.....y buena!

it´s saturday and we´ve finally moved in with our host families. it´s been a crazy couple of days though. after our flight left at like 6:00 a.m. on wednesday from d.c., we stopped in houston and finally made it to san salvador around 11:30 a.m. or so. it was kind of weird flying into san salvador because the airport is fairly close to the pacific ocean and it seemed like we were getting a little too close to the water on the way in. we were greeted at the airport by the guy in charge of the el salvador peace corps office and he guided us through immigration and all that. the minute we got out of the actually airport building it finally hit us that we were in el salvador. i thought i´d be ready for the humidity given that june in ohio was pretty friggin´hot and humid.....but holy crap was it humid in san salvador. after getting horrendous pictures taken of us by the peace corps staff, we loaded all our stuff onto this bus and were taken to san vicente. so let me preface the following by saying that practically none of us got a ¨good night´s sleep¨the night before. we were all super anxious and besides, we had to get up at like 2:00 a.m. so it was nearly impossible to actually sleep. so basically, most ofus had been up for more than 24 hours at the time we were on the bus to san vicente. we were all tired, greasy, hair-matted fools at this point. when we got to san vicente, we were taken into the peace corps training center and welcomed and all that. we ended up being there until like 7:00 that night and seriously, none of us could hardly stay awake enough to get to the hotel. yay for us!! anyway, our hotel - hotel central park - was ok, although i suspect when it isn´t hosting peace corps volunteers, it´s being rented by the hour. it overlooks the parque central (hence it´s name) and it´s clock tower is still half falling down from damage done by the earthquakes in 2001. we also got a free ¨show¨from the local hooker down on the left side of the square who probably serviced about three guys in the time that we were out on the balcony. good times.

the next day was filled with training stuff, and our first dose of malaria pills as well as our typhoid shot. basically most of our training the first couple days was safety and security and what not to do if you´re a woman and don´t want to get raped. to tell you the truth, i was so tired the first actual day of training no amount of lectures on safety and security would´ve helped me if i´d actually been accosted.

last night (friday) we met with and moved in with our host families. there are about 4 volunteers in each community (all outside of san vicente) so we´re not totally alone. we´ll be with these families for 3 months, then we´ll move on our own to our ¨sites¨ where we´ll be living alone for 2 years. anyway, we rode the bus to molineros (the name of my community), which is an absolutely insane experience. the bus is already jam-packed, yet at every stop people get on the bus and try to sell vegetables and then jump off the bus while it´s moving and they play either spanish techno or horrible american music at full blast. it´s crazy.

anyway - we got to molineros and walked to the first volunteer´s new house and basically had to walk through knee-high water to get to it. we´re all not that great at our spanish so it was a little akward, but we managed with the help of our spanish facilitator. we left to find the next house and when we arrived, we were greeted by a guy in a bulletproof vest carrying a machine gun. the ¨house¨was actually a tienda (a little store) and this new house turned out to be mine. woohoo!!! actually, my host family runs a tienda out of part of the house all day. anyway - after some more akwardness, and my awful spanish, i actually became a little more comfortable. the other two volunteers went to their house and i was shown my new room. it´s actually pretty private (compared to other peace corps volunteers´rooms) and i was very surprised to find a machete hanging on my wall. i wonder what i´m gonna need that for???? i suppose i´ll find out at some point. we did use it cut the rope to hang up the peace corps-issued mosquito net, so i guess it´ll come in handy for other stuff other than killing people.

my family - at least the ones i´ve met are - my host mom Dona Ana, her two daughters Cindy who is 2 and Dayana who is 6, Ana´s mother and father, Rosa and Olvidio (sp?). they are absolutely wonderful and i´m sure i´ll have more to tell about them once i´ve spent more than one night at their house. one funny thing - Ana always has Dayana go with me to the latrine (it´s outside and apparently 6 year olds are great for protection), and when i´m in the latrine, Dayana sits outside and makes ghost noises (ooooohhhhh, oooooooooooh) the whole time. not sure what that´s all about but it makes me go hysterical.

that´s all for now. i´ll write more later when i have more time on the ´net! adios!

adios!

well, it is my final night in the states. we had a day and a half of "staging" here in D.C. which started with sharing a hotel room with a complete stranger. it's not a big deal, but with everything else that's going on and all that you're anxious about - it's even more crazy when you're forced to share your personal space with someone you've never met before. luckily my roommate is cool and we got through the agony of sitting in staging and listening to someone tell us the dangers of being a foreigner in latin america. we had our staging with the group that was going to honduras - so there were actually about 65 of us there. but only 28 of us are going to el salvador. so far everyone seems cool. oh, i forgot to mention that i am in the midst of some raging cold on top of everything else. i don't know what the deal is, but i am taking every cold medicine i can think of so i am not miserable when we board the plane tomorrow. but i don't think i'm going to have much luck. oh well. check out time for us tomorrow is 3:00 a.m. (yikes!) so i better sign off. seriously, my roommate and i were discussing the fact that we don't think we've ever set our alarms for 2:00 a.m. before. weird. ok, adios gringos!

bands and other things i'll miss

number one on my list of things i'll be jonesing for while in el salvador is seeing one of my favorite bands - crossties - play every month at a bar in cleveland. they play some WICKED bluegrass and i absolutely love them. a week ago i went to see them play one last time before i leave. they are so friggin' awesome. the only bad thing was that my friend roland wasn 't there b/c he's sick so he couldn't jam with them. but it was a good show anyhow, and roland would have been proud. a band called two dollar bash played before them and almost moved my friend to tears w/ some irish song. they were fun and i'm sure they got sick of hearing me say "if it's not scottish, it's crap!" ha. anyhow - i had such a fun time. plus, i got some really great news too.....there was this painting hanging on the wall of the tavern of a dog - sort of howling or something - and it always intrigued me. it was mostly blue, but had a bunch of other colors and for the six years that i've been going there, i've wanted that painting. well, the other night when i was there, it was gone and so i asked martin - the owner - where it was and he told me they are going to try and make a poster of it. apparently, at the moment it's being formatted and all that. so it looks like i'll get that painting after all. i just have to have someone else get it for me while i'm gone.....um, jen m. you know that's you, right?

crossties (minus roland), two dollar bash
and martin (owner of the barking spider tavern)

i'm already missing pearl jam but that's mostly b/c i went up to canada to see two of their shows this weekend. the people in canada always kick my ass w/ their kindness and their clean cities and roads. how do they keep the roads and cities clean you ask?? recycling, my friends. and probably the no littering thing helps too. duh. anyway - about stone gossard, i mean, pearl jam.......yeah, they rocked. i can't decide if i liked the show where ed was drunk more than the one where he wasn't. i was quite drunk for the second show so that probably clouded my assessment of ed's lack of drunkeness the second night. all i know is this - between the two shows they played "hard to imagine" and "rearviewmirror" - and did a pretty friggin' awesome "indifference" and "grievance." and i always go nuts for "not for you." so for me, those were the highlights - although both shows were killer. oh, wait, i forgot about another highlight - and that was seeing stone dancing this ridiculous ass-shaking dance instead of singing. other hilarities/highlights included: mark asking me "i wonder what 'londex' means?" (you had to be there for that one); mark and i christening his car "mr. mcfeeley"; meeting some awesome people (here's a shout out to my new friend nick....mr. NYU....i mean, seriously, NYU??? and b/c he got a tattoo in kitchener b/c he wanted something to do. no, he didn't decide to - like mark and i did - just drive around, or eat a big giant breakfast at the restaurant where the waitress called me "darlin'" about a hundred times, completely snubbing mark. no, nick got a friggin' tattoo!!! and apparently it's a cool one too - so kudos to him.); learning a TON about kitchener from the mopey couple next to us at the kitchener show....apparently, kitchener has the second largest octoberfest in the world and tickets sell out in may or something. so get your tickets early next year folks; and finally, seeing stone's plaid pants. the only lowpoint was they didn't play "lowlight." i also felt somewhat cheated at both shows b/c i couldn't see jeff that well. i suppose that's what the latin american tour is for - so i can somehow manage to get some tickets and focus only on jeff during any shows i make it to.

ed, jeff, stone and matt

mike

as for everything else - i've basically given up on thinking i'm ready to go. i mean, i'm ready to go and get out of here and get there and all that. but there's so much crap here to deal with still - tax forms and student loan stuff and powers-of-attorney, etc., etc., etc. i'm surprised my brain hasn't exploded at this point. and i see that curb your enthusiasm is premiering the week that i leave. that's just fantastic....i've waited a friggin' year for that damn show to come back on and "it's not tv, it's HBO" decides that the week i leave is the perfect time for the premiere. at least i got to see "look who's talking too" eight million times, along with a boatload of other crappy movies that HBO seems to think the public wants to watch. i wouldn't watch those movies if they were wrapped in gold and hand-delivered to me by unfrozen caveman outfielder johnny damon himself.......wait a minute, yes i would. i still love johnny damon, shaggy hair and all, even if he does play for the bosox. i was just talking w/ my friend today about baseball and johnny's name came up, and it was like i suddenly remembered him. my head has been so filled w/ peace corps stuff lately that i've not been paying attention to much else - including baseball playoff watch - as much as usual. plus, the tigers aren't anywhere near playoff status right now, and the indians are, so i think i'm just trying to block it from my brain. so many of my friends are tribe fans and it sucks to hear "well, the tigers didn't go anywhere again this year did they?" ugh.

tomorrow i'm going out to dinner w/ a bunch of my friends one last time. for some reason, i am losing my voice - like i'm getting a cold. it could also be from yelling like a moron at the pearl jam shows. i think becky and steve are having a bonfire at their house afterwards. that's always fun - but it might be torture because my voice won't be functioning at full capacity and i won't be able to argue w/ steve about hockey or canadians or everything else all night. i guess i could try. and besides, from what i hear, bryan will be there and he always backs me up. sweet.

if i ever figure this blog thing out for real, i'll post more pics. i'm sure these ramblings, as fascinating as they might be in my mind, are really a bunch of mumbo jumbo to anyone actually reading them.

less than two weeks left

not that i expect anyone to find this at all interesting....but i leave for my peace corps service in approx. 11 days. that's forever as far as i'm concerned as i've been waiting and waiting and waiting all summer to finally leave. i'm sick of talking about leaving, and answering questions about what it's going to be like - because i have absolutely no friggin' idea what it's going to be like! i still don't think i have everything i need to go, but i suppose i'll just have to wing the rest. anyway - we'll see how it goes......i'm sure i'll be cursing myself once i get there and don't have some major essential item that, duh, all peace corps volunteers in el salvador need.