Dia de Amistad

Happy Valentine's Day, or as they call it here, Dia de Amistad.

I'm not doing anything special, unless you count hanging out with Kaya, maybe doing some laundry and getting some pupusas for dinner something special. I personally wouldn't consider it special because I do most of that every day. So continues another year in a huge streak of having nothing in particular to do for Valentine's day. Every seems to want to be on the other side of whatever they have, meaning if you have nobody you feel like junk and if you have a ball and chain you wish you were single instead of forced into this hokey holiday.

Been a little while since I last posted. With regards to my dog I finally got the supplies my parents sent and everything is working out great. A proper crate is something my dog totally needed and the rest of the supplies give me extra stuff as the dog grows, like a larger collar and a cloth leash as soon as she stops trying to chew on her leash, until then I am using a chain.

Its been a busy time, but not all directly work related. I've been in and out of my site, which makes me sorta scramble around trying to figure out what to do with my dog. I spent two nights in order to go to the monthly soccer game and one night in order to go to a regional conference for all western volunteers. There have also been a rash of meetings for volunteers in my micro-region (four adjacent municipalities with 11 total volunteers). I am happy to be doing a little more group work, but it doesn't seem all that developed other than my area's planning a workshop for adolescents. Hopefully we can get on the same page as a group of volunteers and find a way to use the micro-region to support our projects and bring each other in.

As I stated I am finally working a little more closely with the other volunteers in my immediate vicinity. It is nice because they all live pretty close and I am getting to know where they all live by going to their respective houses for meetings. I also bring my dog along to their places because they don't mind and several of them also have dogs. So its like two meetings at once, we are working and our dogs are meeting. It kind of makes me look forward to when my dog is a little older and I can take her wherever I go outside the Alcaldia.

Speaking of outside the Alcaldia, I finally got my chance to enter El Imposible with some community members. i wanted to take my dog but I was advised against it, and I'm glad I didn't. The hike was a little to long and hard for Kaya to have accomplished at this point. We hiked out to the source of water for our town and I finally have a full understanding of why we only get water for about an hour and a half a day. The system is really rather poor and old. I can't even begin to describe it in a reasonable manner here. I took pictures, but they just seem to highlight the innate beauty of the forest rather than the water system. Still, I am glad I finally got in there and have a better understanding of both the water system and the forest now. I can't wait to get back in there for a purpose other than work. All this of course is because we are trying to find a way to upgrade or replace the current water system. 2 hours of water a day just doesn't cut it, and often times I don't get home at the correct hours to fill my pila up. That means restricted water use for bathing and washing of clothes and such.

I'm also hopeful to start a project with Habitat for Humanity. I don't want to jinx it, but the lady I spoke to seemed interested in trying to get a meeting together with my mayor and see whats up. They are spreading into our region and I think they can provide some support for replacement housing for families that lost their homes in October floods. Personally I like the way Habitat works rather than other NGOs. Families have to work and pay for part of the project with them and I think that adds value to the home and teaches Salvadorans to take matters in their own hands rather than wait for a free project from some crazy rich country. Seems much more sustainable to me and I have made a conscious decision to avoid projects that just hand people stuff with a non-visible money source and a management that isn't of the community.

Walk the Dog

It is amazing how quickly once can settle into a routine. Before I picked up Kaya I never really thought about my comings or goings. My house was where I slept and where I could catch some time alone without people constantly asking me why I don't have a girlfriend and why I don't go out with Alana. (Another Volunteer, surprisingly everyone seems to know her and they all think we should be married by now.) But now my house is that place I have to go to every few hours to take care of my dog. And I can't think about spending more than a few hours away without making special arrangements. My day pretty much goes like this now:

-Get up at 6 or earlier and take the dog out, then feed her and do my thing while she is eating. Take her out again just before leaving.
-Go and do whatever morning work I have, usually meetings in the Alcaldia or Cara Sucia.
-Get back after lunch and let the dog out again. Spend a little more time with her, then head out again.
-Get back around 4, take the dog out and then play with her for a while. Or perhaps take her for a walk and get looked at like a crazy man.
-Make the dog's dinner around 6 and either concurrently make mine or go get some food after she eats. Either way, she eats before me.
-Relax and do my thing at night, but keep a constant watchful eye out for house soiling. Get a few minutes of obedience training in here and there. (She can pretty much sit on command now)

So with all that I am set to try to leave Kaya for about 2.5 days and play some fútbol in the East. I hope she takes it well and I hope she doesn't revert to peeing all over Erin's house while I am gone. I don't really know how she will respond to staying with someone other than me for any period of time, but its gonna happen eventually, so we'll see now.

Work is going pretty well. There are lots of regional type meetings happening so there is plenty of time to interact with other Volunteers right now. My Social Promotion team is going full steam teaching some of the themes I had written and I am tying to search out some other work to do since I neither get invited to each workshop, no do I want to be at all of them. I will attend the ones that are for the communities closest to mine. I seem set to help behind the scenes starting a municipality wide women's movement, which seems like it might be pretty interesting. Of course I won't be able to enjoy the fruits of that or flaunt my involvement, but thats ok.

Anywho, I got bored and shaved my beard into a fu manchu. I get bored with my facial hair easily, and what else can I do with the prohibitive amounts of hair on my face? So I goof around a bit for funsies. Interstingly enough only one comment so far. I would have expected a slightly larger response, especially from all the female volunteers. I guess the stache is so popular here that any variation means I'm a real man.

Kaya

Ok so I talked about it for a while and thought about it even longer and I finally just went for it and got a puppy. She is a 2.5 month old Boxer and I named her Kaya. Obviously you all want pictures, so here you go.



Kaya

I am still figuring things out a bit, so I am temporarily using a stacking cube shelving unit as a substitute crate for training purposes. (Crate training is a humane way to housebreak a dog and keep your house safe from chewing.) She doesn't have any proper toys yet since there isn't exactly a pet store around here and people don't think of dogs the same way we are used to up north. But I am working on it. On the 26th I will head to the capital for other reasons and check out a pet store with my program director while I am there. Erin, the other volunteer in my town, is excited to babysit for me whenever I need to leave for a short time and she has already met Kaya.

Obviously I am super excited and don't want to leave her ever, but she needs to learn that I won't be there all the time. For now she is a little crybaby when I leave, but hopefully that will change with time.

Translate This

So I got into the capital yesterday after a few days spent at another volunteer's site translating for a group of engineering students from CSU working with Engineers Without Borders. Basically it was a good experience and I am glad to have tried it out, and will be heading out this afternoon to try out a different sort of translating, for children.

Basically my translating time was spent with a team of the engineers that were surveying the community so they can properly estimate costs for the water project they are working on. Since there were only two translators, and the other was busy with another task for the engineers I was running back and forth between the people by the surveying viewfinder and the pole. That got interesting in spots where curious community members wanted to know why some houses were having marks put in front and others not, and also when some over-zealous men wanted to flirt a bit with the women engineers who don't speak Spanish. It can be hard to notice exactly when and where you should be to translate, especially when someone is barely within your view. Certainly it can be fun to watch the fireworks as complete chaos ensues due to inability to communicate, at least it can be amusing to the party that actually understands what is going on.

Aside from funny occurrences, translating can be an odd job. It is very difficult to keep yourself out of a conversation and instead simply translate what is being said or asked. One good example is that someone will often ask a question that I know the answer to, and I need to remember to pose the question to the other people instead of simply answering it myself. Plus it is hard to know how much of side conversations to translate, since the natural tendency of people who can speak a different language is to use it as a bit of a cover knowing that the other parties will never know exactly what was said. I do enjoy it though and I want to keep trying to do it as time goes on to see if I can get a little better at translating while people are still talking. I think the need to immediately repeat what was said in a different language could also result in better comprehension.

Happy New year

Let me start by wishing the obvious Happy New Year to the maybe 7 people who read this blog. I missed the opportunity to wish anyone a Merry Christmas or Happy Chanukah, but my internet schedule was limited in December.

I had big plans for December, and most of them that were work related wound up falling through. I had planned to run a little workshop for my social promotion team to teach them how to run a meeting better and how to give a more effective informal training, but it got canceled. I had planned for one of the Volunteer Coordinators to come out and help me, but alas, since it was canceled she couldn't come. My plan to teach them some ice breakers went awry and got canceled as well because the meeting that I was to present them in went way overtime and my chance was lost. The city hall closed on the 22nd, so after that there was no working in that capacity. All work I did after that day was either done in the Peace Corps office or shut up in my house on my computer.

As much as work failed I did manage to get along pretty well otherwise. I went to San Sal a few times for meetings for other projects with Peace Corps Volunteers. Also I met up with a work friend of my mother's and spent Christmas Eve and day with them. They took me to a nice beach and to a town that is literally all pupuserias. I managed to eat a few pupusas that stand out in my mind as some of the best I have had, which is hard to do considering the sheer quantity of pupusas I wind up eating.


cslom

I also hung out with some community members who are part of a festivities committee and we went to a waterpark in a different department. I spent the day back and forth hanging out with the kids in the kiddie pools and trying to convince the guys to go down the water slides. Eventually I got some of the guys to go down the big, slow, curvy slide and some of the guys and a few of the kids to go down the slide that used the inner-tubes. There was a third slide, a big red one that had about a thirty foot straight down drop that nobody was going on all day. I figured it couldn't be that bad and so I did it and got a standing ovation by the people in the pool below. I wound up being one of only 3 people to go down that slide all day. I would have gone down it several more times, but I almost lost one of my brand new contact lenses on the first go and that was enough for me not to encore my performance. But now lots of my community members are talking about my trip to the waterpark and especially my love of slides.


cslom

We also had a bit of a holiday party with the social promotion team, complete with secret santa gifts and a home grilled hairless sheep. It was good fun and good bonding. I left just in time for everyone to start drinking, which I am not fond of sticking around for, for various reasons including my inability to understand drunken spanish and my desire not to promote drinking. Either way it was fun and a good chance to bond with the people I work with.

Now I am back in the City Hall and preparing to get back to the grind. This month I plan to get out and try my hand at translating, first for some engineers in a friend's site and second at a children's camp at a gorgeous lake. I have never translated before and I think this will be a good opportunity to see how I do. also this month I will finish up some work with other volunteers getting some charlas together and head out to play a soccer game. All in all I'd say it looks pretty exciting for January.

6 months

In all the excitement I completely forgot to mention that as of December 5th it has been 6 months since I departed for my life in the Peace Corps.

There is a a saying in the Peace Corps community that the days crawl by at a snail's pace, but the months and years fly by. I must admit that as cliche as it is, that is how it has been going. Each day feels like it is never going to end and that it will only bring about another endless day. However time has flown by in aggregate and I can't believe how long I've been away. Seriously it feels like training just ended, but another group of volunteers has already come in, trained, swore in and moved into their sites, and that is nearly a 3 month process. I am already filling out my second quarterly report, which means 6 months and I stare at my computer screen dumbfounded at all the time that has gone by and all the activities I need to recall in order to fill in all the boxes and such.

I am now realizing that I have been more out of contact than I need to be with nearly everyone except my family. I have missed friend's birthdays and have been otherwise derelict in my duty to actually talk to people. I mean I have a cell phone and internet access on a semi-regular basis now, and I could call people if I just knew their phone numbers.

Busy Busy Busy

Been a little while since my last post. I've been a little busy since Thanksgiving. Mostly Peace Corps stuff and lots of trips in and out of my site.

I had a meeting with my program director and all the Municipal Developement volunteers from my region of the country that was both refreshing and beautiful. We went to an area in my department called Juayua where we stayed in a quaint little hotel for a night and discussed our work and our problems. These things get us a little more connected with our job and give us a little kickstart when we are running out of steam.

I also managed to get out to San Vicente for what was several days of language class and what is called In Service Training. That basically means I sat through about 20 hours of spanish and about 10 hours of technical training. We learned some of the more technical stuff like how to properly fill out a few types of grant forms and what we should do before helping our communities look for grant money.

December snuck up on me in the midst of being pretty busy and it doesn't look like December will really bring about a change of pace. I am on my way back to my site today, but will be returning to the capital in only 3 days to work on putting together a presentation on how to run meetings. In between now and then I will be teaching my social promoters how to run some ice-breakers to freshen up their ability to run capacity building meetings. Somewhere in there I need to find time to organize my personal life because I just decided to move houses and packed my stuff up and put it in a temporary room in my new house. Then if that is all not enough, I need to brush up my web developement skills and head back to the capital on the 20th to put together a training for that. The end goal of course being a day workshop to teach a group of volunteers how to put together a simple website to promote their communities. Before I get that website workshop put together I need to find time to have another little training session for my social promoters on how to run a meeting and how to run a capacity building workshop, hopefully with the help of someone on the staff.

Of course December also has the holidays so that will also take up a bit of time.

Happy Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I will be celebrating by heading to the closest Muni volunteers place and making a huge vat of chili. Turkey doesn't seem that easy to come by and we don't have an oven, so we went for the most American thing we could think of I am looking forward to it. Then on Friday I am off to the monthly PC soccer game, so pray I don't make a fool of myself out there. Should be a relaxing and fun weekend.

Oh, and side note, just after my father sent me a new flash drive I managed to get mine working. Albeit I lost all my info on the drive, it works now.

Edible Silverware and Grape Soda

I haven't really spoken much about the food, and that is for good reason, its not really something to write home about without some other context. As a general rule it isn't as exotic as I was wont to believe before I left home. I was imagining Mexican food with a more native flair, so as you can imagine I was way off the mark. I'd say food here resembles mexican in that they eat beans, rice and things called tortillas, but that is about as far as one can legitimately compare the two. I find food here to usually be on the bland side and the menu is pretty limited; generally carne asada, pollo encebollado, rice, beans or some sort of simple soup.

The tortilla is something I wish to explore a little more. As americans we are too used to the Mexican idea of a tortilla. That is to say, a large, thin flat thing that is generally a part of other foods, but not generally a food on it own. It can be used as a wrap as in a burrito, a holder as in a taco or quesadilla or fried as in a tostada shell or chips. That isn't what a tortilla is here. Oh sure, its made from the same ingredients, but it isn't used in the same way, nor could you use one for the Mexican purpose if you wanted to. To imagine a tortilla here you need to think in terms of a silver dollar pancake of solid flour that has been grilled. It is small, thick and, if your luck is bad, sorta mealy. I couldn't eat more than one a day at first. I can tell I am becoming well culturally adapted because the amount of tortillas I consume daily is on the rise. Part of the problem is to change the way you think of a tortilla, it isn't really the meal enhancer I wanted it to be. I have also ceased to think of it as a side dish. Currently I like to think of tortillas as edible silverware. That is right, silverware. I am rarely given more than a fork to eat with, and forks are lousy for eating beans, rice or just about anything but salad on their own. So that is where the tortilla comes in, I use it to scoop things onto my fork, mop up errant sauce or bean juice, hold my chicken in place while I tear at it with my fork and whatnot. The beauty of it is that when it becomes soggy, limp or just otherwise broken, a quick bite restores its former glory by revealing a fresher part. When I eat lunch out I average about 3 tortillas now. I call that a win and in my mind I am now at least 3 times more Salvo than I was in training when I could barely stomach a whole tortilla.

Now for the Grape Soda. I hadn't tried it here until today. I had been trying to consume fruit flavored sodas prior to leaving the United States knowing what I was in for. Well I didn't know. Sunday morning I went to a large meeting with members from 6 of the communities in my municipality where there was a training and a zonal committee being formed. It is regular here to be given a random refreshment during the course of a meeting and I was given a grape soda. My first grape soda in El Salvador. I figured I didn't know what it tasted like so I went for it. I wasn't impressed. In fact I'd say I was rather dismayed and repulsed. I found it to taste rather similar to the way my spray fixative for my drawings (or the glue I used to use on plastic models) smells. It gave me an instant headache and I wouldn't be at all surprised if I made a rather horrendous face. I tried to play it off cool, like I just wasn't thirsty since I didn't want to ruin the meeting or dismay all the others happily downing their grape sodas. For a full 45 minutes of the meeting i couldn't focus and I just kept getting grape soda aftertaste in my mouth and trying to hold back those whole body shivers you get when you think of something disgusting or hear nails on a chalkboard. I can't remember a large portion of the training because I couldn't concentrate on anything. With my luck they like to put the Gringo in front to show off that they have an American here to help out. Generally I try not to grimace at the food and find a better, more sensitive way of explaining my distaste. In this case I had to try very hard not only to hide my distaste, but my lack of focus that it caused. Needless to say I will not be drinking any more of the grape soda here.

A Very Uncomfortable Place

Ok, not that uncomfortable, the title just seemed funny if you get reference...

I have been living with a toilet that didn't have any water going to it for about two months. That means I have been flushing by filling a guacal and dumping it in the bowl after I was finished with my business. Well finally after bugging my landlord he installed a tap above the tank of the toilet to fill it, which is better than nothing for now, but presented other problems. After the inaugural flush I noticed that there was quite a bit of dirt going down the drain. That in and of itself wasn't shocking, I expected a little dust and debris. What was shocking is that a colony of ants had decided to take up residence in my own personal toilet. They have probably actually been there longer than I have, and have been enjoying the generally secluded, dry tunnels provided by the inner-workings of a busted toilet. However I am making it my personal mission to drive them out. With every flush more and more of the little buggers go swirling to their doom. I underestimated the tenacity of ants though. Every morning they are back and working up a storm in my toilet, and every morning I flush a horde of them to kingdom come. I wonder if or when they ever give up and move on? They had my entire yard to choose from, and they chose the one place I have to actually sit my ass on.

Everyone talks about how there are only two religions here, Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity, and how the subject of religion will inevitably come up rather quickly in conversation. I was rather surprised by how I managed to escape that subject until now. But it caught up with me and three times in the last day I have had to explain that I don't want to go to any of the churches here and that I am in fact Jewish. The problem is that I have to explain what Judaism is as well and thats not the most comfortable thing in the world to people that only understand that Christ is the savior. To them, if you don't believe in the son, you don't believe in the father. I try to concentrate on similarities, and explain that Christ was in fact a Jew, a rebellious one, but a Jew. Still I don't think most people quite get that I believe in the same god, but in a more limited context. I just have to hope that by now I've made enough of an impression that they don't think I'm some monster who hates Christ, and that news doesn't spread like wildfire that I am not a Christian. So far so good, the people that know don't seem offended except for the one lady that keeps trying to drag me to culto and convert me.

On the upside I have been getting along great otherwise. A new volunteer stopped in on Monday to see the Pueblo and she is currently staying in the Park with one of the curators. She has the option of living in the Park or in the Pueblo. This presents me with the option of exploring new housing under the guise of looking for housing for her. Plus I have been meeting more people by doing that. I like my house, but if I can find something cheaper and in better shape I may jump on it for the new year. I'll wait to find out what the new Volunteer wants to do though.

As far as work goes things are settled pretty much now. I work on my computer forming documents to put in a binder that will be used to train community groups for the most part. We are forming zonal committees and at the same time training them. I am working right now on teamwork, but we already pretty much made info for leadership and project planning. The overall plan is to create 9 modules, 8 of which we will make, one of which a team of women from a local university will make. The three I already mentioned are part of the second module, to be used in December. I am still going to lots of random meetings though, which I just chalk up to learning the culture and getting my face out there. I am hoping with time more people will advise me of important things. Right now I rarely get notified of most things and only a few people do the inviting, and usually on the day of.

Another decent drawing

This time a slightly different subject. I tried a bit of perspective and shading.

by cslom

I keep thinking about this particular drawing and what about it I don't like. I really hate the hair, and as such I took up two more pages in my sketchbook sort of exploring the possiblities of quickly, but convincingly drawing curly hair. I went so far as to recreate the drawing in miniature to test the method I devised. I also despise the eye. It is central to the drawing and commands attention, but of everything it looks the least real to me, especially the dark spot in the white that I can't seem to erase. I need to work on drawing convincing eyes. I think it worked out in the self portrait, but not in this one.

I was bored

I was bored and I figured someone out there somewhere might get a kick out of this. Particularly either Albert or Sherwin.

Yesterday Was a Good Day

Yesterday was one of those rare days where everything seemed to be going my way. The day started simply enough, but just kept getting better. I got good news in terms of finding info for projects, I got a call from my PCVC looking to organize a regional meeting and best of all I got a call from the APCD from AgFor looking to place a volunteer in or near my site to work in the national forrest. All good news. And the rest of the day seemed to be going just as well.


by cslom
I have been sort of willing myself back into the habit of drawing and it finally bore something. I would say I am happy about that drawing. I am flopping back and forth between drawing for realism and developing my skill for line weight and such, and going for my older comic style. My hope is to develope some sort of style somewhere in the middle, a style more my own and at the same time not as childish.

A Better Update, This Time with More Eagle

Immediately after I complained briefly about the bus situation here and how I am tired of it, I of course had to go get on a bus to go back to my site. Barbara and I walked to the nearest bus stop and hopped on what we affectionately call one of the “chicken buses”. The idea being that between major cities there are two types of buses; “especiales” which have A/C, nice seats, a movie and a finite passenger limit, and the “chicken buses” with the cramped seats, people standing in aisles, bad transmissions and all manner of whatever anyone wants to carry on the bus and swing in your face, including of course chickens. (Here I should add that on the previous bus I had a bag of chicken swung inches from my face, and if I ever doubted that there was such a thing as a plastic bag full of live chickens, I don’t doubt it now.) It looked like we were in for a good ride, the bus was fairly empty and we each got our own seat and window. Well a few minutes into the ride just after getting on the major highway towards Sonsonate I spotted a car stopped in our lane. Our bus driver put on the breaks but not quite hard enough, and at the end we sorta careened and came to a sudden stop behind the stopped minivan. Our sudden stop was immediately followed by one of those long drawn out sounds of tires screeching, the kind where you clench your teeth, shrug your shoulders and brace for the sound of metal colliding and glass breaking. Luckily there was no such sound. It was then that Barbara and I looked around and noticed we weren’t entirely in our own lane and traffic was creeping around us slowly and angrily and somewhere in the confusion the minivan in front of us had left and now we were the ones causing traffic. Barbara observed that the engine was off and the driver was attempting to start the bus with no success. More confusion ensued and words were shouted and before I knew it all the male passengers were getting up and getting out of the bus. They proceeded to push the bus backwards on the highway so the driver could pop the clutch in reverse and get us on our way. Success thankfully and the rest of our ride proceeded uneventfully, but with me secretly scared that we would stall again every time we had to stop to pick someone up or let someone off. I mean it is the habit of these buses to stop rather short, with or without reason, so it seemed we could stall again at any time.

I’m still in the process of meeting people in my town and getting privy to what is going on around here other than just what the team of social promoters is doing. People are slowly opening up to me and more willing to have substantial talks with me or introduce themselves, other than just the regular questions of “what are you doing here?”, “when are you going back to the US?” and “wow, can you really speak Spanish?”. It was finally admitted to me that there is an ADESCO in San Chico. Although I wasn’t exactly invited to the meeting that day, I have now met the president, introduced myself to a few members and asked to be notified so I can attend the next meeting. I also discovered that my town is in the process of starting up a new water project to increase our water services. We currently have running water, but not in the whole pueblo, and it shuts off for at least a few hours every day. This project sounds fairly promising and I hope it goes off without a hitch. I am worried that if we need a lot of funding it may be turned down in view of the fact that there are plenty of communities here that need water more desperately than m pueblo. I have introduced myself to the water committee and look forward to their next meeting with the mayor. I am happy that I am finally getting into projects in my community and not just other parts of the municipality.

I am actually a little surprised at how well I am getting along with people in my community and meeting more people considering lots of little things. October has been relatively filled with events and reasons to take off for the weekends or for a day here and there. Between a communal birthday celebration at a beach, my getting a GI infection, a soccer game and a Halloween celebration, I have spent a good deal of time on the weekends away from my town, but I am managing to get more contact in this month than in the previous. I suppose I am just not running around as much with the promoters and the short emergency that took everyone out of my office gave me plenty of time to just sit around and talk to people. I have been developing what is known in Peace Corps circles as “site guilt”, which means I feel bad for spending so much time out of my site. But I have been arranging my calendar and it looks like I’ll be spending much more time in my site this month and the few things I have planned are getting more into my work than some of the stuff I had been doing before.

Rushing

I am rushing through the capital right now on the way back to my site from a Halloween Party. It was fun, and it was random. I couldn't decide on a costume so I went the random route and bought the funniest things I could find as a costume. I don't really wanna describe it, but it was about as random as Stephen who went in a Moo-Moo and shaved his hair into a mohawk. Hopefully there will be pictures to come, then you can see for yourselves.

I wanted to do a little ranting for once. I haven't really gotten a good rant in here on this blog yet. I am frustrated right now about a few things and I'll keep each brief. First my flash drive died, so my best source of getting info from my computer to the rest of the world has gone caput. I don't know what happened, but it won't show up on any computers any more or disk utilities. Also I am getting a little tired of the buses. I know I've been fed up with them before, but moreso now that they aren't a necessary evil for training and I use them at my choice. They suck, they are crowded, I stepped in some vomit on one the other day, and they have the tiniest seats. Seriously it is like they bought an extra set of seats and put them in between seats, and not only that, they stretched one side a bit to have a hand at the farce of trying to get three people into one seat with nowhere to put their knees. And can the rain stop already, the rainy season is supposed end in October, I didn't know they meant on the 31st. Seriously this month has been the hardest, most intense rain.

Ok thats enough ranting for now. Gotta run.

The Week In Review

Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. It has been hard to make or receive calls in my site due to mysterious cell issues. I don't believe it is my phone, since I tried on multiple phones and the outcome seems the same, choppy and screwy sounds and sometimes no sound at all. So if you tried to talk to me I am sorry, I think Tigo is doing something to the cells in my area.

The week started well, with a cool meeting for a human rights group aimed at forming a network to investigate, educate about and combat human rights violations. This is not directed at illegal border crossing even though it sounds like it, it is directed at violations perpetrated against the will of the victim, unlike border crossing which often violates human rights, but the victims choose to proceed of their own free will. Either way, this sounds like a promising project, and they insist on having me take on a position in the committee eventhough I told them that I shouldn't really take one on besides support and advice. We'll see as time comes, but I am happy to be a part of it and look forward to spreading info about this if it turns out well.

For the day before my birthday I was in the capital for medical and wound up spending the night. Randomly one of my pals showed up, so we grabbed a few beers at the hostel that night. That was pretty much the extent of my celebrating.

Only a few people in my town knew it was my birthday. There was talk of slaughtering a goat for the occasion, but that didn't happen and I don't think I am too broken up about it. I had planned to hang out a bit, but that day a river overflowed in Cara Sucia and washed away a few houses causing the mayor to declare an emergency situation. That took everyone away from my town and left me to spend the evening relaxing in my hammock. Wasn't a bad birthday, but a relatively lonely one.

Saturday I met up with lots of volunteers for the monthly soccer game. (Each month it is at someone elses site.) We played hard and had a great turnout, but we still got our tails whipped. We did score though, and so it wasn't a complete loss. Besides we spent the night in a huge house on a gorgeous lake in Santa Ana, which reminded me of either Tahoe or Matt's lake house in Washington.

I told you so

Just so my mom finally believes us I now present photographic proof that the new landcruiser is the same as the lexus vehicle. Not that I would doubt it after having ridden in them many times here, but a photo is worth me saying it a 1000 times.


by cslom


by cslom

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?