And on to the next thing

Earth Day is over, for which oh, be joyful. Our performance of The Lorax went well despite some last-minute setbacks. Such as three of our Salvadoran child actors not showing up until the last minute, while I was frantically trying to recruit shy replacements from the crowd. Talk about a panic attack!

But no major disasters occurred, the students did their dramas and songs, and I gave out prizes for the winners of our recycling contest and our Earth Day drawing contest. Done!

But I don't get to rest just yet...today I have to run all over the village again in a last-ditch attempt to sign teenage girls up for our leadership camp next month, since today is the deadline and I only have one confirmed girl.

So I'm kicking myself off the computer now. Paz y amor!

A MENOS QUE...

So our Earth Day celebration is tomorrow and I can't wait for it to be over! But things are finally coming together and it looks like we should have a lot of good plays to present, including the all-volunteer production of El Lorax I mentioned.

I'm exhausted and busy as hell these days and don't even have weekends free to chill or go run errands, because after Earth Day we have a girls' leadership camp to deal with, and of course the stove project is still going. We're also going to start our school vegetable gardens. Etc, etc, etc...

At least the world map is finally finished. Varnish and all! Pictures to come.

It has also been really hot! Teetering on the edge of the rainy season is the worst, because we get the heat and the extreme humidity without the cool rain. I can't wait for the rainy season to come for real (it should happen in a week or so.)

Paz y amor.

Dia de la Tierra

Earth Day's coming up. Ever worked in retail during the holiday season, or at a newspaper during some kind of emergency? I have done both things and I feel the same way now.

For Earth Day, I suggested to my school director that I bring my Peace Corps theater group to perform The Lorax (which we are doing and which I am super excited for! I am the Once-ler.) Then they told me that they wanted 7th, 8th and 9th grade to do environmental dramas as well. I said great, picked out themes for each class's drama, gave the teachers information sheets about their topic and talked to the kids. But I made it clear at our Earth Day meeting that the teachers would be in charge of writing and rehearsing the plays with their students as well as costumes, etc.

So then of course my director demanded that I spend every day this week in school working on these four skits with the kids, when I have a pile of other things to do and really can only be there POSSIBLY one day. When I told him that, he kept insisting and hinting that I wasn't doing enough for them. Meaning, I wasn't doing their job along with my own.

I'm not even surprised by this kind of stuff anymore. We'll see what happens on Earth Day...

The world map is almost finished...I just have to slap the varnish on it so it doesn't fall off the wall! Then I will post a pic of it. But in the meantime, here are some pics of spring break...

The clock tower in San Vicente, destroyed in the 2001 earthquake and just recently repaired.

El Cuco BeachA bunch of apparently starving cows in my friend Nick's village that just stood there staring at each other for a REALLY LONG TIME.

Paz y amor.

What?!

Have I really not blogged in almost a month??? Me, who used to blog once or twice a week??? This blows my mind.

Well, at least I haven't written for a good reason -- I've been super busy! The world map is almost finished and I am constantly covered in paint. The troubles with getting it painted were puro El Salvador -- even though it's still the dry season, it rained several days last week, causing everyone to freak out and think it would rain this weekend. I wanted to find out for sure by seeing a weather forecast, but I have to ride the bus into town for the Internet or a newspaper, and the bus had broken down for days. So I decided not to take the chance, and we didn't paint on Saturday. But then it didn't rain Friday or Saturday and everyone decided the brief rainy period was over (apparently it often rains for about a week a month before the rainy season actually starts). So some of the youth group told me they would help me paint starting bright and early Sunday.

Of course they showed up and basically did nothing -- just ate ice cream and complained about how hot it was while I painted with some random guy who walked in off the street to help us. We all went home for lunch and they never came back, leaving me to paint most of the afternoon by myself. The youth leader did finally come back near the end of the day to help me finish up, though, and without all of their help this project would have taken much longer. I still have some finishing touches to do. All in all, it was a good birthday (yes, I spent my 24th birthday painting a map on a school and went home happy.)

Other things going on: still buying materials for the stove project, planning an Earth Day celebration in the school, preparing for a girls' leadership camp, generally falling apart with so much work to do!

Thank God I took some time out for a good spring break vacation. The first few days of it I spent drawing the map, of course, but after that I went to the beach, visited friends and hung out in the capital.

I was going to put up pictures of this vacation but this computer freaks out whenever I try. Maybe next time, at a different cyber cafe?

Paz y amor.