Feliz Dia de Gracias!

Yesterday, for Thanksgiving, I got together with some of my old training group in our old training center, where there is an oven. We proceeded to have a faux Thanksgiving. There was no turkey so we bought chicken, no cranberry sauce so we bought cranberry juice (which is $7 here!) Some things did turn out pretty well, like the mashed potatoes, green beans and apple pie. We shared the meal with some of the Salvadoran staff and they didn't hate it! Smashing success.

As we started to cook, we realized the stove and the oven weren't heating up. After many failed attempts, we ended up building a wood fire in a barrel in the backyard and cooking with that. Then someone figured out the problem with the stove was the circuit breaker. But we're already so Peace Corps that we didn't think of American things like that. Go hardcore us.

I feel like I always promise pics on this blog and never deliver. But the computer is now oh-so-slowly loading my pics onto facebook. I hadn't put up any so far, so we're talking like shots from the airport in September.

What else is new? I finally moved into my house and bought a lot of the things I needed. I had to use up most of my $450 move-in allowance. The house is a pretty yellow three-room thing in the center of town, between the church and the casa comunal (community center.) Still no fridge yet though. I have a terrible cold caused, I think, by moving from a very cold house to a very warm one.

I didn't find out about all the things going on in Mumbai until we turned on CNN at the hotel this morning. My heart goes out to everyone there and to everyone affected.

Paz y amor. Send me a note.

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.

Atol de piña

is my new obsession. We went to my friend's host mom's house yesterday after our "Spanish Rally" (which was really just a lot of games in Spanish) and had some. It's basically pineapple pudding with cinnamon in it. It was good but I am even more obsessed with it because my site is like the pineapple capital of El Salvador and I'm going to learn to make it! I also got a book today called "Cooking in the Campo" written by another Peace Corps volunteer. Considering my nearest supermarket, where I can buy American things like sliced bread, yogurt, spaghetti and granola will be 2 hours away but a store selling typical Salvadoran food is across the street, I have to learn to cook comida típica salvadoreña whether I like it or not.




So expect a lot of strange but awesome food after I get home!



Here is atol de piña courtesy of visitesantarosadecopan.org

Also, last Sunday was apparently National Pupusa Day here. I didn't know that at the time, so it was really weird to me that the DJ on the radio wouldn't stop talking about pupusas (the tortillas filled with beans, cheese etc.) They're so common here it would be like a DJ at home talking about bread for an hour. But apparently they made the world's biggest pupusa somewhere in the country. I can't find a picture of it online so you will just have to imagine it.

Tonight is my last night with the family. I'm giving them a framed photo of me with them and then I have to pack all my bags. I don't know how any of us are going to handle it. I was cleaning my room yesterday and my host mom flipped out because she thought I was packing and apparently that would not have been cool.

Back to the office for coffee (which is always instant because El Salvador exports all of its real coffee, thereby dashing my dreams of consuming great local coffee as in Vietnam.)

Paz y amor.

Wrapping things up...

I cannot BELIEVE we are leaving our communities in two days. Our host families are being weird about it, insisting that we have to visit them all the time and then yelling at us because they've decided that we're never going to.


I'm in town today for final interviews. The first one was just about how training went. As a weed-out interview, it was pretty halfhearted. They kept asking things like, "So what do you hate about El Salvador?" and "What would make you go home?" Um, full-scale war?


But since this is a blog about my Peace Corps service and that service starts Saturday, I'll revise my anxieties.

• The isolation. The nearest volunteer is a 45-minute bus ride away, which isn't too terrible, but I've never lived without seeing a ton of people every day and don't know how I'll handle it. Of course there will be Salvadorans in the community to make friends with, but that will take time.
• The work. I'll be teaching environmental ed in two schools, and although I have classroom experience, my enviro knowledge is very basic. The rest of my group is much better off than me -- they were all enviro majors, lived in eco-houses, worked for national parks, the works.
• The rural life. I'm a city girl and proud of it. I've been speaking campo (rural) Spanish and hating every minute of it because I want to speak city Spanish! I'm living in a village now and love it, but where I'm going is still more remote. Apparently I have to set up my own latrine once I get there (it will be a composting one, to show the community how to do it.) Plus villagers are more conservative than capitalinos.

But because there are two sides to every story, here are things I'm excited about:

• The site itself. Everyone keeps telling me it's beautiful and that the people are open and welcoming. And you can never have too many pineapples.
• More independence. I will finally be in control of my own schedule instead of being shuttled from boring class to meaningless workshop. I can improve my Spanish and do community work at my own (more efficient) pace.
• Doing actual work and feeling like I'm making a difference
• Having my own little place and cooking my own (much smaller portions of) food

Speaking of Spanish, my Spanish exit interview was also today and my level is apparently "advanced," finally. It's not yet fluent but I still have 2 more years to go!

Here is the picture of me and my host family that I am about to get framed and give as a gift:
And here by popular demand is Will, in my hammock, as always because his family doesn't have one. (Sad! Everyone has them here and I am certainly getting one if there isn't already one in my La Paz house.)

Fergie is on the radio here. It figures. Paz y amor.

Many changes

I have 10 minutes so I'll make this quick. Today we had our family fiesta to thank our families for putting up with us for so long. My family bought me a new shirt for it, which they shouldn't have done after feeding me and washing my clothes (even my underwear -- my host mom found where I was hiding it!) for months. I was one of the party organizers and despite last-minute rushing around everything went off without a hitch.

A bunch of us are going to the beach all day tomorrow, por fin.

This is my LAST WEEK as a Peace Corps Trainee. Friday I am sworn in as an official volunteer. Apparently the after party will be epic.

I know where my site is -- in the department of La Paz, pretty close to San Vicente and San Salvador, although not terribly convenient because it's up a mountain, so transportation takes longer than you would think. If you're looking at a map, it's a village close to Santa Maria Ostuma and San Pedro Nonualco. I will be working with two schools, a youth group and some other random community members. The site is apparently GORGEOUS and has a lot of fruit trees, especially pineapples. There are so many of those that the church has a pineapple on top of it instead of a cross. I was coincidentally already friends with the volunteer who's leaving that site and there will be a week overlap where we're both there and she can show me around and answer my questions.

I am a 7-hour bus ride away from my boyfriend. Yes, boyfriend. If you have seen facebook you know this already. He is another Peace Corps trainee. I won't waste a lot of this blog with gushy relationship postings, but expect hilarious stories about two Americans trying to date in El Salvador in a culturally appropriate manner (the ridiculous situations have already begun.)

A postscript to the state of Virginia: Thank you for making 22 Peace Corps trainees deliriously happy in San Vicente, El Salvador. I no longer hate you and promise to stop making fun of you forthwith.

Paz y amor. Write me!

What day is tomorrow?

Seriously, I was asked that and blanked. "Um, November 4th? Our lesson on deforestation?...oh, ELECTION DAY!"



Yes people, you know you live in a village in a Thirld World country when it takes you a few seconds to remember that. But the plan is still to watch the returns from the hotel in town. My friend is making guacamole and we're all buying chips.



As a (former?) aspiring journalist, I'm used to projecting objectivity, but if you know me you know who I voted for. I'll just come out and say that I can't imagine a Peace Corps volunteer wouldn't vote for Barack Obama. Especially since he promised to expand the Peace Corps, which most of the staff here has been praying for after 8 years of budget cuts. Our ag-for/environmental ed group is half the size of the previous group. I think tomorrow we might be taking a shot for every swing state that goes to Obama.



I have to dash off to a soccer game (maybe I'll be ruthless!) but here's what last weekend included: a trip to a pool complete with fish that nibbled our feet, a super-fun village dance, and Dia de los Difuntos, or the Day of the Dead. If you've studied Spanish you know what this is -- the people buy brilliant paper flowers and decorations and place them on their relatives' graves. Some of them even hang out at the cemetery and eat and the kids play with toys on their grandparents' graves.



Swearing-in is so close (the 14th!) and then I'll be a real volunteer. I just bought a dress at the market for the occasion. I haggled and everything.



Paz y amor -- we'll probably know who our next president is the next time I post!

El poder tiene que cambiar

That means "the power has to change" and it's what a woman said to me on the bus today. It was a classic Salvadoran conversation: she started out by saying it was cool outside (this morning is actually the coldest I've seen here, except for the mountains of Chalatenango) but what she really wanted to talk about was politics.

Woman: It's cool.
Me: Yeah it is! Better than this morning, though.
Woman: Yes. You're from the States? Where do you study?
Me: I don't. I'm in the Peace Corps.
Woman: Oh. Your elections are soon!
Me: Yes! Tuesday!
Woman: Ours are in March. Everyone here will vote for ARENA (the conservatives) but I prefer FMLN (liberals). ARENA has been in power for the last 20 years. It has to change.

Wow. America much?

We had a lecture on Salvadoran politics yesterday and it was FASCINATING. I wish I could transcript the whole thing for you. But basically it goes like this: the conservatives have been in power since the civil war ended in 1992. ARENA, the conservative party, comes from the Salvadoran military during the civil war; the FMLN were once the guerillas but the peace accords made them a political party. The violence in El Salvador no longer really comes from politics, but the country is still highly polarized. There are stories about people in San Salvador who have blocked construction crews from building roads they have wanted for decades because the other party is paying for the road. No one uses the casa comunal -- basically town hall -- in our village because the regional mayor and the village head are from different parties, so the mayor changed the locks. There is no such thing as bipartisanship here.

The conservative guy running for president now is an inexperienced chief of national police who picked a leftist for his running mate in order to generate mass appeal, but instead confused everybody; the liberal is a famous ex-journalist and skilled orator who is hampered by the fact that the rest of his party are ex-guerillas and by the attack ads that effectively tie him to Hugo Chávez. Add that to the fact that El Salvador is traditionally a very conservative country and you have a dead heat. I'm sure I'll be blogging about this constantly.

For the record, I did vote by emergency absentee ballot, sent by diplomatic pouch after the Prince George's County board of elections failed to mail or e-mail my ballot. I guess I'm not surprised. My friend from North Carolina had to do the same thing, even though he never votes -- North Carolina, after all, is a big-deal swing state.

For election night, our entire 22-person training group is going to the hotel in town. We've rented out the bar and are going to watch the results come in through Internet streaming. I'm so stoked. We still haven't figured out what we're doing for Halloween though.

Time has gone flying by. We've finished the baking project with our youth group after baking banana bread all day Monday. Even though we sold nearly $40 worth, we lost money because flour here is EXPENSIVE if it's not made from corn, something we never knew when we agreed to make banana bread. So it was a completely ineffective fundraiser but still a fun project. Now we're preparing to give them a lesson on deforestation. At first it was a big deal because our training director was going to come sit in, but yesterday through Friday there is a huge summit of all the Latin American presidents here in San Salvador. WHICH is a huge security issue because everyone's scared Chávez will show up and there will be riots, even though the Venezeulan president in question has said he won't come out of fear for his life. So basically none of the PC staff can leave San Sal to come see our presentation, so we get to slack off a little. Such is life here. You prepare for something for weeks, and then it rains or Hugo Chávez shows up and you end up twiddling your thumbs. I love it.

We have had some actual time where we were not working. We're mandated to spend all our afternoons investigating things in the community, so one afternoon we "investigated" a nearby waterfall with some Last weekend was our only free weekend, so half of our group went to a lake in the mountains and the other half went to the beach. I was in the lake group and I'm damn glad I was, because here's a picture: just kidding, the spyware on this computer is not permitting that.

The trip was complete with drinking and American food, two things that never happen to us anymore. We actually have a free weekend next weekend, but we have to spend that in our communities because Sunday's día de los difuntos, or Day of the Dead. If you've ever taken a Spanish class, you know what this is -- basically the Catholic Latin American alternative to Halloween. Everyone goes to the cemetery where their relatives are buried and leaves food, flowers and crafts. So the cemeteries are full of people and it's actually kind of festive. There's also a dance Saturday night, which should be intriguing because a) I've already forgotten how to salsa b) there will be beer which the men will drink but the women can't and c) I have a suspicion that the whole thing is a campaign fundraiser for my neighbor who is running for mayor from the most conservative party in the nation.

It has been cooler and windy here. I have constantly been told the scorpions come out when it's windy so I still sleep in fear. But other than that, life is grand and I should probably get back to work. Send me an e-mail, a facebook message, a comment, or a phone call. Paz y amor.