Nothing of Importance

I don't have anything planned to write about this time. I am just spending some time in Sonsonate downloading a few things onto my flash drive to take back to my own house and computer so I figured an update was due.

I just got back from a few days respite in the East with a few of my buddies from my training group. We hit up Playa El Cuco for 3 days and I got quite burned. The beach was beautiful though, and if you didn't notice all the thatch roofed buildings with huge patios, I'd say the beach reminded me a lot of the beaches in LA. The similarity was slim though, considering the warm water and the salvadorans everywhere. Either way it was a good time, and since I saw Whitney, now I can look forward to my mayor asking a million questions about her. Somehow he is in love with her (as most Salvadorans are) without ever having met her, he only saw her for a few minutes at swearing in and in my photos.

I am also looking forward to the coming week. I have a cool conference coming up on Tudesday regarding creating a forum to help stop people smuggling, indentured servitude and other forms of human rights violations in my communities. I think that should be good and I am happy it is partially being government sponsored. Also coming up is a soccer game on Saturday, which I am looking forward to because I jost got my PCV uniform and was given a pair of cleats, so I want to break those all in and make a fool of myself playing against salvadorans. And most importantly my birthday is coming up this week. Such a good week!

Also I am trying to get my photo site thing worked out. I started a webshots gallery, and when I look at it I have two albums and some other photos, check it out using the link on the right and if it isn't working please leave a comment for me. I want to be able to share my photos with everyone, but there don't seem to be lots of sites that meet my criteria for photo sharing.

Holiday Reflections

The High Holidays have always been at once some of my favorite holidays of the year and some of my most dreaded. Dreaded for obvious reasons, those long services, getting really dressed up, no eating, you know, the works. Those are all minor discomforts though, and I've borne them happily for years because I know that the holidays mean so much more than just wearing a suit and sitting for hours. It took me years to actually listen to what was going on in services, and in actuality that isn't really enough since its in Hebrew and I don't speak the language. So I started to read that translations and actually pay attention to the sermon. I like the spirit of the holidays and although I don't buy 100% of all the g-d stuff, I agree in spirit. That has been my feeling for years and it still is my feeling.

Spending the Holidays in El Salvador has given me a refreshing look at my take on the Holidays. I still feel much the same way, that I agree with the spiriet of the Holidays and I find that they have a powerful message. What could be more important than celebrating the fact that you have survived another year, hoping for it to be a sweet year and taking all due precaution to make a fresh start and make up for whatever may have gone wrong the year before. That has all that much more meaning when you find yourself in a new country, with a semi-new language and very few people that you know or can rely on. While trying to make out as much of the sermon as I could because it was in Spanish, I got to thinking about jewish values in general and how i was making as good a start to a year as I think I have ever made.

First and foremost, as jews we grow up in a particularly odd state of being taught to read and write hebrew, but not to understand it. That translates directly to prayer, we can read and write it, but not understand what is coming from our mouths, or furthermore the pages. We are left to either carry out the motions or dig and ask for meanings. Our understanding of the actual prayers hinges on our language skills outside of hebrew, and I always thought that in part we continues using hebrew in order to make prayer semi-universal. We are not taught the torah as we should be, but rather prayers for our bar/bat mitzvahs, and so we are left with a void of knowledge in terms of what the stories actually mean. We are taught concepts of jewish life, but not where they come from or how we should expect to look for them in everyday life. One such concept is Tikun Olam, we all know it means "heal the world", but really we learn to associate it with donating some food or clothes to a communal box or putting some change in a box.

I sat in the temple in San Salvador thinking about that concept. Tikun Olam took on the basic meaning that I described before when I was a child. When I was in high school and going to jewish camp every summer it had a slightly larger importance when i actually endeavored to do some community service through school and camp, but rarely more than was required, and only more than was required when it was with friends and really fun. In college Tikun Olam and Community Service started to play a more active role in my life because Community Service was one of the values of my (jewish) fraternity. As such I had to actually plan and encourage others to go about doing doing Community Service for the first time in my life. Didn't seem like much then, and in truth it wasn't much, because we really didn't succeed in any large projects, but we tried. Up until that poing Tikun Olam and Community Service were one and the same. That is to say, they were sometime activities to be planned and executed, but not a value I was living every day of my life. Because after all, aren't values something you live with? Shouldn't you be practicing your values?

So it finally dawned on me that though I live in a country now where the Star of David and the Menorah are taken as Evangelical signs and the people here haven't the slightest clue what a Jew is, I am actually living closer to at least one of my Jewish values than I ever have in my life and learning first-hand what it actually means to heal the world. Afterall, the world is a big place, much larger than the US or Israel, which is where most mone and goods that jews generally give through the temple go. And more than that, I am discovering that I am learning more about my values than just Tikun Olam, humility, sharing and perseverance come to play daily.

Sometimes you find out about the things you learned and are told to practice when you are farthest from the places where that is most easily done. After all, what is more important to me, the fact that I didn't go to temple on Yom Kippur (but still fasted) or that I thought about things and discovered I am doing ok?

Adventures in My Backyard

So this post isn't for everyone, but I am gonna put it out therelike it is or was. First I'll start off by mentioning all that has recently happened before launching into the anecdote the title refers to.

Well in the last week or so I have managed to finally meet all the other volunteers that currently live in my Municipio, all five of them. For quite some time I wasn't really sure exactly how many other volunteers lived near me or where exactly they lived, but now I know, and knowing is half the battle. All five of them are girls, none of them is n my program and they have all been here longer than I have. So I feel a bit like an outsider for now, but I am sure that will change with time and the realization that all five of them speak english and are accustomed to the same sorts of food as me. Already I joined them for a charla at a school about recycling and I will be joining them again on monday to give the same charla to several other schools. In this exciting charla I get to play either an empty can or a discarded shoe.

As far as monday goes, it is also Yom Kippur, so we will see how the fast goes while walking around in the heat carrying props for our charla. I have promised myself to try, but have resigned myself to the realization that forgoing water would be a horrible mistake, so I will be drinking throughout the day. It just isn't feasible for me to return to San Salvador to celebrate this holiday as much as I'd like to. I have been spending lots of time out of my site recently and I have to get some stuff done, mainly my quarterly report and some work on ADESCO training curriculums, not to forget the trash charla on Monday as well. But that comes with the realization that I am no longer just an idle spectator here in my site, I am beginning to take on responsibilities and get some work done.

Ok, time for my fun story...

It has been drying out lately, meaning it hasn't been raining a whole lot, but it rained with a vengeance yesterday. I have been bugging my landlord to come by and fix a few problems with my house, but he has been putting that off and being otherwise very Salvo about it. Thats ok, I am growing accustomed to the life here and realize he isn't doing anything out of the ordinary. Well yesterday it rained rather hard in the evening and I my first troublesome experience in my new house. First you should all know that my shower and bathroom are in my backyard, both are covered of course, but I still need to walk across my uncovered backyard to get to them. Furthermore, I haven't managed to buy lights for either yet, so at night it can be rather dark in there with the door closed, which I tend to avoid if possible. Additionally my toilet itself has issues, it has no seat, only a lid that fell off and it needs to be bucket flushed. Well yesterday I had the runs, so I was presented with the not so fun situation of using my sorry excuse for a bathroom in the pitch black rain. Well since I don't want you to use your magination I will describe how this works, bring the headlamp the find the bathroom, hover over the toilet, aim, shoot and hope for the best. That works fine and all in the daytime, or when you aren't in urgent need of the facilities. Last night my aim was a little off and I wound up splashing a bit on the back of the toilet and on my board shorts, which I was wearing because my other clothes were soaked. And the bucket flushing caused a little more splash, so all around last night wasn't so great. I got up early today to mop and clean and this afternoon I plan to do some laundry. (By hand of course)

High Holiday

I was a bit worried when my parents first brought up the question of what I would do for the High Holidays some time ago. I figured the only answer to that was vamos a ver. Well it turned out to work and it has reaffirmed to me that no matter where you find yourself there are always some other jews there that figured out how to carry on and will gladly take you under their wing.

I am sitting in the nicest house I have been in since I left Los Angeles and the only house that legitimately reminded me of the way houses are constructed and layed out in the US. 6 volunteers including myself have invaded this house, eaten our fill and generally made ourselves at home. All this thanks to the generosity of one family who are members of the embassy here. I would never have met them if it weren't for a curious phone call from another volunteer wondering if I was in fact jewish as she had suspected.

I am happy, well fed and glad to wish everyone a Shana Tova.

The Boda

Ok, so September 17th was a monumental day for my family and me. The first of my cousins got married, which means the first of this generation in my family. It makes it all that much more monumental that I grew up with my cousin and more than anything he is like a brother to me. I can’t seem to separate in my mind that kid that I always played sports and video games with and to this day we still enjoy an unhealthy amount of potty humor and drinking stories. But more than that, it was a crazy trek from rural El Salvador to the civic center of Baltimore and back in only 3½ days.

I started off by waking up before the roosters even started crowing, which in and of itself if an extraordinary feat, and made my way through the country on the first bus of the day out of my site. It was a big game of leapfrog from one terminal to the next and somewhere in the middle I found myself wondering through the shady central market of San Salvador where I saw some things that will be burned in my mind for the rest of my life. Eventually I made it to the airport before the doors of my airline even opened, so began the giant game of sitting around airports. I think I actually spent more time waiting in and around airports than I did in planes and certainly more than I did in cars or beds. Buses would be a different story altogether. Strangely it takes as much time to trek from the Airport to my house as it took both planes including layover from El Salvador to Maryland. But it was all worth it.

I got the honor of being in my first wedding party and I got to see many members of my family who I haven’t seen in much longer than the nearly 4 months I have been gone. I never knew how tiring it was to get dressed up and take photos then stand around in the front of a wedding, nor did I ever think how rewarding it was. I wouldn’t have traded that ache in my feet for anything on Sunday night. Through the whole affair I saw family, ate good food and took some lukewarm showers. (No, I was not mentally or physically prepared to jump from the freezing cold showers here in El Salvador to the hot massaging showers in the Hyatt.)

As I said to many people before I left I had mixed feelings about rushing back to the US so soon and for such a short period of time. But it turned out alright. It didn’t give me nearly enough time to acclimate to life in the US again, and therefore it didn’t give me the opportunity to really start missing my life there. All in all I came away with a bagful of stuff to use in my life here and when the whirlwind was over I feel more like it was a really exhausting dream than anything else. A dream that leaves you with great photos and some really comfy sheets.

Ok so I do´n't have my camera with me and that is bugging me because I can't add any of the beautiful pictures I took while hiking around the hills in northern Morazan last weekend. I was there to celebrate Angie's birthday which happens to be on the same day as my father, his two sisters and one of my cousins. That is a lot of people for one day, but it makes it easy to remember. Anyway, so a bunch of us descended upon Angie's site and crashed in a hotel for two nights while we hung out and hiked aound. I have to admit she got a beautiful area. She lives way up in the hills near Honduras and from looking around you would forget you are in El Salvador. Everything is Pine and Oak and it reminded me quite a bit of the higher areas in California like Yosemite and Tahoe. Its also fairly cool, which was a big surprise seeing as how its El Sal and all. But alas I don't have my camera with me so none of you can see these lovely photos and bask in what I am describing.

On the home front I've paid for a house for this month, which solves the issue of finding a house. Unfortunately simply having a house opens many more issues, like buying a bed and other such necessities as well as the little things you never think about needing. For example, I now am set out on the task of acquiring various sizes of guacals, enough dishes for myself and maybe a guest or two, some cleaning items, various hardware items like lightbulbs and whatever else comes up. Its more work than I thought, but its something to do. It gave me an excellent excuse to run of to the closest city and I plan to spend the day here.

I am personally torn about how I feel to be going to the States for Elie's wedding. Of course I want to see my family. And of course I want to get some much needed items while I am in the States. The problem is that I don't know how I am going to handle being in the US again after so short a time and knowing that I will have to come back here. I mean I am just now getting used to life here and this may soil that. In addition I feel just a tad guilty for leaving my site and flying off so early in my service, I mean its not usually done, but its for a good reason and I gave lots of warning. I know I shouldn't feel too bad because my Alcalde will be out of town too, but I am leaving on independence day. That could mean horrible flying conditions or an open airport, I am hoping for the latter. Either way it is what it is. That leaves me trying to figure out what to pack and how to get to the airport by bus.

I am still just sorta tagging along on the various tasks that the social promoters currently have going, but now I am starting to have a little more input and I am actually being invited for various tasks not just asked where I think I want to go. I am looking forward to the time after I get back from the wedding because the promoters will be changing their focus from the Civil Protection Committees back to ADESCOs and they want me to help them build a curriculum to teach the boards leadership. And they have plans to continue educating these boards afterwards, so I will most likely help develope future topics and curriculums as well. Additionally I need to do my entry into site event, which is basically a charla to community leaders explaining who I am and what I can do, then inviting them to do the same. That should get my face out there a little more and introduce me to some new people in my town. I don't need to do it yet, but now that I am settling and my personal needs are getting covered, I figure the sooner the better.

For my brother who is very impatient, you should know that in order to update my blog I need to find a good bit of time and an internet cafe. The two at the same time are hard to come by and for the most part I plan to update whenever I am in one of the cities here, which I am hoping to do once a week, but it may be less. I also may be able to find an hour here or there at a closer internet cafe if I can't make it to a city every week. But the point is that internet is a rarity here and I've gotta find time to travel to somewhere that has it. Also to my brother, thanks for taking care of stuff for me while I am gone.

Trying to get my feet wet

Literrally I am just trying to get my face out there and see as much of my municipality as I possibly can. That is harder than you think considering my municipality is one of the 10 largest in the country. (I figured that out after some research into relative sizes.) Furthermore I would like to get and about more, but I find myself lurking about my town trying to figure out just what to do about a house and trying to stalk the few people I know that either own houses or can help me look for one. There is much more to getting out as well, like transportation, or lack thereof. My Alcaldia doesn't have its own vehicle right now, so all the social promoters and I get around in whoever's pickup can be borrowed that day and make runs to various communities and run back and forth picking people up and dropping people off. Sometimes that leaves us waiting at a site for a while or getting somewhere else really late. It can also leave me stuck somewhere much later than I wanted to be or with a different social promoter at an event I wasn't really planning on attending.

The random location and attendance pattern isn't all bad though. Tuesday I stumbled upon a meeting of people who were trying to build a legalized community group with aspirations to be a environmental group. They apparently are a group of fishermen who have gotten permission from the government to collect turtle eggs and then hatch them and return the baby turtles to the wild. Now they are looking to legalize their group in order to solicit funds. With this they plan to receive donations of food, money and equipment to make a effect a more permanent ability to raise and release turtles. Of course there is always a hitch, or several. They don't have enough people is the first problem, and I think we can fix that if they would just agree to either join the already existing community group and use their legal standing, or look for more members, but they seemed skeptical. Additionally they aren't all environmentally minded. On closer inspection they actually keep and eat or sell a portion of the turtle eggs. Seems a little counter-intuitive for a group trying to raise and release turtles, but hey, other people are just collecting the eggs and selling them, so if these guys want to raise and release some, that is something that nobody else is doing. So I figure it is better to help these guys out and try to get them to raise more and sell fewer eggs than to just let them be. Still, I am excited to have stumbled upon one of the first projects I can help with and get excited about.

Up until now I have just been tagging along and watching somewhat dumbfounded at what my social promoters have been doing, this is my first real chance to contribute to the developement.

First impressions again

Ok I know I already went to my site and had my first impressions, but since I wasn't really "living" there yet I reserve the right to have my first impressions again.

Ok, so the pueblo is actually much bigger than it looks because being nestled in the hills and among a forest, the houses and streets sort of meander into the hills and trees and can't really be seen unless you know where to look. Apparantly I had no idea during my site visit. Now I know because I went around meeting people while they were fleeing from their houses because their houses were being fumigated.

Also, my town is still just as quiet as I thought. Really very little happens after the alcaldia closes. I hope this changes with time and as I meet people. I know people are hanging out somewhere, probably in their houses or somewhere semi-private. I figure as I get to know people maybe I will be invited to tag along to something or other and maybe even get invited over for dinner now and then. One thing at a time though. I managed to go to the Sunday soccer games, and although I didn't really meet anyone new, at least they all know that I like soccer... er fútbol... and that I know the rules. I'm hoping fútbol is the first step to integration.

My house situation is coming along slowly. Right now I am staying in a quaint little room for free which is great while I wait. I don´t really want to stay there though, as I had my heart set on the larger house that the room is part of. I can´t really cook or clean or store food or anything while my living situation is so up in the air and I really wanna get this settle because eating out all the time isn't as much fun as indicated in El Salvador, especially on a limited budget. I am doing my best to talk to the owner, but he is busy, I am busy and for some reason the language barrier is much harder to overcome with him. I mean I speak spanish, or so I thought...

So that leads me to spanish. The Peace Corps in El Salvador has created a multi-tier system for rating the spanish skills of its volunteers. I came in as a Novice advance, which in my words is like the best of the losers. The aim of the language facilitators is to get the lower level speakers into the intermediate range where they can communicate more easily and have a better understanding. I jumped from Novice Advance to Intermediate Advance, which I am proud of, but I was really hoping to get up to Advance Low. That really would have been a good accomplishment. Still I have nothing to complain about I jumped three levels, which is more than most. It has only been a small amount of time and already my spanish is much better, I am excited to think how I will be speaking after a year or more.

Its Over

Training that is. Tomorrow I go live on my own like a big boy. I even arranged my own big boy house and I got a big boy desk at my alcaldia. Aren't you all proud of me? I feel all grown up, and like I just graduated from 7th grade or something like that.

Today we go out and enjoy ourselves as much as our modest amount of cash will allow. That sadly isn't very much but damn are we gonna make the best of it and enjoy ourselves. Splurging on ourselves seems like the thing to do tonight. After all, it isn't every day that you officially become a Peace Corps Volunteer and take an oath to uphold and protect the constitution... so help you g-d. So in that spirit, I think that the constitution might be at the bottom of a can or five and I need to do my duty by looking for it. I know its down there somewhere.

I don't know how else to ask

I asked once by mass email but nobody responded. I don´t have contact (email and such) for a few people. This means Cyrus, Peter, Avi and anyone else that feels that they haven't heard from me but thing they should have. I know at least one or two of you have read this blog. Please anyone that reads this and knows some contact info for some people that should be hearing from me please send me an email.

Everything else is going well. I am actually sad to be leaving Santo Domingo. It sucks to say goodbye to people.

San Chico

So I am finally in my site and the town is as small as I had been told. However the Alcaldia has a decidedly large town feel considering how large the municipio is. I mean the town itself is about a quarter of the size of Santo Domingo, but municipio is one of the larger ones in the department and the Alcaldia employs more than 5 times as many people as the one in Santo Domingo. I´ve already been provided with a desk and it is only my second day of my site visit, I don´t even live here yet.

That leads me to my second point, housing might be interesting for a while. Since the town is so small there don´t seem to be many houses on the market. There is a nice gentleman that seems to be friends or possibly a coworker of my counterpart in some capacity that owns two large houses. Quite frankly I was looking to rent a small house all to myself, not a large room in a huge house with a shared bathroom. For now I have asked just about everyone who works at the Alcaldia and actually lives in town to think if they know of anything. I am supposed to see another house sometime today, I´m hoping it is my dream house. If not the front casita part of the huge house will become available mere days after I return here, and that is better than just a room in the house.

The trip out here was interesting. I crashed in San Sal the night before in hopes of simplifying the trip and shortening my travel time. It seems I succeeded in shortening travel time, but not simplifying the trip. I asked the cobrador on my bus to tell me when to get off for the western terminal, he asked me where I was going, I told him, then he told me to get off at a different spot which had the same bus. Sounds like he did me a favor, but I was supposed to meet someone at the terminal, so I had to get another bus back. This time the cobrador ignored my request entirely and I spotted the terminal on my own one stop too late, and wound up walking back to the terminal. Not fun with a big overnight bag on your back. But I met up with Stephen and we took all the necessary busses without further complication.

Right now I am sitting in the only internet cafe in my town and it has dial-up internet. I haven´t used dial up in some time, but I think I may need to get used to it. That or get used to traveling a little bit to use some faster internet. I am here because my counterpart isn´t in the office today and I am supposed to go see a house and a go to a meeting in the afternoon, but have nothing to do right now until lunch.

Taller and more

So today was my group's Taller, something like a day-camp with a teaching them. I think it went decently well overall. It did work to reinforce my thoughts that I don't like doing presentations to youth alone, but in a group of volunteers I rather enjoy myself. Even if I do wind up taking a lesser role than some more outgoing people with better spanish skills. Still, I managed to bring lots of leadership excersises to the table that I learned back in the day at TEAM Cal. I like the planning more than the execution and I think I would probably like the whole thing a bit more in English, but thats life. You can't always get what you want, especially in a spanish speaking country. We did luck out and get to use our training center, so we had money left over to use to get the children and ourselves Pollo Campero, which is something like the Salvadoran version of KFC, except that they are all wild about it. All in all I am happy about the day and I'm sorta looking forward to tonight since it is the last night of fiestas in my town. I can't seem to get enought elote (corn) in any of its forms at the fiesta. My leading favorite is elote with salt and lime, but they have the rediculous and aptly named elote loco which I enjoy from time to time. (I didn't do a good job of describing it before, but it is corn with mayo, mustard, cheese, bbq sauce and taco bell style salsa. It doesn't sound appetizing I know, but it is strangely addictive and tasty.)

So Much Happening...

Its hard to describe it all. This past week has been a bit of a blur. Huge amounts of activity and small amounts of sleep have made it seem like one big continuous event in my mind.

Where I last left off fiestas were starting in my town and I was getting very little sleep. Well I had no idea at the time, but things were just getting started. Its louder than I ever thought it could be and my house is more crowded than a barn at Harris Ranch. The noise is almost unbearable every night, and more people arrive to sell products and set up booths or food stands every day. To top it off, the band that lives in my house sets off fireworks at 4 in the morning and walks around town playing music to wake people up. Crazy I know, but true. And just to make sure I was a little more uncomfortable, water has been out here for more than 6 days. My family has been going down to a river to get water to bathe and flush toilets with.

During all this commotion we managed to have a few cool trips with the trainees. On Saturday we went to two sites that contain some ruins from Mayans. The first site had what seems to be the remains of a small town preserved because of several volcano eruptions. Nearby there is a site that seems to be more of a religious site that is composed of several pyramids and a large square. Its a bit of an experience because we got to walk basically all over the ruins and played frisbee in the old square. I enjoyed it, especially in comparison to the few Mayan sites I had visited in Belize years ago. The construction style is nearly identical, but the materials are totally different, leaving the Salvadoran sites much more exposed to decay by the elements. Still I find ruins fascinating and somehow mysterious to walk around and think about.

After all that excitement we all got up very early Sunday morning and set out to climb the volcano just outside San Vicente. I forget the actual name at the moment, but it was a hell of a climb. Actually I'd put it up there as the hardest hike I've ever done. That is a big claim since I've had some crazy hikes and and hiking mishaps, but I feel it is justified. We left our sites at just about 6am and got to our starting point and began to climb just before 7. On the way there were several nice vistas and we saw the house of one of the former presidents of El Salvador who apparently owns the majority of the volcano. Midway up I started having extreme hip pains, but I decided to tough it out because this wasn't going to be an everyday opportunity. I don't regret my choice, but from that point on it got more and more steep and my hip reminded me often that it wasn't happy. For a good way I was almost climbing on all fours and we were covered by forest canopy, so I couldn't see any progress. But at about 11:30 I got to the top and it was absolutely beatiful up there above the clouds. The view and time at the top was totally worth it. The descent went well except for a little bit of rain. But at that point it was too nice and I couldn't really complain.

Today we got our site assignents and I´m still realing over the news. I can´t wrap my head around the fact that I finally have a place to call my own. I am not posting the story because it seems a little odd, but it went out in an email and if you want to hear it email me and I will fill you in.

Getting a Little Nuts

Things are beginning to get a little nuts around here. As time winds down in training I find that life is speeding up a little bit and my emotions are a little all over the place.

The first and most obvious reason why I am a little out of my mind right now is that we've had both of our interviews to assign our sites and we are less than a week away from finding out where we will be spending the rest of our two years. My APCD (basically my boss) seemed very excited after my second interview and gave me the impression that based on my statements, he already had a site that seemed to be my cup of tea. That seems encouraging to me that there is a site that seems to fit based on my personality and what I like working on. But damn it I want to know now where I will live. The waiting really is the hardest part.

The second and more confusing issue on my mind is the early termination of our second and third trainees from our training group. Granted they are married so that makes two departing at once a little less shocking, but I really feel like I was getting to know them and that they would make it for the long haul. I understand their decision and I can't say that I blame them, but it feels like things are slowly falling apart. Besides, Will was one of the guys and we are very few in numbers these days. Two of the three that have left were guys and there weren't that many of us to begin with. This just sort of sets the wheels in motion wondering who else is destined to jump ship, and who else I will regret losing as an in-country pal.

The final nail in my crazy coffin right now is something called Fiestas Patronales. Loosely translated it means festivals for saints, or the patron saints of each town. Yes, each town here has its own saint and I'll be damned if they don't celbrate the hell out of him. The fiesta here isn't even supposed to begin for a week, but already every person that could possibly be selling anything has set up shop in the park, which happens to be right in front of my house. Noises and hollering continue all night and just about drive me nuts til I pass out with exhaustion. I am wondering what it will be like in a week when more stalls arrive to sell stuff, rides start getting set up and fireworks start going off with even more regularity than they already do. I don't imagine there will be much sleeping involved. On the up side I am all set to try some elote loco, which is crazy corn, or corn with every topping known to man on it. Hopefully there will be some photos.

Isla Tasajera

For a little rest and relaxation we went to a little island off the Costa del Sol called Isla Tasajera. We rented out the entirety of a hotel for $26 per person for 2 nights, that included all food and lodging. It was a little on the expensive side considering our budgets, but I think it was worth every cent.

We started by taking a private bus straight from the training center, which is the best way to do it in my opinion. The bus ride was what you'd expect of a bunch of 20 something people in a private bus on their way to party it up on an island, in other words, party bus. That was largely the case until two police men busted into the back door and I proceeded to hide everything from view. However we were lucky and they just wanted to hitch a free ride for a few miles and didn't have any plans to hinder our fun. Once we got to the beach two little water taxis took us the rest of the way and we proceeded to eat dinner then continue with our festivities. That meant lots of cards and lots of beer, a good combo if you ask me.

Somehow when we were deciding rooms I picked a room with two of the other guys, but when I turned around only my stuff was in the room and I was a bit confused about why they went to other rooms. I made sure to tell everyone that I had a room to myself and anyone could switch if their room was crowded, but I remained solo. That made me feel a bit lonely in the grand scheme of things. Did I smell or something? I mean what did I do to either earn a room solo or get abandoned for the comfort of more crowded spaces?


The morning was our first real view of the island since we got in after dark. It was quiet and pretty and I got a few nice shots of the sun on the water in the morning. Clearly we spent most of the day at the beach playing in the water and getting burnt. The water was warmer than I am used to for the Pacific and the beach was a sort of silty sand. The waves were fun and large enough to play around in. So we swam, played frisbee, kicked around a ball and good fun was had by all.

The evening was largely a repeat of the first, but this time a little more boistrous and with a little more in the way of adult beverages. This time we played lots of cards and talked for hours. I can't speak enough of the combination of beer, cards and hammocks, it does wonders for the spirit.


The following morning some of us took a scenic boat ride and saw some of the nice houses and boats along the Costa del Sol, as well as a little bird infested island. We left mid day.

The Pajaro, the Guacal and the Carlos

So now that I have managed to sneak away and have some time to update I realized my previous account was somewhat clinical and bland. I will recount some of the interesting things that slipped my mind when I wrote about Field Based Training.

First and foremost I was originally offered a matress on the floor of the Casa Antonia, she managed to one up herself by presenting me with a bed upon my return. I was thankful for the upgrade and assured her that I would be a good house guest. To my surprise not all was alright with the bed. First it did´n't have a matress, instead just a few sheets folded over the base of the bed, thats ok though, I can manage on a floor or a hammock in a pinch and this was better than either of those. Upon laying on the bed it became immediately evident that at the foot of the bed a large guacal (think big plastic tub) was hogging all the foot space. I did my best to move it without making too much of a fuss, but it was full and stacked high with luggage and what seemed to be half of all the clothes in the room. I didn't bother too much with it after that, I had made a little more space, enough to spread my legs and put one foot on either side of the guacal.

My big surprise came during the night after I had already dealt with the problems of the blankets and the guacal. To my shock and horror there was a thumping under the bed, originating from a cardboard box without any labels. I didn't know exactly what to do with it but just sorta ignore it and hope it wasn't life threatening. By the time the sound presented itself everyone was asleep except me. The next morning Antonia entered my room and removed the mystery box. Apparently a small parrot sleeps in the box under the bed every night, and since I hadn't been to the back of the house during daylight the day before, I didn't see the parrot on its daytime perch. Suffice to say that whenever the parrot had a bad night, so did Carl.

Field based training

So we just came back from field based training. I encourage you all to consult Matt Ladd's blog which is linked on the right and see if he has put anything up about it because he had a very interesting experience of it. I am not going to steal his thunder, and most likely he'll have some funny account of it.

As for me and the trainees that went with me, we had a reasonably uneventful time by comparison, but memorable and pleasant by all regards. We went to Jayaque which is high up in the hills and as such has a wonderfully mild climate. Not too many bugs, a nice breeze and never too hot compared to the rest of the country. Beatiful views and nice people as well, perhaps the only fault is that the town itself is one big hill and you always seem to be walking uphill no matter where you are going.

We got acquainted with the town, met our families and picked up trash with a group from the school the first day. It was cool to see the kids get involved, but upon buying some goods, I was disappointed to see some of the kids throw their trash on the ground after we had spent over an hour picking up countless bags worth of trash off the ground and one of the students had given an impromptu chat about why littering is bad. So much for work and information inspiring a change in behavior. I think some of them got it, but honestly I think that eventhough they all seem to know the repurcussions, they still don't really care. Unfortunate indeed, we have our work cut out for us.

The second day was uneventful, we painted a basketball court with some motivated kids. Hard, good work, but not much to say about it. I got paint all over my hands and shoes.

The third day was charla day. Two seperate two hour charlas can really wear a person out. Thank god that we were giving them in teams, I would have wanted to shoot myself if I had to do that alone. The first charla went really well. The little kids ate up our dinamicas and they loved Whitney because she knew so many fun games. Will and I would have been a little lost without her, so thank you Whitney, you saved us from failure. Speaking of failure, the second charla didn't go as spectacularly well. Will got sick and left, which meant we had to do his part without prep. Additionally we had prepared a charla for older kids and then we were presented with a slew of kids from 1st to 9th grade. Let me tell you that giving a mixed age charla is not fun, half the group is always either confused or bored. Luckily the other half is usually somewhat engaged. Our facilitator ensured us that we did a good job given the circumstances, but I think it was a bit of a failure on a whole. Can't win 'em all though. At least I know what its like now.

Today we hiked up close to the peak of the mountain that Jayaque is on. Beautiful views, I love hikes for that reason. I could have done without all the spider webs though. I did enjoy myself though. Its interesting to hike through coffee fincas and see some of the families living in shacks that are clearly there to work the land at rock bottom prices. I felt sorta bad for them being so removed from the town and living in such shacks. I have a better idea of what it must have been like when coffee was the dominant export here. I don't know that life is any better for the people in the fincas, but at least its not everyone's life here anymore.

I forgot about this one...

So for a little while I forgot to mention the duck man. I call him the duck man because he had some strange obsession with ducks... but I'll explain that a little later. When we were in San Sebastian buying hammocks we were approached by an obviously poor old man who came to beg us for a little change. We assured him that we had only what we needed for the bus home, but he wasn't dissuaded, he wanted to talk to us instead once he found out the gringos could speak spanish.

Angela somehow let slip that she was from Australia, which prompted this man to begin a series of unintelligle questions about the rights and abilities in the land down under. Of them all I only understood one, and I was the only person that understood it. It seems he desperately wanted to know if you could marry a duck in Australia. This seemed strange to me, so I didn't let on that I knew what he was asking about and just feigned ignorance with the rest. But this was his most important question so he began to motion like a duck and repeat the question over and over. Finally when thoroughly exhausted of that he decided to sing me a song since I seemed to understand him the best.

It was while he was singing to me that he touched my knee and I got a whiff of his breath. Suddenly all I could think of was furiously washing my knee and face. I didn't mean it in any bad way, it was just all my mind was transfixed on at the time because I didn't want to be talking to him, much less serenaded by him.

It wasn't until after the whole sordid and filthy affair that I discovered a little something about marrying ducks... apparently the word for marriage and hunting are very similar in spanish. Casar is to marry and cazar is to hunt, subtle but important difference. I choose to believe it was his lack of a front tooth that forced his Z's into sounding like S's. So but for the grace of one tooth we might have had a nice talk about hunting ducks instead of marrying ducks and being serenaded.

Ok, time for random stuff

Since I am waiting for photos to upload and I have nothing better to do in the mean time I will recount many true and possibly amusing events that have taken place during my time here so far.

First and foremost I believe there is a Salvadoran man conducting some sort of Jean racketeering scam out of one of the back bedrooms of our house. I am not sure how this works, but I can assure you he is there and believes he is making money. The scam seems to consist of walking to the back of the house, rummaging through a few bins of jeans wrapped in plastic, making all sorts of noise, but making no discernable progress in all of his sorting. No customers ever come or go and he never leaves with any jeans, nor does he ever come with any. Once or twice he has asked me if I needed jeans, but I declined the invite to join his little scheme. I've also spied him discussing the finer points of selling pants with Don Fabio, but I think he isn't taking Fabio's advice, because the jeans just get sorted and never sold.

I've had the pleasure of being part of many an awkward social gathering and seen many an awkward event. So many in fact that I've considered starting a journal solely composed of these moments because they occur so frequently that they soon escape my memory. Once such example is being invited to lunch at the house of one of our community member's secret boyfriend with her mother. ( I should add that we have met him, but the mother hasn't) If that isn't awkward enough I had the good fortune of spying a cat popping a squat and proceeding to heave and huff at the labor of relieving himself of yesterday's food. This is the sort of thing that once you catch it, you can't take your eye off it.

Yet another day I had the fortune of getting a bacterial infection. This isn't awkward per se, but the effects are. For example, running to the bathroom and nearly not making it, running the risk of soiling yourself with every step, not fun. Additionally, in order to confirm the infection you have to put a "sample" in a very small cup. Needless to say this is difficult when you've all but lost control of all functions related to your bowels. One must also deliver the sample in a timely manner, which can be a fun hike while sick.

Immersion Days etc.

I just got back from what is called Immersion Days and while I was somewhat apprehensive about the experience at first, the reality is entirely different.

Let me start by describing the activity briefly. Each trainee is assigned to a volunteer that is currently serving and that volunteer finds a place for the trainee to stay in a canton close to where the live. The volunteer then shares some information about how to get to the assigned community and from there it is the responsibility of the trainee to get there by bus or other indicated means of transportation. After that, the trainee stays in the appointed community for two days by himself and the third day meets with the volunteer and stays with him for a day.

That all sounds rather scary on paper. But the reality of it is that it wasn't all that bad. We have all already struck out once to places unfamiliar to us and to live with people unfamiliar with us when we moved to our host communities. This time the experience was tempered by the fact that if something happened, we weren't staying there long term.

The place where I stayed was a rather quiet little canton in La Union, the self proclaimed hottest department in El Salvador. I'd say that it is absolutely true. It borders on oppressively hot there in the middle of the day. I stayed in the house of a man named Ismael, was led around town by my primary contact named Efraim and ate at yet another house of a woman named Ophelia. This all added up to quite a bit of walking around during the heat of the day. It also meant that since I was viewed as more of a communal visitor and not anyone in particular's sole responsibility. That meant when the three people mentioned had something to do, I was either left alone to read Roughing It by Mark Twain or was left to the mercy of anyone who happened to stop by. More often than not a young boy stopped by to watch what Bryan Dwyer calls "gringo TV". This consisted mainly of sidling up next to me and staring at me with a slight tilt of the head and a slack-jaw. This also consisted of the young boy resisting any and all attempts I made to talk to him in favor of just staring at me slack-jawed. I'm sure that is the preferred "gringoTV" position in many a canton.

I also had the pleasure of being shown the "zona verde" no less than three times by different people. They are very proud of this little public swatch of land that has a few trees, some sickly grass and a few "nacimientos" where water collects from the stream and can be used to wash clothes, clean dishes or bathe in. I took in the spectacle humbly every time and commented on how nice the shade is if you want to go down to the river and bathe. Good thing I saw it all though, because the following morning I needed to use my new knowledge and go and bathe in the stream. I'm sure this was a sight because all the women doing washing of any sort stopped and just watched me take a bucket bath. I assume I did everything correctly, but I can't be sure really. Enough of that though, afterwards I had the privilege of staying at Nate Dollar's house, which is a mansion by volunteer standards. I got to stay with him for about 18 hours. After that we departed in the morning for San Salvador.

In the capital the Embassy was putting on a sort of pre July 4th celebration. Peace Corps is invited to attend at a reduced fee, so volunteers and trainees alike show up in droves. It was good to spend some quality time with Americans, speak english and most importantly get a few beers for $1 a piece. The whole affair didn't last that long though since our rides back to our host communities showed up after a short time. Most trainees didn't like leaving, and so decided to stay, but I didn't want to tempt fate or my shaky stomach and decided to go back to Santo Domingo for a good nights sleep and some purified water.