I could still be ruthless if you let me

After spending three weeks out of site, I left AGAIN this weekend for my first Peace Corps soccer game. Site guilt is a strange phenomenon -- after all, travel is usually marked by hopping around a country as much as you can. And when I first came to Peace Corps I thought I would be getting around the country all the time. But when volunteers, me included, spend more than a few nights out of their sites every month, the "site guilt" kicks in -- the feeling that we're leaving too much and having too much fun at the expense of work.

Maybe it's because there's so much to be done. When I think of the amount of projects I have going -- tons of time at school, revitalizing the community development organization, a stove-building project, Saturday English, youth group -- my head spins a little.

That said, THANK GOD I went to the soccer game. The first week back after my premature trip to the States was really tough, and I needed a healthy dose of fun and gringos. The way it works is, the soccer team plays a game in a different volunteer's site every month, against the Salvadorans from that community. This time, the women's team lost to the Salvies 2-1 on penalty kicks. But the men's team won for the first time in years!

During the pre-departure orientation we had before leaving for El Salvador, I said one of my Peace Corps goals was to learn how to play ruthless Salvadoran soccer. Apparently I was so animated about it that people made jokes about my "ruthlessness" for months. So when we had to pick nicknames for our jerseys, I picked Ruthless...and now all the volunteers who didn't know me before this weekend think my name is Ruth.

The game was timed perfectly with fiestas patronales in the site we went to, so after the game there was a lot of dressing up, drinking and dancing. One Salvadoran band even played Stone Temple Pilots, Green Day, Sublime, Radiohead and U2.

A bunch of us crashed in the host volunteer's house, in hammocks or on yoga mats or thin mattresses. Then, true to volunteer form, most of us were out the door at 7 a.m.

So back to my site and to school. Paz y amor.