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.