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!