salv, accompanied by some waterfalls as well. And I plan on buying a puppy asap.

We move next Friday so post some questions about what you want to here about at my new site! Not sure of my internet access yet, but I believe there's a cafe in the pueblo 30 min bus ride from my house :)

Rain

It actually rained last night for the first time since we´ve been here. And the expression "raining cats and dogs" made sense to me for the first time. If the rats on the roof didn´t make enough sound, hail falling on a tin roof is sure to wake you up. I found myself dreaming about the rain storms and landslides that happened this past november. Wiped out a lot of the neighboring communities and a few volunteers actually lost their host family and-or host family houses. The communities we are in are at the base of a volcano and when the rain comes it comes hard. It causes landslides and large boulders and mud destroys much of the area below, or whatever is in the path. In November, it rained for 4 hours one night and killed 200-300 people. Its really sad. Some people live in houses just made of mud and they cant hold up in the storms. It´s hard to imagine the fear people live in. My host mom said that she is afraid for her children to move back into my room when I move out because it is not attached to her room. If another bad storm comes, she wants to make sure she can get to them quickly...

A Long Day

I just got back from a shower, and yet am still sweating. At about 8:45pm, I decided it was getting late and headed for the shower. I stepped over Black, sleeping on his back as always, and realized that I forgot my clothes were still on the line outside. Even though they were still not dry (the sun was not out much today but you would never know it from the way I was sweating) I brought them in for fear of theft. Not that they are worth anything, but the thought of scrubbing the crap out of them on a rock for 3 hours at 6am this morning, only to have them stolen would really kill me. So when I looked up to pull them down, I saw a beautiful clear sky full of stars. It was really pretty and so peaceful...that it inspired me to blog. This internet modem card thing is pretty useful. Its $1 an hour or $2.50 for the day and it picks up internet whereever there is cell service pretty much. Its not bad... when it decides to work...and when it decides to work at a decent speed.

So after lava ropa -ing this morning, we had our Garbage Cleanup Campaign around the park and church with the kids at 8am. About 12 showed up. After that we headed to the soccer field, played, got stung by bees, offered free refreshments to the kids for cleaning up (of which my littlest brother decided to pour on the heads of the others) and then went for a swim in the river. It was about 3.5 ft deep with large rocks on both sides that were not visible in the murky, dirty, polluted and very soapy water from the people washing clothes. So of course it was perfect for teenage boys to be doing back flips into. I was semi-petrified the entire time. But as I got used to the plunging bodies, I gave in to the chicken fights. And not to toot my own horn but I took some skinny little 14 yr olds down. I also won the "how far can you swim under water (into rocks) holding your breath" race. I guess I should mention most Salvadorans can't swim...

After that I decided to take the bus to town to buy some soccer socks and get ice cream. My mom told me the socks cost $1 but the first place I found offered them for $3.50 and I was too sweaty to really care at that point. (Maybe I should have named this blog "Sweating".) Anyway, I was happy when I got them down to $2. But then they offered me a Salvadoran soccer jersey and of course I thought I needed one so I got that too for $8...worth $5. Okay I'm gonna practice bargaining. But the point of that is that Peace Corps had a sign-up to play JICA (the Japanese volunteer group comparable to PC) in the National Football Stadium in San Salv this weekend. So I signed up and am really excited to play. The stadium is supposed to be awesome and people are coming to watch and all. It costs una cora if you wanna come see us. Plus we get to spend Sat night in the capital city. Our 2nd night out. Trainings weak. But it seems like its gonna be a great weekend.

After getting ripped off, I went to the ice cream store we discovered on Friday and that I am now addicted to. Its $2.50 for a two scoop cone with sprinkles: thats the equivalent of about 7 choco bananas, 10 bus rides to town, a day of internet, 2 liquados, 8 pupusas or 2.5 pairs of socks if you are not a dumb gringa, but it was worth every penny. and I am definitely getting it again tomorrow. The past 2 times they have been out of coffee flavor but carmelo and chocolate were equally delicious...I imagine.

As soon as I walked in the door, my oldest bro was ready to head back to the soccer field. I was so tired, but went. My mom came for the first time. And fell about 10 mins into playing. It happens all the time on the rock dusty and dung covered field but I felt bad for her.

That brings me to where I am now. Sitting in my room sweating with some relaxing music playing. On the internet for a little. Paying a days worth but falling asleep already. And have class 8-5 tomorrow as usual. It's hard to imagine the rainy season since we haven't seen a drop yet. And I heard from another volunteer that the 3rd earthquake has occurred since we've been here and I have yet to actually feel one. I guess that's a good thing.

Thinking of everyone at home, can't wait to read some more letters soon. I have a little over 2 weeks left here until I move out on my own. I got some info about what my site will probably be like for the next 2 years. I've been told I will NOT have a host family (my own place, come party), I will be in a semi-mountainous area with a pretty view and close to some waterfalls, I will have a latrine and water but un-reliable electricity (for now). There is a strong women's group in the canton, it is very rural and very dusty. A canton is basically a rural place with just houses and possible a small soda shop or 2. The closest pueblo ( a small town basically) is over an hour walk or 30 mins by bus and a volunteer currently lives there but is moving back to the US soon. I found out Thurs the exact details so I will post then.

Write me! Send me stuff! I miss you guys and always thinking of home.

xoxo Jaime

Choco Bananas

Lunch break. And after eating lunch I also decided to go to the street vendors for a Choco Bananas. If there is one thing Salvadorans have perfected, its covering a banana in chocolate, sesame see sprinkles, nuts and most importantly, coco krispies. They never fail. After that I thought I should get a Liquado. aka a Smoothie. Papaya. Also delicious. But the dirty ice and milk may get to me at a later date. Worth it for now. crap speak of the devil I just spilled the liquado onto the keyboard in the internet cafe. Putting a smoothie in a plastic bag with a straw is one thing not perfect about here.

Another great thing about El Salvador is [Hasta Que El Dinero Nos Separe. Whenever you are feeling down, this telenovela is always there to cheer you up. Great acting.

Other than that, we went to the Candelaria yesterday which was really cool. This is a place in the fields where they process sugar cane. Its amazing how much of it there is and the process was so cool to see. Extremely hot with the fires and burning and squeezing and mixing but none of the workers looked like they were complaining. We even got to stick our fingers in and grab some. It kinda felt like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to me.

Back to Training. 3 Weeks to go until we Move to our sites!

La Playa

We had our Free Overnight weekend this past weekend...and we went to the beach. Costa Del Sol. What a perfect name since we enjoyed the most perfect sunset on the beach. It was beautiful.

We had a cute little hotel on the beach where we squeezed 13 people into 5 beds...well I slept on a lounge chair. And some others in hammocks. It was great to finally relax, socialize, get a tan and have 2 full free days to ourselves. We´ve been so busy with training.

3 weeks left of it and then we´re off to our respective sites. We´ll see what that brings :) Will try to get some more photos up soon!

xoxo