Farewell to the USA

So tomorrow morning, I get on the plane back to El Salvador. I still think it will be hard to go back, but after shopping yesterday I'm a little more prepared -- I now have peanut butter, more books, gifts for my host family, and my grandfather gave me a shortwave radio. Too bad I spent half an hour looking for the BBC on it and could only find Spanish bible programs. I don't need a shortwave radio to hear that in El Salvador.

Plus, if everything works out, I will be briefly reunited with my friend Emily at the Cleveland airport in between flights! How awesome is it that she's going home to Ohio the same weekend I'm flying through? I almost don't want to think about it, because with our luck my flight will be delayed for two hours again and our window of opportunity will be shattered.

Here is an excerpt from our gchat when we concocted this plan:

me: I think we should do it!!!!!
Emily: me too!!!!
10:56 PM me: oh my god!!!!
Emily: assuming nothing crazy happens with your flight....AHHHH!
me: oh no I don't have a cell phone that works in america

...so we'll see how this goes.

Next post will be from El Sal!

Clarification

The plumbing in my grandfather's house was fixed a day after I wrote that post. So I have been enjoying flush toilets, hot showers and dishwashers. We were not snowed in without those things, thank God.

The ice on the roads is melting and I think we are going to get good Chinese food today (China Wok, the chain in El Salvador, is really awful) and see "Slumdog Millionaire," which is supposed to be a good movie...but the main draw is the main character, Jamal Malik, has the same first and last name as my brother. Now everyone thinks we are from the slums of Mumbai.

We are also going shopping so I can pick up American shower gels and snacks! I might even take a risk and buy peanut butter...

We had blueberry pancakes and real Canadian maple syrup today for breakfast. I am never going back to El Salvador. It's funny that my perfect day in America involves foods from China and Canada and a movie from India.

Seriously, my favorite foods and TV shows aside, I actually think it will be really hard to go back after this. Being here and talking to all my friends, and even watching the news and reading newspapers, is making me miss the fun, action-packed life I used to lead. Covering stories, running around newsrooms, following politics to the second, nights out in the city, Maryland sports games, musical theater...it makes me wish I had stayed and continued that frustrating job search. The Peace Corps is supposed to be fulfilling, but I have always felt that way about journalism too -- so what am I doing?

But at the same time, I'm already missing aspects of the Peace Corps. Hiking and running around outside, for one -- being snowed in has been brutal. Spanish, too (thanks, Mariana, for last night's refresher chat). And after our practice lessons went so well during training, I am super excited to go back and start teaching. And I know there are still two years of Salvadoran adventures ahead of me, and I already miss the other volunteers.

I'll just have to think about that when I board the plane Saturday morning...because otherwise I don't know if I'll make it on!

Que nieve, que nieve, que nieve

So I lied. I said I probably wouldn't blog at all this week and I've been blogging every day.

It is snowing like mad in New Hampshire. There were already 30 inches on the ground when I got here on Saturday, and none of that ever melted because temps have been below freezing every day. Today we're supposed to be getting 6 to 10 inches more.

Here is my grandfather's house in the storm. I hardly ever see anything like this in DC, much less El Salvador.

For all my PC friends who miss the fluffy white stuff...

A lesson learned, part II

So the cycle of things breaking in my grandfather's house has widened: now a pipe in the basement is clogged and nothing is allowed to go down any drain ever. No use of the sink, no hot showers, no flushing the toilet. We are debating digging a latrine hole in the snow. I actually miss going to the bathroom in a falling-down wooden outhouse.

We are brushing our teeth like I do in the Peace Corps: filling up cups and water bottles and spitting outside. Guess the States are more like El Salvador than I realized.

So don't be too jealous, fellow PC/ES volunteers. I still live your life!

Per my fam's request

Here are some pictures, now that I am in the States and have a working Internet connection...

The kids with their sparklers on New Year's Eve

He doesn't know what his shirt says.

Edith, the woman who owns my house, preparing banana leaves to make tamales.

The New Year's Dance

A political rally for FMLN, the liberal opposition party that started with the guerillas during the Salvadoran civil war. This was taken from a roof in San Vicente.

The wake, funeral, burial and two receptions are finally over. There were a lot of morbid and depressing parts, but I'm just going to focus on the things I'm happy about: family, hot showers (like WAY hotter than the hottest ones in ES), the disappearance of my stomach problems, a whole slew of foods I didn't even know I missed like cheesecake and deviled eggs, fast wireless Internet, shopping, riding in cars all the time, central heating, snow, English, the list goes on and on.

I never thought I liked winter until I came back here and realized I missed the muted colors, the quiet and tranquility that it inspires. People describe El Salvador as tranquil too, but it's a kind of hot, exhausted lack of energy. To me it's entirely different.

My laundry situation did put one thing into perspective, though. I was so stoked to wash a quick and easy mindless load of clothes -- to just press a few buttons and come back in an hour. But my grandpa's dryer is dying and I ended up wearing PJs all day, toying with the dryer and eventually rushing to blow-dry my outfit half an hour before leaving for the wake. The entire time I was so frustrated because this is America, and things are supposed to work in America, and doing laundry shouldn't be even more stressful than it is in the Third World. It made me remember that things are things, and even when you have them they break, and life is always stressful no matter where you are. It's easy to blame life's craziness on being in a poor, "inferior" country, but that's not really fair.

So a dryer taught me a lesson. That's weird.

It's 3 a.m. and I wanna go to be-e-ed

I don't really, which is why I'm blogging. In El Salvador I'm lucky to stay up until 10 pm, but I got to my grandfather's house at 1 a.m. today and everyone was still up waiting for me. So out came food, beer and wine. I love my family.

The flights still pretty much kicked my ass. I got up at 4:30 a.m. to take a $23 taxi to the only airport in El Sal, boarded an 8:30 a.m. flight to Houston and kicked around that airport for 4 hours. Did you know it's the George Bush airport??? Named after Bush Sr., but still. They have a big statue of him and everything.

I had to eat lunch in Houston, but unfortunately, all the food near my terminal was actually the same as San Salvador! Wendy's, Subway, Papa John's. At least I got my favorite thing at Starbucks -- a white raspberry mocha. It cost more than 4 meals in El Salvador.

The nice thing was that half the people in Houston were speaking Spanish. I still felt like I was in Central America.

The real shenanigans came at my connection in Newark. From there to Manchester it's just a 45 minute flight, but we sat on the plane for that long waiting for them to fix a computer, then they de-planed all of us and we waited another 45 minutes for a new plane. My poor mom and uncle were waiting for me in Manchester this whole time. And I was still feeling sick to my stomach -- I was going to wait until I got to New Hampshire to crib my family's medicine, but as the hours dragged on in Newark, I caved in and bought Gas-X at the airport. Who knew they sold that at Hudson News?

Anyway, now I'm back and somehow not tired. There are huge mounds of snow on the ground and it is literally zero degrees. It's nice to be back in the States, but after spending a week with hot showers and a day in San Sal with American food, it's not as mind-boggling as I thought it would be. Although my wonderful laundry party has not happened yet.

I don't think I'm going to blog much this week, because my grandmother's funeral isn't exactly relevant to the Peace Corps. The wake is tomorrow and there are a lot of funeral/burial/reception-type events Tuesday, but after that I think I'm just kicking around New Hampshire until Saturday. And there is wireless in this house, so chat me up.

Love to all.

Return to the States

So it happened sooner than I expected. My grandmother died at night on Jan. 20, having watched Barack Obama's inauguration, I am happy to say. Which means that early tomorrow morning I get on a plane for New Hampshire, where I will stay for a week to attend the wake and the funeral.

It was hard to be told this news crushed in a van full of Peace Corps volunteers on our way to build fuel-efficient stoves. It was harder still to spend all day building the stoves afterwards. And it's hard to leave my site for three weeks in a row, and I'm nervous the rapid transition from warm to freezing will make me sick yet again (I never thought of myself as delicate until I came here.) But although the reason I'm going back is depressing, I have to say I'm excited to see the whole family again. And wash my clothes in a washer/dryer.

Luckily, all my volunteer friends have been super comforting, and Peace Corps staff has been great too, advancing me some vacation time so I can go back so early in my service. So family, I'll see you soon.

I myself watched the inauguration on YouTube just now, and I must say it's nice to be proud of your president. I have never known what that felt like until now.

Peace and love in the land of the free.

Of many things, mostly sickness

I got to watch the inauguration today, or as much of it as I could between annoying phone calls from an incompetent woman who fixed our school's computers wrong.

I wouldn't have watched it at all, except that I was in the Peace Corps Office because I spent all of yesterday throwing up for no discernible reason. So I guess my bizarre sickness was a good thing?

Anyway, it was really cool to watch the inauguration in the Peace Corps conference room with the mix of people we had -- young American volunteers, older American staffers, and Salvadorans who were possibly more excited than the gringos. They kept congratulating us.

Now that I'm all better (they never did figure out what was wrong with me) I have returned to my training week at the Escuela Nacional de Agricultura, or the national agricultural university, where we've spent the week learning things like how to start a tree nursery or plant vegetables. It's been fun because we get to go work outside while the youth development volunteers are in San Vicente listening to presentations all day (sorry, guys.) But what's even more awesome is us volunteers get a house all to ourselves and free access to the pool and Internet, and the cafeteria food isn't bad and prepared to American hygiene standards. So it's been a pretty kickass week apart from the random vomiting.

And apart from the sad news I'm receiving from my family that my grandmother's been moved to hospice care. I will probably be flying home for her funeral within the month, or rather to New Hampshire. This means I won't be coming to DC now or in May -- but I think this is much more important. Love to the family if you're reading this. Especially Grandma.

Even before I got the news, I'd realized that my grandmother has been an immensely positive influence on my life. Once, when I was about nine years old, she told me that I had been blessed with intelligence and it was time to think about giving back. I know she imparted that spirit to my mother, aunt and uncles, and between all of them, they taught me to go through life with the purpose of helping others. It's why I'm in the Peace Corps right now and why I'll choose my career for public service and not just money. So thank you, Grandma.

Love and miss everyone.

Back to the start

So I'm back in San Vicente, the place I lived for my first two months here, for training. Back with my old host family, who were as thrilled to see me as I was to see them. And back with my whole group, who are partying it up together for the first time since Election Day. Maybe there will be another history-changing moment.

The bad news is I forgot my memory stick at my old/new host family's house so I can't put up those pictures today. Don't get mad at me -- I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. just to get here. But the nice thing about being in the city every day is I can probably do it tomorrow!

As much as I love my site, being back here has its advantages. I am 20 minutes away from things like good pizza and ice cream sundaes. I get to hang out with a fun group of gringos (and my boyfriend!) 24/7 for a couple of weeks. I can get on the computer and/or go drinking every day of the week.

Some people think the best Peace Corps Volunteers are the ones who rough it the most. I say it's all about keeping yourself happy enough to do good work and be a friendly face in the community. And if that means two weeks of daily Snickers bars, alcohol and Internet, I say there's nothing wrong with that.

Paz, amor and dash me a note -- I could actually get back to you in 48 hours!

So this is the new year

I can't believe it's 2009!

New Year's Eve was actually much like Christmas. Except possibly stranger. During the day I learned how to make tamales (yum!) If you don't know what those are, they are corn mash stuffed with all kinds of things and sometimes sugared or made with young corn for a sweeter taste. Ours had chicken or beans inside.

Then a friend-ish woman in my community invited me to her house at 4 pm. I hadn't seen her in a long time so I expected to just drop by, chat, maybe eat still more tamales.

I got to her house and about 20 kids were sitting around with bibles. "Let the culto begin," said my friend's sister.

For background, I have been scared of Salvadoran evangelicals ever since my friend was dragged to their church during training and discovered that at the end of each sermon they spend half an hour crying. He was yelled at for not being "triste" enough. I have heard similar stories from other volunteers. And, come on, they call their worship sessions "cultos!" Luckily, there are hardly any evangelicals in my community, so I don't really offend anyone by spending most of my time with the Catholics. I'm not Catholic either but at least I know what I'm in for when I walk into Mass (thanks, Grandma.)

Were they going to make these kids cry???

Thankfully, no. They made some of them feel slightly bad for not bringing Bibles, then they talked about Noah's Ark, then they all sang songs about God that seemed pointless to me ("The butterfly flew over the hill and what did he see? He saw God. The end.") During all this, I stood there clapping awkwardly and wondering how I got into all this.

After the singing, they passed out toys and bowls of fruit salad heaped on top of vanilla ice cream and the kids played jump rope. Then the culto was over.

Evangelicals aren't so bad.

Neither was the rest of the night. I went home and had dinner with the family. All the family ever. Think 40 plates. By the time seats were found for everyone and one of the tíos said the longest grace in history, the chicken, rice and tortillas were cold.

Luckily, dinner ended so late that we all missed 4-hour church again. Score! After my cult meeting, I 'd had more than enough religion for one day.

Then all the kids threw firecrackers for 4 hours. I could barely hear an hour in. I destroyed a few plants trying to get the hang of Salvie fireworks.

At midnight, the church bells rang and everyone hugged each other and said "Feliz Año." The family is so big that this took 15 minutes. The whole world threw firecrackers and then we all went to dance. I danced with an old drunk man for about an hour because he kept following me.

The next day I woke up at 9 a.m., which is Earth-shatteringly late here. An hour later, I was still in my pajamas when the family invited me on a hike for which they were leaving that instant. Are you kidding me? I thought. I had slept about 6 hours, which is double what anyone else slept, as drunk people were waking them up all night (I guess after college I just tune them out?) I did have a reason to stay back, which was that I had agreed to help a friend with her English homework. I was later informed that it's a tradition to sleep for like three hours and then go hiking to the river on New Year's Day. Whatever floats their boat.

There are no pictures of all this craziness because the computers are once again refusing to cooperate. Maybe I will have more luck in San Vicente when I show up there on Thursday for 2.5 weeks of more training! Yay group reunion!

In other news, Saturdays were once my "day off" and now they are the busiest day of my life. I've signed on to teach computer classes all morning and an English class in the afternoon before youth group meetings. So it looks like you'll be hearing from me on Sundays from now on if I haven't melted down.

Paz y amor!