Well that was interesting

As I try for the thousandth time to upload pics using a slow Net cafe computer, I figured I'd write about Christmas here.

Christmas in El Salvador is December 24. A volunteer I know wrote "Navidad" on her calendar on December 25 and was told by Salvadorans to change it because it was wrong. But nothing much happens until the evening of the 24. During the day, everyone works. I personally spent all that morning washing my clothes by hand.

At night is when the fun begins. And by fun, I mean 5-hour church vigil. In hte week leading up to Christmas, I had gone from dreading this to mildly interested. After all, my community counterpart/host family member was going to sing, and the church is the nice big one with the pineapple on top, and I was curious. Plus, sitting through church here (something I do whenever I am invited so I don't offend people) is kind of relaxing. I just zone the priest out and plan the next day in my head or something.

Before church, I was invited to another family's house to eat panes rellenos, or big sandwiches stuffed with warm chicken and vegetables. They were delicious. I had been told we were going to church afterwards, but at the last minute, no one went. I was actually kind of nervous because I had told the whole family I would go but didn't want to walk the 30 minutes alone in the dark. So it was that I accidentally missed 5-hour church.

Instead, I went to a dance. Going dancing here is not as much fun as it sounds because 1) all the dances are the same, 2) I can barely dance to any of them, and 3) I have to stay sober. Luckily, the dance was next door to my house, so I was able to duck out after 2 hours, no harm no foul. Tonight there is another dance much farther away...we'll see if I go to that one.

Real Christmas, the next day, was even more fun and even more strange. I woke up and finally opened the seriously great packages from my mom, which included a less great student loan statement (I'm sorry you're bankrupt, Citibank, but stop pretending I didn't send you that deferment form!) and the fall issue of TERP magazine, which I was suprised to find I was in. Look for the photo of the journalism school groundbreaking. I did NOT sign up for that to follow me here.

Then I washed clothes by hand for two more hours. Ah, Peace Corps.

During the day, I was annoyed by children running in and begging for my gifts, so I eventually had to hide them. Then the dance committee man to whom I lent the community center key came over drunk and babbling about said key. A member of the family had to kick him out of my house. Finally, I got the key back, ate a lovely chicken dinner with the family and watched the community Christmas pageant for the thousandth time when it came to our house. The pageant people have invited me to come with them on their little tours every day for a week, and I could never figure out why they were so disappointed that I only went twice. Until I remembered all the random people I don't even know begging for me to take their pictures and then asking me when they will get to hold a copy in their hands. In short, I am the town digital camera, and everyone expects me to print all the photos even though they're 55 cents a pop, which is a fortune here. And when I don't show up to an event, there are no photos. This makes me very popular and very irritated.

I feel like a terrible person when I complain that people just want my things all the time: my money (yes, I have been asked for loans already), my Christmas presents, my photographs, my food, the fuel-saving stoves I am actually trying to build for the community but can't do overnight. I always thought I was a generous person at heart, but one time I gave two of the family's kids chocolate and now there are children at my house AT ALL TIMES begging for candy. This is just one example for the if-you-give-a-mouse-a-cookie mentality I encounter every day here. It's made me go the other way and instinctively not give anything away, ever. And isn't the Peace Corps supposed to make me a better person?

I don't mean to sound too negative, because I really have had a great week. So I'm going to shut up now and give you some photos, because it didn't work on Facebook after all and it will not cost me 55 cents.

This is Hernan, the youth group president, and his sister Maricela as we go on the impromptu hike/camping trip I mentioned earlier.

Here are Will, Megan and Nick in front of the pineapple church in my pueblo. See the pineapple? See? Isn't that funny??


One of many photos of the Christmas pageant that featured pyrotechnics for the Devil and lots of off-key singing.

More to come on Facebook when computers work in the city of Zacatecoluca. Paz, amor y prospero año nuevo a todos.

Feliz Navidad

to everyone. This is probably the last time I'll blog until after Christmas, so just throwing that out there.

I am finally feeling in the Christmas spirit, something that back home usually starts for me in October. But I'm here in the capital again today (what a site-negligent volunteer I am!) celebrating with some friends. So far it has just involved eating a lot of junk food, buying rum and using the Internet. Thank God for the holidays.

The city is packed, unsurprisingly -- it's the last Saturday before Christmas. The bus to the mall took 45 minutes, the mall was chaos, and I was so happy. In my rural site, Christmas is much more religious than commercial. It was nice to get a taste of commercialism and see Santa Claus and a big Christmas tree in a mall, and every store decorated with sales. I am officially too materialistic for Peace Corps.

We might see a movie here tonight for the first time. I have no idea what movies even exist anymore. My dear friend Emily back home pointed out to me that it's Oscar season. I miss rushing to see all the indie flicks and Best Picture nominees so I can enter Oscar pools. Although Emily always wins them ;-)

The restaurant where I ate breakfast today had the American Saturday morning cartoons. A Christmas Mickey Mouse show and a Christmas Tom & Jerry. I don't even think I had ever seen them in English. But everything is funnier in Spanish. It was funny because the morals of the episodes were that Christmas is about kindness and generosity. But here, Christmas isn't about those things. It's just about Jesus.

So that's my Christmas in the city. In a week or so you'll hear all about my Christmas in the country.

Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea.

Kidnapped?

The following story is typical to the Peace Corps.

Yesterday, I was finally eating a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup in the comfort of my home when Maricela, one of the youth in my community, dropped by and asked if I was free to hike down to the river "tomorrow."

No, I said, I have to go to the capital tomorrow.

What about tonight? she asked.

Sure, I said, I can go tonight.

I met up with Hernan, her brother, and their friend Anibal at 3:30 p.m. and we started walking. On the way, we stopped by Hernan and Maricela's house.

When will you be back? their dad asked.

Tomorrow, Hernan said.

My mouth dropped open. How could they forget to tell me an all-important sentence like, Hey, we're spending the night?

I can't do this, I said. I have to be on a bus at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow.

Eventually I was convinced to continue with them and book it out of there at first light. I had no toothbrush or change of clothes, but I was more worried about things like, where will we sleep? And, will it be cold? I had to call my host family and tell them that this wasn't the quick hike I thought it would be. I resisted saying I had been kidnapped, please send money.

We hiked down to the river, a pretty easy 45 minutes except for the crossing where there was no bridge or stones (Hernan ended up carrying me across.) When we got to our campsite, which was on land owned by Anibal's family, we cooked corn, bananas and other vegetables that were growing nearby (boiled bananas are the best food ever.) Everyone had planned on bathing in the river, but only Maricela ended up doing so because it was pitch dark.

In answer to my sleeping question, we slept in hammocks and yes, it was cold. It was so cold that I couldn't sleep at all. At 12:30 a.m. I left my hammock and decided to sleep on a corn sack on the ground near the fire. Maricela, cold as well, ended up spooning me.

At some point, about a dozen mosquitos bit me through my pants, but other than that and the cold, it was actually a fun night.

I set my alarm for 5 a.m. the next day. When it went off, it was still dark, so we slept a half hour more. Then I made everybody get up, even though it was still dark, because I wanted to basically run back up the hill to my house. But then hora salvadorena, the endless dallying and disregard for time, came into play. I tried to chivvy people along without being a Nazi but nearly lost it when the boys started picking corn instead of putting out the fire. On the hike back uphill, I nearly left them all behind.

After the fastest bucket bath ever, I made it to the capital. Still a little shell shocked, but alive and surprised at my own patience and flexibility. (Peace Corps Volunteers, sorry for repeating the mantra.)

Here is a long-awaited picture of my site. It's actually my host family's finca, or the land where they grow coffee and oranges and pineapples.

Paz y amor. Send your love.

Recuperation

Mystery solved: I had pneumonia. I spent an entire week in a hotel in San Salvador eating soup once a day. While in the hotel, I made the mistake of watching "A Christmas Story," burst into tears when I saw the snow, and continued feeling homesick for roughly two weeks. Reinforcing my theory that I only get homesick when I'm physically ill in another country. It didn't help that all I wanted for a week was tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwhich, neither of which exist here.

It still sucks a little to think of missing Christmas in America: the parties (especially the Cheverly caroling one) and the glitzy mall displays and Christmas music. The possibility of snow in D.C. and the reality of snow in New England. Hot apple cider, spiced rum, sugar cookies, even the Salvation Army people with those annoying bells. And of course, my family and our tradition of opening presents in the morning and seeing movies in the afternoon. Everyone celebrates Christmas here in a more religious, less commercialized way (processions and midnight mass and fireworks on the 24th) but I totally miss the commercialization.

People keep asking how I got pneumonia in a tropical country. I had never had it in my life, and even among Peace Corps volunteers here it's not that common. All I can think of is I had a cold for a week and I guess it just got worse and worse until my lung got infected. After antibiotics, I feel a lot better, although my chest still hurts when I exercise (which I'm not supposed to be doing yet, but my site is a steep 30-minute hike from town so I really have no choice, do I?) I keep going to the doctor in the capital like every 10 days. At least it's an excuse to go to the capital, I guess.

The pneumonia really set me back, though. I had about a thousand emails and no food because I couldn't get to town to take care of groceries and the Internet. I missed an environmental camp and a couple of activities with the youth group in town. And I spent three hectic days preparing for a briefing with my program director that I should have been working on for weeks. It all came together in the end, although now he wants me to re-form the community development organization that fell apart due to in-fighting between neighborhoods. Needless to say, that seems a bit overwhelming, especially right now that I don't really know anyone in the community...we'll see what happens.

What else is new? I bought a fridge two weeks ago and it was finally delivered, so now I can save leftovers and buy things like yogurt! Yesterday I randomly ran into a guy from the Association of Pineapple Producers of El Salvador, and he showed me the organization's huge expanse of fields and crops. I might work with them to make pineapple jams and things (mmm.) I'm starting to work on a project the previous volunteer left, where we build fuel-efficient stoves for the community...everyone here uses wood-burning stoves and sometimes they have to walk for like 3 hours to get the wood. These new stoves cook fast and burn less wood, saving time and trees. The whole community is in love with them so I'm trying to learn all I can about how to build and fund them.

My bout of homesickness is over now that I'm working and back in the swing of things. We'll see how I feel on December 25, but I'm looking forward to Christmas Salvie-style.

Pictures are failing to upload. So what else is new.

Paz y amor. Send me a line.

First major illness

I had heard that there are some volunteers who never get sick in two years, or at least not sick enough to come into the medical office in the capital. My stomach toughened by Bangladesh, my immune system proving its greatness as everyone around me caught cold and I ran around unscathed, I began to fantasize that I could be one of those volunteers.

But how could I have forgotten? I have this thing for visiting foreign hospitals everywhere (think Spain) or at least getting sick in other countries (Italy, Bangladesh.) So two nights ago, after a week of a bad cold, I woke up with a fever and painful muscle spasms down my right side.

The next day, guess where I was? Yep, in the hospital in San Salvador. Getting there was a 4-hour journey involving two bus rides and a cab trip in sweltering heat. After being loaded up with three different medications, I was sent to a hotel for the night, where I promptly slept for 15 hours.

Today, I'm still running a fever, high blood pressure and an upset stomach. So it looks like a visit to the testing lab for me, plus another night in a San Sal hotel. At least it gets English TV channels and the water is a lukewarm shower instead of a freezing cold bucket bath.

This is meant to make you all feel better about getting sick in America.

Feliz Dia de Gracias!

Yesterday, for Thanksgiving, I got together with some of my old training group in our old training center, where there is an oven. We proceeded to have a faux Thanksgiving. There was no turkey so we bought chicken, no cranberry sauce so we bought cranberry juice (which is $7 here!) Some things did turn out pretty well, like the mashed potatoes, green beans and apple pie. We shared the meal with some of the Salvadoran staff and they didn't hate it! Smashing success.

As we started to cook, we realized the stove and the oven weren't heating up. After many failed attempts, we ended up building a wood fire in a barrel in the backyard and cooking with that. Then someone figured out the problem with the stove was the circuit breaker. But we're already so Peace Corps that we didn't think of American things like that. Go hardcore us.

I feel like I always promise pics on this blog and never deliver. But the computer is now oh-so-slowly loading my pics onto facebook. I hadn't put up any so far, so we're talking like shots from the airport in September.

What else is new? I finally moved into my house and bought a lot of the things I needed. I had to use up most of my $450 move-in allowance. The house is a pretty yellow three-room thing in the center of town, between the church and the casa comunal (community center.) Still no fridge yet though. I have a terrible cold caused, I think, by moving from a very cold house to a very warm one.

I didn't find out about all the things going on in Mumbai until we turned on CNN at the hotel this morning. My heart goes out to everyone there and to everyone affected.

Paz y amor. Send me a note.

SITE!!!

Yes people, I'm finally here! I got to my site, a village in the department of La Paz in the foothills of a volcano, Saturday and life has been crazy ever since. This is where I'll be spending the next 2 years and frankly, I'm thrilled. Even though it welcomed me with another, even stronger, earthquake the first day. A barrel of water fell over in my counterpart's house but I heard of no injuries. That didn't stop my old host mom and my program director from calling me immediately though. They think it was a 5.something on the Richter scale.

The volunteer I'm replacing is still here till Sunday so I haven't got the chance to unpack or buy my own furniture yet. That includes a stove, fridge, food. So I'm eating with the host family (we're in small houses as part of a family compound) until I can cook for myself. Not really being able to settle in has been the biggest challenge so far. For example, I was going to put up site pics and put all the training pics on facebook, but my camera batteries died and the charger is packed away somewhere. That will have to wait until next week.

I've been spending some time with my new host family and they are awesome. It's a HUGE family (think like 20 people around all the time) and coupled with my lack of name/face recognition I always feel a little lost. But they're really nice and they have a huge parcel of land filled with coffee, pineapples, oranges, tangerines, bananas, coconuts...which means a lot less grocery shopping for me!

Like I said earlier, my region is famous for its lush vegetation, particularly fruit trees. Other Peace Corps have started calling me the pineapple queen. I got a shirt of Santa Maria Ostuma, the municipality my village belongs to, and it has a pineapple on it.

I've walked all around the village, which is huge enough to be a town, already with Suzanne, the old volunteer, who is a total sweetheart and very helpful even though she has her traumatic farewells to deal with this week. My counterparts are the school director and a female community activist/volunteer health promoter. Between them and Suzanne I've participated in a church flea market, met the mayor, attended a meeting for scholarship kids who I'll be working with, and we have a lot more planned through Sunday. After that I'll be focused on moving in, integrating, meeting still more people and conducting community diagnostics. Tomorrow I have two meetings where I'll be introduced to families of students and then more of the community.

It is cold here. I have been sleeping in a hoodie, jeans, socks and still cold. Today I'm buying pajama pants. All I brought were sleep shorts because hey, it's not supposed to be cold in El Salvador! It's probably still warmer than the States right now but the absence of central heating makes all the difference.

I've been warned the community is not well organized, but Suzanne still managed to get a lot done here, although it was frustrating. I know the school expects me to do environmental education and English lessons and to work with the students on recycling and planting trees. And I'll also be working with a youth group and possibly continuing a project to provide the village with fuel-efficient stoves. I'm excited to begin working but I know I really won't get much done until February. These two months before our additional training in January are mostly for community integration, which is fine with me.

Another flip side is it's much harder to get around than I thought it would be. To go to the supermarket, bank or internet I only have one choice of bus to take, at 6:45 am, and then I switch buses and ride to the department capital until 8:15. The village is up a steep hill from Santa Maria and if I don't hit the noon or 4 pm buses on the way back I have to hike it. It takes like 30-40 minutes and leaves everyone who tries it breathless and sweating, even in cold weather. Guess I'll be losing that training weight after all.

To get to the capital is possibly still worse because it's impossible to get everything done in a few hours there and hit all the right buses back. Even though it's a short distance away, whenever I go there I'll probably have to spend the night. Damn mountains.

To the right you will see a Christmas list, for everyone who was asking. Mail is reliable here although it takes about a month and you shouldn't send anything fragile or valuable. My new address at site is now visible to all my friends on facebook. If you're not on facebook and you want it, email me. Also email me your address if you weren't at my goodbye party!

More pictures soon, yo les prometo. Paz y amor.

Atol de piña

is my new obsession. We went to my friend's host mom's house yesterday after our "Spanish Rally" (which was really just a lot of games in Spanish) and had some. It's basically pineapple pudding with cinnamon in it. It was good but I am even more obsessed with it because my site is like the pineapple capital of El Salvador and I'm going to learn to make it! I also got a book today called "Cooking in the Campo" written by another Peace Corps volunteer. Considering my nearest supermarket, where I can buy American things like sliced bread, yogurt, spaghetti and granola will be 2 hours away but a store selling typical Salvadoran food is across the street, I have to learn to cook comida típica salvadoreña whether I like it or not.




So expect a lot of strange but awesome food after I get home!



Here is atol de piña courtesy of visitesantarosadecopan.org

Also, last Sunday was apparently National Pupusa Day here. I didn't know that at the time, so it was really weird to me that the DJ on the radio wouldn't stop talking about pupusas (the tortillas filled with beans, cheese etc.) They're so common here it would be like a DJ at home talking about bread for an hour. But apparently they made the world's biggest pupusa somewhere in the country. I can't find a picture of it online so you will just have to imagine it.

Tonight is my last night with the family. I'm giving them a framed photo of me with them and then I have to pack all my bags. I don't know how any of us are going to handle it. I was cleaning my room yesterday and my host mom flipped out because she thought I was packing and apparently that would not have been cool.

Back to the office for coffee (which is always instant because El Salvador exports all of its real coffee, thereby dashing my dreams of consuming great local coffee as in Vietnam.)

Paz y amor.

Wrapping things up...

I cannot BELIEVE we are leaving our communities in two days. Our host families are being weird about it, insisting that we have to visit them all the time and then yelling at us because they've decided that we're never going to.


I'm in town today for final interviews. The first one was just about how training went. As a weed-out interview, it was pretty halfhearted. They kept asking things like, "So what do you hate about El Salvador?" and "What would make you go home?" Um, full-scale war?


But since this is a blog about my Peace Corps service and that service starts Saturday, I'll revise my anxieties.

• The isolation. The nearest volunteer is a 45-minute bus ride away, which isn't too terrible, but I've never lived without seeing a ton of people every day and don't know how I'll handle it. Of course there will be Salvadorans in the community to make friends with, but that will take time.
• The work. I'll be teaching environmental ed in two schools, and although I have classroom experience, my enviro knowledge is very basic. The rest of my group is much better off than me -- they were all enviro majors, lived in eco-houses, worked for national parks, the works.
• The rural life. I'm a city girl and proud of it. I've been speaking campo (rural) Spanish and hating every minute of it because I want to speak city Spanish! I'm living in a village now and love it, but where I'm going is still more remote. Apparently I have to set up my own latrine once I get there (it will be a composting one, to show the community how to do it.) Plus villagers are more conservative than capitalinos.

But because there are two sides to every story, here are things I'm excited about:

• The site itself. Everyone keeps telling me it's beautiful and that the people are open and welcoming. And you can never have too many pineapples.
• More independence. I will finally be in control of my own schedule instead of being shuttled from boring class to meaningless workshop. I can improve my Spanish and do community work at my own (more efficient) pace.
• Doing actual work and feeling like I'm making a difference
• Having my own little place and cooking my own (much smaller portions of) food

Speaking of Spanish, my Spanish exit interview was also today and my level is apparently "advanced," finally. It's not yet fluent but I still have 2 more years to go!

Here is the picture of me and my host family that I am about to get framed and give as a gift:
And here by popular demand is Will, in my hammock, as always because his family doesn't have one. (Sad! Everyone has them here and I am certainly getting one if there isn't already one in my La Paz house.)

Fergie is on the radio here. It figures. Paz y amor.

Many changes

I have 10 minutes so I'll make this quick. Today we had our family fiesta to thank our families for putting up with us for so long. My family bought me a new shirt for it, which they shouldn't have done after feeding me and washing my clothes (even my underwear -- my host mom found where I was hiding it!) for months. I was one of the party organizers and despite last-minute rushing around everything went off without a hitch.

A bunch of us are going to the beach all day tomorrow, por fin.

This is my LAST WEEK as a Peace Corps Trainee. Friday I am sworn in as an official volunteer. Apparently the after party will be epic.

I know where my site is -- in the department of La Paz, pretty close to San Vicente and San Salvador, although not terribly convenient because it's up a mountain, so transportation takes longer than you would think. If you're looking at a map, it's a village close to Santa Maria Ostuma and San Pedro Nonualco. I will be working with two schools, a youth group and some other random community members. The site is apparently GORGEOUS and has a lot of fruit trees, especially pineapples. There are so many of those that the church has a pineapple on top of it instead of a cross. I was coincidentally already friends with the volunteer who's leaving that site and there will be a week overlap where we're both there and she can show me around and answer my questions.

I am a 7-hour bus ride away from my boyfriend. Yes, boyfriend. If you have seen facebook you know this already. He is another Peace Corps trainee. I won't waste a lot of this blog with gushy relationship postings, but expect hilarious stories about two Americans trying to date in El Salvador in a culturally appropriate manner (the ridiculous situations have already begun.)

A postscript to the state of Virginia: Thank you for making 22 Peace Corps trainees deliriously happy in San Vicente, El Salvador. I no longer hate you and promise to stop making fun of you forthwith.

Paz y amor. Write me!

What day is tomorrow?

Seriously, I was asked that and blanked. "Um, November 4th? Our lesson on deforestation?...oh, ELECTION DAY!"



Yes people, you know you live in a village in a Thirld World country when it takes you a few seconds to remember that. But the plan is still to watch the returns from the hotel in town. My friend is making guacamole and we're all buying chips.



As a (former?) aspiring journalist, I'm used to projecting objectivity, but if you know me you know who I voted for. I'll just come out and say that I can't imagine a Peace Corps volunteer wouldn't vote for Barack Obama. Especially since he promised to expand the Peace Corps, which most of the staff here has been praying for after 8 years of budget cuts. Our ag-for/environmental ed group is half the size of the previous group. I think tomorrow we might be taking a shot for every swing state that goes to Obama.



I have to dash off to a soccer game (maybe I'll be ruthless!) but here's what last weekend included: a trip to a pool complete with fish that nibbled our feet, a super-fun village dance, and Dia de los Difuntos, or the Day of the Dead. If you've studied Spanish you know what this is -- the people buy brilliant paper flowers and decorations and place them on their relatives' graves. Some of them even hang out at the cemetery and eat and the kids play with toys on their grandparents' graves.



Swearing-in is so close (the 14th!) and then I'll be a real volunteer. I just bought a dress at the market for the occasion. I haggled and everything.



Paz y amor -- we'll probably know who our next president is the next time I post!

El poder tiene que cambiar

That means "the power has to change" and it's what a woman said to me on the bus today. It was a classic Salvadoran conversation: she started out by saying it was cool outside (this morning is actually the coldest I've seen here, except for the mountains of Chalatenango) but what she really wanted to talk about was politics.

Woman: It's cool.
Me: Yeah it is! Better than this morning, though.
Woman: Yes. You're from the States? Where do you study?
Me: I don't. I'm in the Peace Corps.
Woman: Oh. Your elections are soon!
Me: Yes! Tuesday!
Woman: Ours are in March. Everyone here will vote for ARENA (the conservatives) but I prefer FMLN (liberals). ARENA has been in power for the last 20 years. It has to change.

Wow. America much?

We had a lecture on Salvadoran politics yesterday and it was FASCINATING. I wish I could transcript the whole thing for you. But basically it goes like this: the conservatives have been in power since the civil war ended in 1992. ARENA, the conservative party, comes from the Salvadoran military during the civil war; the FMLN were once the guerillas but the peace accords made them a political party. The violence in El Salvador no longer really comes from politics, but the country is still highly polarized. There are stories about people in San Salvador who have blocked construction crews from building roads they have wanted for decades because the other party is paying for the road. No one uses the casa comunal -- basically town hall -- in our village because the regional mayor and the village head are from different parties, so the mayor changed the locks. There is no such thing as bipartisanship here.

The conservative guy running for president now is an inexperienced chief of national police who picked a leftist for his running mate in order to generate mass appeal, but instead confused everybody; the liberal is a famous ex-journalist and skilled orator who is hampered by the fact that the rest of his party are ex-guerillas and by the attack ads that effectively tie him to Hugo Chávez. Add that to the fact that El Salvador is traditionally a very conservative country and you have a dead heat. I'm sure I'll be blogging about this constantly.

For the record, I did vote by emergency absentee ballot, sent by diplomatic pouch after the Prince George's County board of elections failed to mail or e-mail my ballot. I guess I'm not surprised. My friend from North Carolina had to do the same thing, even though he never votes -- North Carolina, after all, is a big-deal swing state.

For election night, our entire 22-person training group is going to the hotel in town. We've rented out the bar and are going to watch the results come in through Internet streaming. I'm so stoked. We still haven't figured out what we're doing for Halloween though.

Time has gone flying by. We've finished the baking project with our youth group after baking banana bread all day Monday. Even though we sold nearly $40 worth, we lost money because flour here is EXPENSIVE if it's not made from corn, something we never knew when we agreed to make banana bread. So it was a completely ineffective fundraiser but still a fun project. Now we're preparing to give them a lesson on deforestation. At first it was a big deal because our training director was going to come sit in, but yesterday through Friday there is a huge summit of all the Latin American presidents here in San Salvador. WHICH is a huge security issue because everyone's scared Chávez will show up and there will be riots, even though the Venezeulan president in question has said he won't come out of fear for his life. So basically none of the PC staff can leave San Sal to come see our presentation, so we get to slack off a little. Such is life here. You prepare for something for weeks, and then it rains or Hugo Chávez shows up and you end up twiddling your thumbs. I love it.

We have had some actual time where we were not working. We're mandated to spend all our afternoons investigating things in the community, so one afternoon we "investigated" a nearby waterfall with some Last weekend was our only free weekend, so half of our group went to a lake in the mountains and the other half went to the beach. I was in the lake group and I'm damn glad I was, because here's a picture: just kidding, the spyware on this computer is not permitting that.

The trip was complete with drinking and American food, two things that never happen to us anymore. We actually have a free weekend next weekend, but we have to spend that in our communities because Sunday's día de los difuntos, or Day of the Dead. If you've ever taken a Spanish class, you know what this is -- basically the Catholic Latin American alternative to Halloween. Everyone goes to the cemetery where their relatives are buried and leaves food, flowers and crafts. So the cemeteries are full of people and it's actually kind of festive. There's also a dance Saturday night, which should be intriguing because a) I've already forgotten how to salsa b) there will be beer which the men will drink but the women can't and c) I have a suspicion that the whole thing is a campaign fundraiser for my neighbor who is running for mayor from the most conservative party in the nation.

It has been cooler and windy here. I have constantly been told the scorpions come out when it's windy so I still sleep in fear. But other than that, life is grand and I should probably get back to work. Send me an e-mail, a facebook message, a comment, or a phone call. Paz y amor.

La globalización está por todos lados

That's right, I'm back at the cyber cafe. It's Sunday and there was nothing else to do. But two friends and I went in together and found out that half our group had also taken the bus to town. Great minds think alike, I guess...

The title of my post is something my Spanish teacher said to me last semester and basically means that globalization is everywhere. She was talking about her conviction that there's a Starbucks here, a fact that was later disproven. But it applies to my life in another important way: the media. I can't count the times I've heard "Total Eclipse of the Heart," "Lady in Red" or "Careless Whisper" on the bus, mixed in with the new faves like T-Pain's "Low" or Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl."

I already mentioned some of the American shows we get here, but there are a lot more, from "The Flintstones" to "Dead Zone" to "Tru Calling." It's funny to see shows here that weren't even popular in the States, but then they don't have "The Office" or "Grey's Anatomy." My family also spends a lot of time watching the news, at least half of which is about the U.S. election or the financial crisis. The whole hour of En Punto, the Sunday-morning pundit show, was devoted today to the election. And a lot of volunteers are voting online. So even though I'm missing all the excitement, I'm not exactly far away.

It's warm and gorgeous here today after days of neverending rain. It was nice to wake up late and spend time with my host fam, cooking and watching TV. Guess which tortilla I made...
Yep, I think it's safe to say I need a lot more practice. The other things are red beans and an egg/string bean mixture which is awesome because the string beans are new and fresh from the fields. I also get fried/cooked plantains all the time, so Maryland Food Co-op-ers, be jealous, because they're even better here.

Paz y amor and keep the messages coming!

Rain, rain go away

One would think by reading this blog that I have all the time in the world to take a bus into the pueblo, get on a computer and post. It's been true lately but it shouldn't be! My community group has all these plans in motion that keep being rained out., i.e. our trip to a nearby waterfall today. We were also going to have a group meeting and plan our bake sale, our tree-planting project, our lombriculture project, our deforestation charla...(Spanish for "chat" but mainly refers to the kind of interactive lecture Peace Corps volunteers do all the time). But all that will have to be left for Monday. The youth group the next community over made tons of money yesterday selling tamales, so hopefully our fundraiser will be just as successful...or we'll have to deal with a lot of gloating!

It has been kind of hard to get anything done with this group, which has been a little frustrating. Most of the other communities are working with a youth group that already existed, but our village didn't have one so we had to form one, which was an endeavor in itself. Then heavy rains cancelled one meeting, and others were nearly ruined by hora salvadoreña -- Salvadoran time. The Latin American disregard for punctuality definitely has applied to our meetings. By the time people actually show up, we only have about 20 minutes to hash things out before it gets dark and people have to go home to dinner. And when we try to do things on the weekends -- like today -- there's always some calamity.

We're also supposed to make our group sustainable, meaning it won't just dissolve after we leave our training communities for our sites. We've elected the leadership and all that but it's so hard to tell exactly how interested they are. One kid definitely is so we'll see if he galvanizes the rest. Otherwise the next group of Peace Corps trainees will have to form a group all over again. Pretty soon well-meaning trainees could be the laughingstock of Cañas...

Stop the negativity! I just gotta have faith! We're trying again with the youth Monday.

And speaking of things I'm trying again, here is that pic of Honduras:
And here I am on the bridge between Honduras and El Salvador (the others are awesome volunteers)
Paz, amor and write me!

Scorpion bites and Honduran sites

Many volunteers spend 27 months in El Salvador without ever getting stung by a scorpion.

I, of course, lasted 3 weeks.

Here's how it happened: I woke up last Wednesday night and felt a little chilly (I know, right? It is "winter" here.) So I pulled my blanket a little closer around me and felt something scrape my back hard. I thought there was a staple in my blanket and drowsily did nothing, but then the pain intensified.

Scorpion! I thought. After all, being stung by a scorpion has been one of my biggest fears since before I left the States. Especially when I heard your tongue swells up so you can't talk (true sometimes) and that you can die from them (a lie.)

Anyway, I jumped out of bed and a wave of dizziness and nausea hit. I sat down, put my head between my legs and wondered whether I would throw up. Then it was randomly over and I started looking for my attacker. I pulled off all the covers, the pillowcase, the mosquito net, searched and shook, killed a moth and a fly, and nothing. My host mom came in and asked if there was an "animal" in my bed. I was tempted to say, yes, there was a cow, but I killed it and threw it in the trash, so I'm fine now, thanks.

Really I explained that something bit me and it hurt like a bitch. My host father, by then awake as well, overheard and said, "Scorpion!" We searched again and found no such creature.

"It was an ant," my host mom said. "It left already."

Doubtfully, I went back to sleep.

At 6 a.m. my alarm went off. I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was a weirdly-shaped black animal with a curly tail on my mosquito net -- on the inside. I stared at it in weary triumph, thinking I had been right all along. Then I realized there was still a scorpion 2 feet away from me, panicked and bolted. My host mom was nowhere to be found so I had to approach my host dad, whom I have a much more formal relationship with. He was washing his pickup.

"Excuse me, sorry to interrupt, but I believe there's a scorpion in my bed."

He ran inside and somehow the rest of the family materialized in my room. Everyone watched as my host mom calmly picked up the scorpion with some tissue paper and threw it outside. It was actually pretty anticlimactic. I was expecting her to touch it and fall down dead or something.

Other than a dull throbbing pain in my back (and randomly, in my hand) the next day, the bite really had no long-term consequences. Apparently small scorpions do less damage. I didn't have much time to dwell on it, though, because I had to catch a bus to the faraway mountain province of Chalatenango, where I was scheduled to spend 4 days with a bunch of volunteers for an "immersion experience."

I arrived in Chalate at the house of John and Katie, the married couple of volunteers whom I was officially visiting (a bunch of other volunteers came up just to hike and hang out as well.) We were super high up and I was cold all weekend. We were near the border, but I didn't realize how near until John pointed out the window and said, "By the way, that's Honduras."

This is the part where I tried to post a picture of Honduras but the Internet cafe wouldn't let me. Soon, my dearies, soon.

The first night, I had to stay with a family in John and Katie's village, which was probably my most trying experience so far. The wall of my bedroom was covered with flies, I was cold, wet and slightly ill, and the family kept asking about a visa to the States. I was thrilled when John came to pick me up the next day and the other volunteers arrived. There were about 6 all told and they gave me really helpful answers to the millions of questions I had even though they all only have a month left in their service and their heads are in a way different place.

On Saturday we hiked to the Punta Más Alta -- the highest point in El Salvador. The views on the mountain were STUNNING. That night we ate pupusas, hot chocolate, fudge and watched Enchanted in Spanish. Considering drinking is not really culturally appropriate here, it was the best party I could ask for -- it was actually super fun.

We've been pretty damn busy this week as well -- Tuesday we got into San Vicente for our weekly meetings, for which I usually dress a little more professionally. So I was wearing dress pants and sandals, my friend Anna was wearing a skirt and dress shoes, and then our tech trainer goes, "Hey everyone, we're going to clean up a river! Sorry I didnt't give you advance notice!" Oh, Peace Corps.

One thing I've learned about Salvadoran kids is that a lot of them are super shy or they're just not paying attention. This became evident during the river cleanup, which we did with kids from a nearby volunteer's site, as well as during my first English class, which I taught to 5th and 6th graders today at my village school. They barely wanted to talk at all, but it was nothing that Pictionary couldn't solve.

The youth group continues despite pouring rains and hora salvadoreña, which means that those that do show up are an hour late and we have to make rushed decisions before it gets too dark for everyone to walk home safely. We're taking a trip to a nearby waterfall Saturday and we have projects in the works to do a bake sale and use the proceeds to plant trees. One of the kids who's most excited about this is a deportee with a MS-13 tattoo on his hand. Don't worry, we remain alert.

We get a lot of the American news in Spanish on the Salvadoran channels, since everyone has a relative allá (literally "over there" but most often meaning "in the States.") But we don't get everything and I'm upset to be missing such a crazy election. And I want to hear all your news too, so get on that! Post a comment, e-mail or call!

Paz y amor.

A note...

This blog's title is a clever rhyme that has nothing to do with Vietnam! It refers to the Hairspray song "Good Morning Baltimore." See, it rhymes, and it has to do with my life! From (near) Baltimore to Salvador!

I got a cell phone number. You'll see it if you're my friend on facebook. I include the U.S. exit code and the Salvadoran country code also for your convenience. So it's a really long number but it's exactly what you'd have to dial.

In answer to some of your questions, it is "winter" here so it's not that hot. In the city it feels like 87 degrees but at home in Cañas it's much cooler, especially when it rains which is still every day. Inside the house sometimes it's boiling hot, so we all just sit on the porch. And the harvest is coming soon (November-December) for corn, beans and sugar cane.

Yesterday our group went to the anthropological museum in San Sal and learned all about the country's history which, like most Latin American countries, is laced with persecution of indígenos. The word "indio" is still used as an adjective here to describe crude or uncivilized people or things. But the indigenous population here has almost thoroughly assimilated and I get the impression that it's worse for them in other Central American countries.

Then we went out for pineapple pizza at Pizza Hut and walked around Metro Centro, the big mall. Globalization is scary. Burger King and Pizza Hut are everywhere in the capital, as are Levi's and Nine West. My friends and I agreed that it's more of a culture shock to go to a mall in ES, where everything is trying to be American so the minor differences REALLY stand out. Our country houses, with their latrines and farm animals, are easy to adjust to by comparison.

Which makes me realize I didn't address one thing -- yes, I do have electricity and running water (most of the time) here. In fact, I'll go through a day in the life (expect another one of these when I get to site):

6:00 a.m. - wake up. Take a shower (which is curtained off outside, but I do actually have a shower head, not a bucket bath.) Get ready for Spanish class, brushing teeth at an outside sink with bottled water because I will never be able to drink the water here. If it's Sunday, no class, go running with some of the other ag/env crew. Before class or after running, am force-fed large breakfast of beans/eggs/tortilla/plantains by Doña Lorena.

7:30 a.m. - Walk up a big hill to Spanish class at another trainee's house or catch a bus to the training cener in San Vicente for some other Peace Corps-mandated activity (tomorrow it's an English teaching workshop.)

noon - Lunch, either packed by my host mom for San V or eaten at my house after community Spanish class. Again, always too large.

1 p.m. - More Peace Corps workshops or Spanish class, often followed by time to plan our community youth groups.

3-4:30 p.m. - Community classes end, hang out and play cards/soccer with other PC friends. Sometimes walk a few minutes to visit trainees in nearby community. If in San V, stop by Internet cafe/post office/supermarket.

6-6:30 p.m. - Dinner at home. Again, too much food.

After dinner - Watch TV/play games with family. We get Smallville, House and 30 Rock here, as well as tons of news and crappy Jerry Springer-type talk shows. Games are improvised with few actual toys (sliding bottle tops across a table to knock down a dictionary mounted on a stick, doing a "Shell Shuffle" type game with a leaf and other bottle tops.) But it's still fun and it really made me realize how uncreative Americans are with their ready-made entertainment.

9-10 p.m. - Bedtime.

Yes, those early-to-bed early-to-rise hours are correct. I don't know what you all must think of me.

But I know what I think of you: I miss you! Thanks for the comments and emails! Write more!

Paz y amor.

SWITCHED!

Thank God! I got my job description switched to environmental education. Just sat through my first EE-specific presentation and I'm so excited. I'll be teaching in a school, probably working with younger kids, and also leading environmental clubs, chats and trash campaigns. At first they told me I couldn't switch because they had promised x munber of sites an agroforestry volunteer, but then my lovely friend Anna wanted to switch out of enviro ed, so it worked perfectly.

I also learned to salsa, merengue, bachata and cumbia today -- all Latin American dances that I'm sure I will use during my time here. We also started dancing to reggaeton until it got too embarrassing (which happened quickly.) The four of us who are living in my community already went to a birthday party where all the Salvadorans put on music and yelled at us to dance. But they weren't even dancing -- they just wanted to watch us and laugh. So we booked it soon after, but it was dark when we walked home and all the dogs were running around the community, most of which have been exposed to rabies. So we picked up huge sticks and kept walking while all around us dogs ran and barked and howled, but it was so dark we couldn't even see them. By far the most petrifying experience I've had...

Cell phones coming in a week!

Here is 4-year-old Brian and the dog, Muñeca, who only eats tortillas and watermelon.

Post a comment or e-mail me please! Keep me in the loop!

El Salvador!

So sorry I never posted till now...I've been in El Salvador since Sept. 16 and this is the first day I've had a good stretch of time in an internet cafe! Of course, too much has happened to write about it all, so I'll just give you a brief outline. We flew into the capital of San Salvador and were immediately fed Pizza Hut, and we were all starving because they don't feed you on planes anymore. After that we went to the nearby city of San Vicente, where the Peace Corps training center is. For two days we stayed in a hotel and ate tons of traditional food three times a day at a nearby restaurant. First horror story of the Peace Corps: when I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I unknowingly decapitated a lizard. We found it dead on the floor in the morning.

After that, we went to meet our host families. I'm one of four volunteers in the rural community of Las Cañas, about a 20-minute bus ride from San Vicente. We all meet at one volunteer's house for Spanish classes in the morning (very easy for me with my Spanish minor) and to work on community projects in the afternoon. All the ag-for/environmental ed volunteers are supposed to do an environmental project with the community youth group. But since there's no group in Cañas, we have to form our own, which is much more time-consuming. Our first meeting is on Monday; we invited 54 youth hoping at least 10 would show. Otherwise we'll just have to eat all the cookies and soda ourselves. So I guess failure wouldn't be so bad.

Speaking of food, we get far too much of it. The girl you all know who lived off of granola bars and coffee is now eating three full meals a day. We're literally forced to because our Salvadoran host mothers will cry if we turn food down. So far it's been delicious. All you pupusa lovers are probably green with envy. Every day I also eat delicious mixtures of beans, rice, tortilla and egg. It's so starch-heavy that I will probably gain weight, contrary to what you would think about a girl in a Third World country.

You will want to know how my host family is. I love them. The father, Don Felipe, has a brother who lives in Langley Park, two minutes away from my college apartment. It's a small world after all. The mother's name is Doña Lorena and they have a 17-year-old girl and two sons; one aged 13 and one 4 and adorable. They're nice and funny and laid-back and I'm glad I came here knowing Spanish because I love to just sit on the porch (in a hammock!) and talk to them.

Here's Doña Lorena on the porch of our house:


It's not all R&R here, though. The rest part has been severely hampered by the roosters that start crowing at literally 2 a.m. and the ant bites that wake me up in the middle of the night feeling like my feet are on fire. We've also had a lot of fun work trips. Today we visited a volunteer at a nearby site and helped him plant vetiver grass to slow erosion. Yesterday I helped Don Felipe dig an irrigation ditch. We've also visited the elementary school in Cañas to observe how Salvadoran public schools work. The kids here only go to school for half a day, and a lot of them don't even do that -- they stay home and help their parents out instead, since there are no truancy laws.

This country is so green and beautiful it's hard to imagine it has any environmental problems. It's the rainy season now and it pours every day, but that ends in November.

There's only been one major drawback to my service so far, and that's my job description. I soon came to realize that while I actually like planting things, I don't think I'm qualified to have the more technical agroforestry position that I've been pushed into. When I was first invited I was under the impression that I would be doing some field work but my primary task would be environmental education in schools. Last week I found out that's not the case -- that's a different kind of volunteer, a fact which had not been made clear to me or several other trainees. And just today I found out that it would be "very hard" to switch. I have a meeting with my director about it Tuesday. Keep your fingers crossed for me because I really don't want to be given a job I can't do. I'd hate to let a whole community down and I wouldn't be happy here, and who knows how long my service will last if that's the case?

More updates soon (a week or two?) but drop me a line and tell me about your lives! No cell phone yet, but I've put my mailing address on facebook. You'll see it if you're my friend.

Paz y amor! More pics when my friends aren't rushing me out of the Net cafe :)

The Adventure Begins!

I'm sitting in the lobby of a very nice hotel in Arlington, fired up after my first day of pre-departure orientation! I guess there are about 20 trainees in my group and to my relief, I met a lot of cool people today.

That doesn't quite make up for all the people I left behind, but since I haven't yet left the area I grew up in, none of my goodbyes seemed really final. I might see some of my home friends tomorrow, actually, and my mom has volunteered to drive to the hotel and pick up anything I decide to ditch if my suitcases come in over the weight limit (a fear that has been gnawing at me for days, since I first clumsily tried to weigh my mammoth bags on our tiny bathroom scale. How do you pack for 27 months in 80 pounds or less???)

On my last night in Cheverly, my mom and I went to Five Guys for dinner and picked up cannolis from the Italian Inn for dessert. Along the way, something reminded me of the old stuffed dog I used to own -- Toto, my constant companion and the only thing I had that survived our housefire when I was 6. I casually asked my mom where he was, we couldn't find him, and somehow this became a catastrophe in both of our minds. Maybe it's because I was leaving for 27 months and I needed to pay homage to my entire childhood spent in the same little house.

Eventually I found him, petted him and put him back in his basket in the basement. But the next morning, when we get in the car to drive me away for years, there Toto was in the backseat. My mom claims he wanted to see me off and got there himself. Somehow she knew exactly what I needed.

We said our goodbyes without pain or tears, knowing we'd talk soon. Orientation was fun, but the most surreal part of it all is that most people are from much farther away than Arlington. Half my group is in bed now because they had to get up at 4 a.m. for their long flights. My roommate called me "Ms. 20 minutes away" as she was falling asleep at about...noon.

Other orientation highlights:

• Rumors circulated that John McCain and Sarah Palin were staying in our hotel, which is near their campaign HQ. Some, including me, said that was impossible because McCain probably had a house around here. Others pointed out that even if he did, he probably didn't remember it. We wanted him to come talk to us, considering he could be our next boss. However, the rumors were later dismissed.
• We had to draw pictures of our aspirations and anxieties on a big sheet of paper. Some of our aspirations included dancing, ruthless soccer playing (mine) and feeding a monkey a pupusa.
• We were given debit cards with the American flag on them that said "We The People" and were ordered to take large wads of cash out of the ATM with them because they wouldn't work in El Salvador.
• Drinking at the hotel bar, because the Peace Corps is classy like that.

Well, it's time for me to get to bed, as I somehow have to function at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow. I miss you all and if I don't update tomorrow, my next post will be from EL SALVADOR!

Three Days Grace

At last, the Peace Corps blog is up and running by popular demand! (Read: the demand of three people.)

If you were expecting this post to be filled with exciting stories about scorpion bites and soccer balls to the head, I'll have to burst your bubble with the news that I am not yet at my post in El Salvador. In fact I'm still sitting in my room in Cheverly, Md. My 27 months of Peace Corps service start in three days with a two-day orientation in Arlington, Va. Seriously. My orientation could have been anywhere in the country, and it had to be 20 minutes away from my house. I had to call the travel agency to say I wouldn't be needing a flight to orientation, and the agent was genuinely confused.

Agent: How are you getting there?
Me: My mom is driving me.
Agent: Will you need reimbursement for your miles driven?
Me: Sure, you can give me like five bucks.

Until then, my life is a whirlwind of packing and farewells. Today was my last day as a volunteer gardener at Behnke Nurseries in Beltsville, a job I took to prepare for my agroforestry/environmental education role in the Peace Corps. I genuinely had fun at that job and will miss my wonderful colleagues -- and I learned a lot about plants! If you ever want to know how to grow spider plants or save Brazilian Fireworks or crape myrtles from untimely deaths, I'm your girl. And working outside in long pants during the hottest days of summer prepared me doubly for field work in El Salvador. Too bad the Peace Corps won't give me a little walkie-talkie to radio for help when I don't know what to do.

I walked out of work today with lots of blessings and two offers of part-time employment after I return (why not?) Many of my co-workers knew I'm leaving soon and had lots of questions, which I'll answer again now for the benefit of you readers.

Alia's Peace Corps FAQ

When do you leave?
Like I wrote above, my pre-departure orientation starts Sept. 14 and lasts two days. Straight from there, I hop on a plane to San Salvador (the capital of El Salvador, if you slept through 7th grade) Sept. 16.

Then where will you be?
For the first three months, I will be training in San Vicente, a city kind of near San Salvador (a two-hour bus ride away.) According to the Salvadoran Spanish professor I had last semester, San Vicente is a good-sized city, but more rural than the capital. I assume my group is training there because it would be harder to plant and compost and all that good stuff in the capital. After training, I will probably go to a still more rural village, where I will remain for two years, although I could switch villages if I complete all my projects or if the first one they assign me doesn't work out for some reason.

Can you come home?
Yes, kind of. I can't go anywhere for the first six months or the last three. I get sweet federal-government vacation time (an accumulation of two days per month) and can use those days for a trip back to the States, but I would have to come up with the money myself (donations will be taken at my goodbye party! Kidding.) I can quit whenever I want, but I wouldn't bet on that happening!

What will you be doing?
I don't know for sure and probably won't know until near the end of training. And even then, over the course of my service, projects will start and end and everything will be in flux. My official job is, like I said, agroforestry/environmental education. From what I gather from other Peace Corps volunteers, this means I will probably be assigned to a school. I guess I'll be holding classes and workshops on recycling and environmentally sustainable farming practices like composting and "agroforestry" (planting trees for the good of the environment and other crops.) I will probably also do field work in those areas and will start secondary projects like English classes and youth groups. I'm determined to teach a drama class as well or even put on a village play. You can take the girl out of the theater but you can never take the theater out of the girl!

Are you nervous?
No.
Seriously.
And I can't figure out why not. By all accounts I should be terrified by the prospect of going to a strange country known for civil wars and gang violence, doing work that has nothing to do with the degree I so recently acquired (journalism? What's journalism?) But here's what balances all of that out:

• I won't be alone. I train with a large group of new volunteers who apparently will become close and supportive friends. I don't doubt that -- after all, I spent a semester in Spain with a group of strangers, and I couldn't have made it through without them.
• I've traveled extensively before, even in Third World countries. I've never been to Latin America, and spending time in Bangladesh and Vietnam won't automatically prepare me for this much greater challenge -- but from those experiences, and from my semester in Europe, I've learned how to handle the frustrating aspects of lengthy stays abroad.
• I minored in Spanish and have a good working knowledge of the language and the culture throughout much of Latin America. Since I got assigned to El Salvador, I've been doing my best to learn everything I can about that country specifically.
• The Peace Corps seems to devote the time and resources to prepare me for the challenges I might face. If you know me well, that might sound strange coming from me -- the sometimes cynical aspiring journalist with an innate distrust of the federal government. But our training also incorporates things like cultural adjustment and health and safety, so I feel like I'll be able to handle things.
• I'm really excited!!!

Will you be able to keep in touch?
I better be!!! I have reason to believe I could have Internet access a few times a week, between school and visits to Internet cafes or whatever. Or I could end up getting online as infrequently as once a month. But I really want to KIT with everyone as often as possible. Snail mail is another option, albeit a less reliable one. And I am 99% sure I will have a Salvadoran cell phone. But that's the main purpose of this blog: to keep everyone who is interested informed about my life in the Peace Corps. And I would love it if you all would comment or email me individually and keep me in the loop about your lives too!!!

So that's my future in a nutshell. And it's weird -- as I drove home today I literally felt like I was reviewing my past. I drove past the University of Maryland, where I just spent the best four years of my life, walking through the old-fashioned brick buildings and grassy fields and dashing across Route 1 to the bars with my friends as I saw all the students doing today. And then through Cheverly, where I grew up in a quiet, close-knit town with a few thousand others who perpetually bike or walk their dogs under a continuous canopy of huge trees.

I'll miss it all, but I can't wait to describe San Vicente to you in a similar post five days from now!

Besos (kisses),

Alia

(The packing is not going so well.)