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.