Happy Birthday Mom!

This week has been my hardest yet down here. For one thing, it´s my Mom´s 50th Birthday and I´m not there to spend it with her. You never really appreciate things until they´re not right there with you do you? I wish I had spent more time with her while I was home. Happy Birthday Mom. I love you. I miss you every day. I read your letter all the time, and cry everytime.

Every single person that meets me down here asks to see the picture of you. ¨Y la foto de su mama?¨ You´re more important here that I am! They say you look like a doll. They can´t believe how young you look. And how beautiful you are. You stole all my thunder! And they haven´t even met you. They haven´t laughed at your corny jokes or eaten your special chicken dish. They haven´t seen you play softball or go bowling. They didn´t see you rub my back at night when I would cry about leg pains. They don´t know that the reason I don´t mind sweeping my house everyday is because I think about how you told me ¨its good exercise¨. They know you´re beautiful, but they don´t even know how special you are.

I hope you have a really good day and I hope that lots of happiness always finds you. I love you mommy.

The other reason is because I thought my dog was dead. 2 nights ago, he started vomiting. He tried to walk to the door, but fell. He was shaking, even his head was trembling. He wouldn´t eat or drink. He was just lying there, crapping himself. I thought for sure he would die. An hour into his seizure, a scorpion ran by on the floor. As I frantically tried to kick it away from Barro without getting stung myself, in sandals half falling off, since Barro had eaten the strap of one, I wondered if maybe he had gotten stung. Or maybe it was something he ate. WHY does he have to eat poop, balloons, leaves, bugs, FROGS? Or maybe he had eaten ant poision. I don´t know. But I was hysterically crying watching him suffer. There was no vet, let alone a person down here than actually CARED about animals. So I wrapped him in a blanket and sat on the floor with him (and his falling feces) on my lap, crying my eyes out on the cement floor. After 2 hours of desolation, I used my last 10 cents of saldo on my phone, and called my counterpart. In the middle of the night, she came over with her granddaughter who shortly fell asleep in my hammock. It was really nice of her to come, and I was really glad for the comfort of company. Unfortunately, she told me Barro had ¨Ojo¨. A sickness only cured by witch doctors. I was NOT allowed to bring him to the AgroServicio aka ¨vet¨. Instead, she took a chicken egg, rubbed it all over his head and body. Gave him a bath in alcohol covered leaves that made him smell really bad and attracteed A LOT of bugs. And told me to crack the egg, dig a hole outside, and bury it. For the disease was now out of his system and in the egg.

I don´t exactly believe that the chicken egg saved Barros life. But 2 days later, he can walk again, is not vomiting, ate some food this morning (still has a rancid lime green diarrea) and is alive. I hope that he will be okay. And now he will be staying on a tight leash. It was hard to think I was losing my best friend and roomate here. As big of a pain in the ass he is, I love him.

The other reasons, are the normal homesickness. I miss life back home. I want to share stories with Danielle, probably about guys or going out, laughing on the couch. Maybe looking in the mirror about whose stomach is fatter. Are you still detoxing? I want to watch Christina from across the rooming, typing on her computer. So concentrated that she can´t hear me talking to her. I want to help her get ready for college. Tell her about my experiences and get excited with her about how much fun she will have. Are you sure you wanna go to Maryland and not Florida? I want to hug Amanda...I want her to be a baby again when I would rock her to sleep on the blue chair or make her say bad words with my friends. Oops. Or at least I want to watch her grow up. 7th grade! Thats when everything starts getting bad... I had my first boyfriend...but we didn´t hug til 8th grade dont worry. I DONT wanna be there to help with math, but I DO wanna be there to see your 100s! Not even kidding, Justin Bieber is on in the Internet Cafe right now! I wanna be watching him on YouTube with you in my room :( I want to be with my Dad, eating strawberrys that he has cut the stems off of for me. Or sitting on the couch while he cooks me eggs and then watching Goodfellas for the 70th time together. I want to do situps on the floor with my Mom. Go grocery shopping with her and be really excited for juice on sale but spending way too much on Warm Delights and Chocolate Chip Cookies and then hiding them in unsuspecting places in the house. I want to sit in Grams house, watching her cook dinner, smelling the sweet tomato sauce, and afterwards re using the tinfoil for the 15th time. I want to be with my family.

But I´m building a family here. I have started an Artesania group. A guy in town makes really awesome jewelry out of natural seeds that grow here and he wants to teach people. I am in contact with an organization to request materials or funds for our group. Once everyone can make stuff, we are going to try to sell them at tourist fairs or larger pueblos. People are really excited about it. We have a group learning to make hammocks. Including me. Does anyone at home realize how comfortable these things are? I haven´t been to a house yet that doesn´t have one down here. Anyone want one at home? I am also going to give art, gym/yoga and english classes at the school. I´ve been observing classes this week at 2 schools the children attend here. And I´m helping teach adults reading, writing and general education. It´s nice now to walk through the community and hear these people, who I call friends and hope to call family soon, say Hola Nina Jaime, instead of stare and whisper Gringa, like they did before. It also helps playing soccer on the guys team every Sunday, but I´m pretty sure the group of teenaged guys would have accepted me before I did that anyway...

And I just read an email from our Peace Corps Country Director here. In it was a section about rebuilding the Guinea program. It made me think about how different things would have been if I actually ended up there. I was told I would have contact with home once a month. No water. No electricity. FRENCH with a local dialect. Learning 2 languages! A desert with hardly ever rain. The ivory coast. Could I have done it? I don´t know. Maybe there´s a reason I ended up here. But maybe I could have. Everything is about your attitude. It´s all in your mindset. You can do anything you really put your mind to. And I´ve learned here that its not about whether you have a mud hut or house of cement blocks. Its not hard to take bucket baths and you get withstand eating beans everyday. What matters is people and relationships. I could have survived Peace Corps Guinea. Maybe I would have turned out more like Bear Grylls, than the slightly less high maintenance form of myself that Ive become... but I think I could have done it with the help of the people of Guinea around. I´ve been asked how to change the world? Is it possible... I don´t know. But what´s the hurt in trying. HOW is the question. For me, this is it- people. Loving people. Seeing the beauty in everyday, even if it means finding it. Appreciating what you have, even though it may be less than others, or not much at all. Doing things that make others happy... and will... without a doubt, make you happier in return. Holding the door for someone. Saying hello, or ¨Salu¨ to people who pass by. Maybe you can afford to give back in bigger ways. Do things with good intentions. Follow your dreams- its one of the HARDEST things to do. But if you do what makes you happy, it will rub off on others. Think that we were all born the same, we all want to be happy, and we all deserve to be happy. So have compassion. Don´t let little things make you angry, and don´t be angry at other people. It does nothing for yourself. Guinea would be hard place to live. But people there deserve to be happy...and people there are just as sweet as the people here in El Salvador. So as much as I miss home, I will keep appreciating the little things here. The greenish blue bird that sat on my tree this morning, singing me a morning tune. The baby horse that Barro and I watch frolick behind his mama...never 3 steps away. The easy access to freshly fallen mangos, papayas and avocados. Doing yogo infront of the misty mountains in the morning. Hugs from little kids I barely know and even kisses on the cheek. Living Life.