where i´ve been and where i´m going

no worries....this entry won´t be as long as the previous one. first of all, we had a GREAT time in suchitoto. lots of drinking beer and mojitos (made by the cuban husband of the salvadoran woman who owned our kick ass hostel). we also took a boat ride across lake suchitlan and saw a million (well, not really a million - but it seemed like it) different types of birds on these little islands in the middle of the lake. i could only imagine having my site location somewhere near this area. some may be wondering why i´m not posting any pictures. well, with all that crazy rain, i think the humidity got to my digital camera because the screen is all f*"#ed up and i can´t take any pictures with it. i did buy this cheapo automatic camera when i was in san salvador so i could still at least take pictures when i was in chalatenango and suchitoto. but i have to figure out when and where i´m going to get them developed because, well, let´s just say el salvador is not known for it´s fine processing of film. my mom is sending me a new digital camera that i´m going to have to keep in a box or something when i´m not using it. i guess i have about 6 months to figure it out since it looks like we´re on the brink of the dry season here.

anyway, suchitoto is kind of like the santa fe of el salvador. tons of art galleries and artisan shops, lots of nature stuff to do. we only had a day and a half, but it was a nice break from the training routine and spanish lessons. plus, one of the guys in our group plays the guitar and sings amazingly, so we spent a lot of saturday night sitting around our hostel lobby, drinking beer and just generally having a good time.

last night two things happened. my family celebrated sindy´s second birthday (i know i told you all that she was 2 before, but unlike in the states where people give the age of their children in months, and EXACTLY in months, here they give their age by what´s closest. so with sindy, she was almost 2 so her mom told me she was 2). so the birthday celebration was really fun. megan came over and so did anna and her family. my mom invited melissa too, but melissa never participates in anything (i´ll give you the lowdown and the reputation she has built for herself in our community later). ana´s sister jaqueline and her daughter fiorela, viviana (ana´s grandmother), ovidio and mama rosa, and some other cousins were all there. actually, it was mama rosa´s birthday on sunday - so it was a double celebration, but the fiesta was clearly all about sindy. we had a piñata - which was supposed to be tweety bird, but it looked like some kind of alien/gang member child of tweety bird because it had these weird green shoes and a red bandana. we had so much fun though, and sindy was super excited to eat tons of candy and cake.

the second thing that happened - which actually happened before the fiesta - was that megan, anna and i were given a lecture by megan´s host dad - don mario. i´ve mentioned before that we have spanish classes at megan´s house, right? well, megan´s family has hosted like 8 other peace corps volunteers - so they know the routine and what-not. apparently, though, mario thinks we´re speaking way too much english when we have breaks or are just hanging out at their house. megan mentioned that he´s given her some small little lectures before, especially on those days where we were trapped in molineros during the crazy rains. i guess mario had been super pissed and really quiet the past couple of days and megan thought it might have something to do with our speaking english too much. melissa - who lives next door with mario´s sister and her husband - attributed mario´s bad mood to the fact that the family pretty much lost all of their bean crops during the massive rains. so last night, we were working on a community contact project with maps with megan´s host mom and mario was in and out, but not really talking to us. then he gave us this big detailed map of molineros and told us to look at that. so we did, and we eventually finished talking with megan´s mom and were ready to go. melissa left and megan, anna and i were talking about them coming over later for the fiesta. mario comes up and keeps waving this other map in front of us, telling us that we really should be using this map for our project (which wasn´t what the point of the project was...it was to get individuals to draw maps of what the community looks like to THEM). we were all just agreeing with him and kind of just telling him that it was a really great map when he starts launching into this whole thing about how we need to practice more spanish. he´s telling us how we´re supposed to have ¨confianza¨ with him - which means ¨trust.¨ confianza is a major thing here, and we were saying how we did, but trying to explain to him that at times it´s difficult to speak spanish all the time because we aren´t that great at it and feel stupid trying to have discussions in spanish when we can just have them in english. mario just kept going on and on about how when we get to our sites, we´re not going to have confianza with anyone and if we can´t speak spanish, we´re all pretty much screwed. and that we´re supposed to ask him questions and he won´t be upset if we don´t know words and whatever. but i don´t think he realizes how much we have learned already and we still have a month, and when we´re sitting around talking about where we´re going for travel weekend or who is annoying us in the training center, we feel like idiots speaking in spanish - because we all speak english. not to mention the fact that a five minute conversation would probably end up being 20 minutes if we talked in spanish. ugh. anyway, we smoothed it over with him and i think things are all good, but sheesh, what an experience.

so tomorrow i´m going to la union. it´s another department of el salvador and is in the northeast part of the country, near the honduras border. we have field based training. there are 4 of us going to each different site and we´ll be working with a volunteer for 3 days. i think we have to each spend our nights though separately with different families, and then re-convene in the morning for our work with the volunteer. anna and i are in the same group, so that´s good. i think, though, that we have a spanish teacher and another member of the training staff that goes with us as well. if i´m not mistaken, carlos is going with us....he´s a friggin´ riot! he´s in charge of the agro-forestry/environmental ed program and is just soooo funny. he speaks this really suave kind of spanish and i can´t keep a straight face whenever he´s around. anyway - i´m sure it will be fun and we´ll learn a lot....not to mention the fact that we´ll get to see yet another awesome area of the country.

next week is the big ¨dia de los muertos¨ - which is actually 2 days. i´m super excited for that. then on saturday, some of us are going to an archaeological site which is being organized by the peace corps training office. then on sunday i believe a group of us is hiking chinchontepec - san vicente´s massive volcano. i´m sure we´re all going to be a little bit challenged, if only for the fact that we´ve all been eating foods that can´t possibly be good for our hearts these past four weeks.

ok, well that´s about it for now. i´m getting some pictures of suchitoto from anna´s digital camera, so i´ll post them whenever i get a chance. and hopefully my new camera will arrive shortly.

adios!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

me, anna and megan (molineros, molineros, molineros!!!)

the gang that went to suchitoto

brendan and i outside the restaurant in suchitoto

chalatenango

i think this is the longest thing i´ve ever written that i wasn´t required to write. maybe not. in any event, be prepared because this entry is SUPER long!!!

so the area i was assigned to for immersion weekend was in the department of chalatenango, which is next to santa ana. (el salvador is broken up into departments, e.g. san salvador, san miguel, san vicente, santa ana, la libertad, chalatenango, etc.) anyway, chalatenango is in the northwest area of the country and blew me away with its vistas and gigantic trees. it is way less densely populated than san vicente and way more forested. the canton (town) i was assigned to was called portrero sula, and had never had a gringa/gringo stay there before. the family i stayed with spoke no english at all, and even though my family in molineros speaks no english, i felt like i was starting all over again with this new family.

the volunteer who met me in san salvador and took me to my site (and who i stayed with on saturday) was maria de la cruz. at first, i thought she didn’t like me because i didn’t speak spanish very well – and it’s her native language. also, she obviously fits in a lot better than i do – simply because she is hispanic. so when she met me in san salvador and we took the bus to nueva concepcion, and finally to potrero sula, i was drawing a lot more attention than she ever got because i’m a gringa, i’m tall, i have blond hair, blue eyes and i was carrying my huge red north face backpack. she dropped me off at my host family’s house and kind of left me in the dark about where i was supposed to go and what i was supposed to do the next day. i was actually kind of pissed off because of it.

my family in portero sula was super nice and i think they thought i was really goofy because my spanish wasn’t the greatest. i tend to laugh it off most of the time, and my family picked up on this quite quickly. the family consisted of: victoria and jose, the grandmother and grandfather who are 79 and 86, respectively; andrea, their daughter, 38; and dimaris and johanna, andrea’s daughters who are 21 (yes, 21) and 14, respectively. actually, andrea lives elsewhere in the canton (i’m not sure why) and dimaris and johanna live with the grandparents in the house where i stayed. lydia and jose (andrea’s brother) and their son ricardo came over the first night i was there – i think just to see “the gringa.” ricardo is 18 and is super fascinated with all things american – so he was drilling me most of the night about the united states. victoria was so kind and really affectionate – but my favorite member of the family was andrea. she was so helpful and just a really good person. there was a miscommunication between maria, victor (maria’s salvadoran counterpart who she works with in the area promoting ag-forestry concepts) and my family about my meeting victor on saturday to go to a charla (a talk) that maria and victor were giving about trash and recycling. their audience was going to be a group of parents who were attending a required school meeting in maria’s caseria (a town that is even smaller than a canton). i was supposed to meet victor at his house in portrero sula, but maria told my family that victor was coming to their house to meet me. after 1:00 p.m. passed (the time we thought he was coming), dimaris called maria and found out i was supposed to go to victor’s house. so andrea walked with me all the way to the caseria which ended up being a couple of miles. i felt really bad, but she kept saying she liked the walk because it was really pretty. she was right about that. the road leading to maria’s caseria is basically just a tree covered road, with protected forest on both sides. the rio lempa runs through portrero sula, and weaves itself through chalatanengo. the road follows the river, and it’s hard to believe that it’s probably 100% contaminated. anyway, when i got to maria’s caseria – andrea made sure i was in the right place, and then hitched a ride on a pickup back to portrero sula and never complained once.

anyway, my two second favorite people ended up being two farmers i ended up working with on friday morning. one was jose (andrea’s brother) and this other guy named felomon. we left early friday morning and hiked (and i mean hiked), all the way up to their manzanas so i could learn more about the types of crops grown here in el salvador. felemon was awesome and seemed really excited about the fact that i was interested in their cultivation calendar and planting styles. jose was more quiet, but was super energetic about showing me the crops he has. at one point we were climbing high up on one of the hills where jose has a manzana and i felt something sharp on my leg. i was talking to felomon at the time and so i kind of ignored it. then all of a sudden jose’s like “ormigas!” i looked down and i swear to god there were like 200 ants on my pant leg. they were each no bigger than a speck of dust, but were biting the hell out of both my ankle and foot. so felomon and jose were brushing them off and i’m dying of pain for a minute. apparently i stepped too close to this dead log and the ants went crazy. the ants here are probably the most annoying of all the bugs. they get into everything and are everywhere. it’s like they multiply by the thousands in mere minutes. it’s nuts. anyway, the pain didn’t last long, and after a minute or so, we were on our way again. i must have burned 10,000 calories that morning because we just kept climbing higher and higher, hopping over and under fences. the payoffs were the most awesome views i’ve seen so far here in el salvador. we finally got to another big crop and found this guy picking some of the beans in his field. it’s hysterical how these farmers just “find” each other. we’d be walking along the middle of a corn field and jose would yell out and i’m thinking “who the hell is he yelling at?” and the next thing i’d know some other farmer would pop his head up from the field and greet felomon and jose. so this last field we stopped in, we were talking to this other farmer and felomon starts yelling at yet another farmer who is across the field. he starts telling him how i’m learning about the agriculture in el salvador and what-not. so this guy starts walking towards us, and next thing i know he whips out a pistol and shoots two rounds into the air. i’m like “what the hell??” i’m up on this mountain, really, really, really far away from anywhere with these four farmers, one of whom has a gun AND a machete! it sounds crazy, but i wasn’t scared at all....but i was definitely taken aback. also, i had a machete that felomon let me borrow – so it wasn’t like i was totally defenseless if something would have happened. i ended up helping them pick some of the beans (they do all their harvesting by hand) and for the first time felt like i was actually doing some arduous work. so all four of the farmers gathered up big separate bundles of the beans (still on their vines) and each carried one all the way back down to the canton. felomon and i took two bundles back to my family’s house and we, along with the grandfather and some other woman, shelled the beans. the next day we ended up eating those very beans – so that was kind of cool.

i had quite an experience on friday night. i had just come back from going to the charla in maria’s caseria. i was dead tired so the family and i were just chilling on the porch/dining area and talking about what i did that day. all of a sudden we hear this super loud noise, like a motor, and the family’s two dogs go nuts and start barking like crazy. i didn’t really think anything of the dogs barking because my first night at my family’s home in molineros clued me into the fact that salvadoran dogs have split personalities: one being sweet and nice and the other being something similar to cujo. anyway – these two dogs run towards the front gate and go crazy. next thing i know, a pickup truck pulls up to the gate. three guys wearing bandanas hop out of the truck, carrying this machine that sounds like a chainsaw and looks like a friggin’ grenade launcher. half the family gets up and runs towards the street, knocking their chairs over. the other half runs into this other room in the house. i’m standing there like an idiot, thinking we’re on the brink of being kidnapped or something. i’m telling you i nearly passed out i was so scared. i had no idea what was going on and couldn’t hear a damn thing anyone was saying because this machine was drowning out everything else. so i go towards the room that half the family ran into. there, they are getting the grandfather up out of bed and at this point i still don’t know who the three men are and what the hell they’re doing there. i follow the three family members plus the grandfather out onto the street, where the rest of the family is and it’s there that i find out that the three men are fumigating the house for zancudas (mosquitos) because there was a case of dengue fever in portrero sula. i still don’t get why they were operating with the speed of a pit crew at a NASCAR race – but at least now i know that all men wearing bandanas over their faces aren’t members of the MS – one of the most feared gangs in el salvador. we spent nearly an hour on the street waiting for the house to clear out after the men left. let’s just say i was ready for bed the minute we were able to go back inside.

anyway – the next day (saturday) maria told me i was supposed to catch the bus at 2:30 p.m. and take it to her caseria. i was supposed to “tell the driver” to go to a desvio (an intersection...if you can even call it that. it’s basically just two dirt roads crossing each other....not an intersection like we would think of in the states) that she couldn’t even remember the name of. i’m thinking “how the hell am i supposed to ask him to drop me off somewhere when i can’t even tell him where.” she seemed to think that i knew everything she did about the town or something. if that wasn’t enough, after i got to the desvio, then i was supposed to walk up some road and look for one of two “newer” houses. at this point i was really pissed because seriously – i’ve been here in el salvador for four weeks. i’m the first gringa in this town – i’m thinking the least she could have suggested is that we meet somewhere in her caseria – somewhere on the street where the bus would drop people off. all morning all i could think about was what i was going to tell barbara at the peace corps office when she asked us individually how our immersion weekends went – how my family was great, but my volunteer sucked. so that morning, there seemed to be some discrepancy among my family about what time the bus was actually coming by the canton. i had to walk to the desvio outside the canton, and then wait for the bus at 1:30, or 2:00, or 1:00 – nobody seemed to know for sure. so at 1:00 i bid my family farewell, loaded up my backpack and set off. i got to the desvio and gaged my options. i could sit there and wait, or i could just start walking. i knew i just needed to stay on that road – as andrea and i had walked it the day before. the thought of carrying my backpack on the two-mile walk in the hot salvadoran sun was not appealing, but standing at that desvio waiting for a bus that might not come for another hour seemed daunting as well. so i just started walking. i’m not sure if that was something barbara or the peace corps office would have approved of. the road had very little traffic, if any, the day andrea and i walked it. that could have either been a good thing, or a bad one. lots of traffic would have meant lots of guys in pickups whistling and catcalling and what-not. no traffic meant someone lurking in the forest, or a lone passing truck with a bunch of asshole hombres could grab me or whatever and nobody would know. but standing at the desvio waiting for the bus presented the same risks. the walk was absolutely awesome, and i was pretty content. there was only one truckload of hombres that yelled some stuff, but i just ignored them and kept walking. i made it to the caseria with no problems, and as i was walking through the town, i hear someone yell my name and it’s maria eating lunch at somebody’s house. so i met her up there and we continued on to her house.

maria’s house is friggin’ huge. i don’t know how she scored this place, but it’s a palace compared to all the other houses i’ve seen since being here. she has this gigantic porch, three huge rooms, a really cool outside kitchen that actually is its own separate structure, and two....TWO bathrooms – with toilets that flush. one of the bathrooms – the outside one – actually has a shower with super nice tiles. she said she pays something like $20 a month for everything – including electric. she doesn’t even use the third room. she has an awesome back yard with a banana tree, as well as a cohote tree. her house rocks. anyway, after hanging out with her for a while, i wasn’t as pissed off as before. i think she’s just a really introverted person, but she chilled out a bit while i was there. we ended up getting along pretty well, and i even got to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that night for dinner. i did have to hold my bread over maria’s small gas stove in order to toast it, but it was all good.

on sunday we headed over to her friend’s house for lunch. the main dish was rabbit. maria and i were about halfway through eating when her friend told maria that we were eating the rabbit that maria was petting the day before. that kind of put things into perspective and i decided to eat more of the salad that maria brought. salvadorans don’t really eat raw vegetables. they think we’re crazy for having them as a snack, or in a salad or whatever. every once in a while a salvadoran will fix a salad that has lettuce, tomatoes and maybe cucumbers. but the idea of eating peppers raw is totally out of the question. so maria brought this salad to lunch, and her friend ate a few bites and kind of ignored it. and maria and i were talking about how it’s so funny that salvadorans think we’re so weird for eating raw vegetables because it’s not very healthy, yet they practically deep fry everything, and then continue to pile on the salt and sugar and whatever other fattening things they can utilize.

anyhow – i took the 2:00 bus out of maria’s caseria and had to ride an hour to nueva concepcion. i then had to take another 2 hour bus ride to san salvador, where i had to change buses at the eastern terminal – which is by far one of the scariest places i’ve had to visit in el salvador. when you hear the word “terminal” you’d probably think of something official – like grand central station or gare d’nord in paris, or something like that. well, at least that’s what i thought when we first went to san salvador way back whenever that was. not so. eastern terminal is basically a huge-ass dirt parking lot, with a zillion buses, in no particular order or place. there are tons of stands that are falling apart with sketchy vendors selling food that is totally not clean. to round out this fabulous area are greasy hombres with nothing to do with their time except hang out at the bus station, as well as taxi drivers that attack you before you’re even off the bus trying to get you to hire them. i was unsure about whether or not the bus i needed to get on would even be there because it was sunday night. i was already planning what i was going to do if the bus wasn’t there. but after uncomfortably searching the terminal i found my bus, hopped on and chilled until it left for molineros.

it was so nice to be “home.” it was dark and i knew my family would be worried because i was so late – it was already 6:30 - and of course, it was dark. ana greeted me on the street and gave me a hug and i felt like i hadn’t been there in forever. i was grilled on chalatenango for a good hour. but i was super glad to be back. ana kept telling me that anna and megan had come over like four times to see if i was back yet, but i didn’t feel like going over to their houses, so i basically just unpacked my shit and went to sleep.

the end.

oh – this weekend we get a travel weekend – which is really just a day and a half. some of us are going to suchitoto. we wanted to go to the beach, but we decided that we wanted more than just a day and a half there, so we decided on suchitoto. it’s supposed to have these amazing coffee places, as well as tons of artisan shops. it’s an old colonial town near the lake, so i’m sure it’ll be really cool. so next week i’ll have more travel stories to tell.

oh, one final thing....tomorrow i have to give a charla to a third grade class about trash and recycling. in spanish. yeah, i’m freaking out about it.

adios!

no hay pan!!

so, apparently i´m a wierdo because i´m not a huge fan of the tortillas. i like them, but i love pan frances. basically when you eat breakfast, lunch or dinner here, you get either tortillas or pan frances with your meal. i´m not down with the tortillas, but i eat them whenever ana gives them to me. this morning she was fixing my lunch (all the host families send packed lunches with the volunteers to take into san vicente the days we are there.....which is actually a funny thing to witness at lunchtime. it´s a virtual ¨who has what¨ in the kitchen at 11:30. half of us don´t actually know what we are looking at in our little tupperware containers, and the other half knows exactly what it is, e.g. half a fish - including the head). anyway, this morning ana confessed to me ¨no hay pan¨ (there is no pan) and looked disappointed that she had to give me two tortillas instead. i assured her that tortillas are good - it´s just hard to eat them for every meal of the day, seven days a week. the specialty food here and one that most of us absolutely adore is the pupusa. they fixed us pupusas at the training center the first night we were here and damn, i was hooked that very night. it´s basically two tortillas (but they don´t taste the same as the regular tortillas) with cheese, or cheese and beans, in the middle. it´s hard to explain because it sounds like what we call quesadillas, but it´s nothing like that at all. the cheese is different here, which makes it taste way different. plus, it´s just a whole hell of a lot better than a quesadilla. every canton has a pupuseria somewhere, which is basically just a little shelter made out of tree branches and limbs where a group of women set up shop on saturday and sunday nights. they pretty much make pupusas all night long. and i´m lucky because the pupuseria in my canton is right next to my house. woo hoo!!! (we found out recently that the word pupusa has another quite derogatory meaning - you figure it out - so lately we´ve tried to refrain from saying ¨me gusta pupusas¨ too much....) .

yesterday we went out and did a tree identification training session at the abandoned agricultural school. there are so many awesome trees here. the problem is, lots of people use them for fuel wood, and the fuel wood consumption is going faster than the tree production. this is one of the big parts of our program....we´ll all probably end up starting a tree nursery somewhere. which will be so cool.

thursday we leave for immersion weekend - which is going to be a little scary. they are sending us out, alone, to different communities around the country to stay with totally different host families so we can work out integrating our spanish and learning about other areas of the country. this is for two nights. then on saturday night we are going to stay with another peace corps volunteer who is already 0n his or her own and we´ll work with them for a day. it´s super exciting, but also really overwhelming. especially since my spanish is only so-so. but it is getting better, and i can´t imagine it´s going to hurt to try and get by. i´m sure it´ll only help.

ok, so i said before that i´d talk about the whole ¨peace corps is a dating service¨ thing. so here it is. we just found out that one of the other volunteers in our group who is in another town has “hooked up” with her host brother who is around the same age as her. we are all totally shocked because come on, it’s been three weeks! which brings me to a wierd subject. like the second day we were in el salvador, we had to eat dinner at the peace corps training center. there were two three-year volunteers there hanging out with us and telling us what our programs are going to be like. one of them is in charge of training the youth development group and the other is in charge of training my group – the agro-forestry/environmental education group. anyway – bri, the one in charge of the youth development group started talking to a group of us about how every volunteer ends up with a salvadoran boyfriend or girlfriend. we were all totally shocked and bri continued to tell us a ton of stories about hooking up with them and all that. by the end of the night my brain was hurting because she had told us all of this stuff that we had never even thought about before. i mean, when i was getting ready to leave for the peace corps i was thinking about adjusting to a different kind of life and implementing our program and all of that. i was worried about the mental aspect of the whole thing and being away from home for two plus years. anna and i were saying how there was no way we were even prepared for the stuff brie was telling us. brie was telling us that out of her group, five volunteers have gotten married, two are engaged, and another two are co-habitating – all with salvadorans. then our trainer/volunteer said she has a salvadoran boyfriend too. when anna and i were telling ana about all this, she said that one of the volunteers that stayed with mario’s family (megan’s host family) in molineros, ended up marrying a cousin of ana’s husband. we´ve yet to find out if mark (one of the other trainers in san Vicente) has a salvadoran girlfriend. i can’t see why he wouldn’t – apparently it’s the thing to do.

that´s it for now. hopefully i´ll survive immersion weekend!

adios!

land of natural disasters

so today was the first day we were able to come into san vicente since last saturday. we had pretty much been in lockdown in our communities because of the double red alert that el salvador was under because of the volcano (volcan ilamantopec) eruption and then the floods from hurricane stan. i think something like 70 people have died here because of the massive amounts of rain that fell earlier in the week. it started sometime saturday night and really did not stop until thursday afternoon. i seriously have never seen so much rain in my whole life. it was absolutely pouring non-stop for five days. it was miserable because every time we had to go outside for something, our shoes were soaked, our clothes were soaked, everything was absolutely drenched.

see, anna and i have to go to megan´s house for spanish lessons and since we were supposed to stay in our communities, our spanish teacher was supposed to come to our town for spanish lessons all week. melissa lives right next to megan, so it´s not a big deal for her to go over there. but for anna and i, we have to walk across town and there is a spot where two roads intersect and basically the river runs over the road in the rainy season. it´s wasn´t bad last week because there were a bunch of rocks we could jump from and get to the other side. but this week, there was so much rain that there was no way to cross it unless we rolled up our pants and just waded through it. on tuesday, this stupid river had an actual current. anna and i were like ¨is this even happening?¨ we knew that our feet were probably infested with some kind of disgusto bacteria and all i wanted to do is soak my feet in a vat of purell antibacterial gel. anyway - our teacher never showed up on tuesday but the peace corps called and said anna and i should go back to megan´s after lunch because byron (one of the guys from the office) was going to come by and talk with us about some feedback thing. so anna and i left my house and went down to the ¨river¨and it had now risen like another foot. we were like ¨screw this¨ so we tried to go this back way that a couple of farmers had showed us before. by this time my umbrella wasn´t even working anymore. we get to this tiny path we are supposed to follow and we are dying laughing because this whole thing is so ridiculous. i mean, we weren´t even helping people as peace corps members, we were just trying to get to damn spanish class. anna said that this is what the ads for the peace corps should be - us trampling through pig and cow crap in the pouring rain in an attempt to cross from one side of the town to another. so we´re on this path, right? and in front of us is this cow, with one hoof in the path, totally blocking our way. it was like the last straw and i thought i was going to die laughing. the cow turned around and just stared at us and we see these bratty teenage kids yelling at us from their house to go around it and saying ¨hello¨ and ¨bye bye¨ in english. and it was like we knew that´s what we were going to have to do, but we were laughing so hard we couldn´t move. finally we got around it and continued walking to megan´s. to top things off, right after i almost fell down in this bacteria-infested street of mud and crap, some guy whistled at us as we were going by his house. we were like ¨are you EVEN kidding???¨

in any event, we found out later that our spanish teacher got into an accident coming to class on wednesday. apparently the peace corps was taking the teachers to some of their communities and the truck with our teacher in it got into a crazy accident. i guess she´s in the hospital and when we came into the office today, the truck was parked outside and the entire front end is smashed in. i guess she is ok, though so that´s good.

as if both of those disasters - the storms and the volcano - weren´t enough, today we were in the office having a spanish class and all of a sudden our teacher was really quiet for a second and i was like ¨what the hell is she doing?¨ then york, one of the volunteers i was sitting next to, is looking at me and is like ¨are you moving my chair?¨ i thought my chair was falling backwards and then i realized it was an earthquake. there were only about 10 of us in the office and everything was super silent and then when it was over everyone was freaking out. we found out later that it was about a 6.2 and was based somewhere off of the coast. apparently san salvador felt it way more - about a 4.0. i don´t know what it was where we were, but it was definitely the weirdest thing i have felt. it was like having motion sickness or something. anyway - so that´s that. í can´t belief i´ve only been here two weeks and so far i´ve experienced/witnessed a volcano eruption, massive flooding and devastation and now an earthquake. i´m wondering what´s next......locusts?? black plague?? maybe a tornado or two??

melissa and i actually got to go out on wednesday and work with a local farmer, don orlando, in his field. we couldn´t really do much because it pretty much poured the whole entire time. my shoes were soaked after walking through his sugar cane and corn fields. it was really interesting though. and when we got up to his field, we had a super awesome view of molineros. i couldn´t believe we were that far away. but you could see our purple church from high in don orlando´s field. we dug up some beans and he showed us how much they had grown since the corn was harvested. then he showed us this area along the main road that apparently served as a killing field back in the civil war. he said they used to bring buses of people up there and slaughter them. it was strange to think that because the it was really pretty up there. anyway.....

lastly, let me inform you all that when i left the house this morning, all of my underwear was hanging from a dead tree on the side of the house (which is clearly visible for every person who comes to the tienda to buy things). it rained so much earlier this week that practically all of my clothes were soaked. yesterday was the first day we had any sun and so i took advantage of it by washing all my clothes and trying to hang them on the line before it started raining again. well, guess what? yep, you guessed it. it started raining again. so basically all the clothes had to come onto the porch – which is actually where the kitchen is. you´d think having my underwear hanging from the dead tree was embarrassing enough. not so. try to imagine it all hanging over the dinner table. yep….so actually the tree thing isn´t so bad. ana said this morning that they´d dry quicker on the tree. great, whatever…..as long as i have dry clothes, i don´t care where they are hanging or who sees them.

that´s it for now. i have some interesting things to say about the peace corps being an official dating service. but that will have to wait until the next entry. it´s actually quite intriguing. oh, before i sign off.....here are some pictures of my family and where i have been living.

adios for now!!!!

dayana (my sister)

dayana, ana (my mom) and sindy (i just found out sindy is spelled with an ¨s¨and not a ¨c¨) in front of ana´s tienda - which is also the front of my house

sindy (my sister)

mama rosa (my grandmother) and sindy

the front of my house/tienda

all spanish, all the time

we`ve basically been speaking spanish 24-7 here (which is the point of this whole thing, but still.....). it`s frustrating sometimes because i can`t figure out how to get things across all of the time. but hopefully i`ll figure that out the more i use the language. i think my family understands me most of the time, but there are times where i think they are just acting like they understand so i`ll shut up!! probably not though. they are awesome. ana is a little worried because i`ve not had much of an appetite the past couple of days. but give me a break - after about a week of grease, huevos, grease, sugar, frijoles, crema, fried plantains and atol (leche de maiz....corn milk), i think my body is saying it can`t take any more for a couple of days. don`t get me wrong...the food is awesome, and if i wasn`t seriously concerned about the amount of oil i consume on a daily basis here, i`d be a happy camper. the only thing i don`t really like are the pipians. they are some kind of green squash-like vegetable that is really hard for me to eat. the other day ana gave me a whole bowl of them and i forced about half of them down before telling her i was full. i saw one of the handouts the peace corps gives the host families and it`s so funny. it says that we, as americans, aren`t accustomed to the huge proportions of food that they will want to give us. then it has this drawing of this person doubled over and holding his stomach. anyway, i haven`t gotten sick yet, even though over half of the volunteers have. i`m crossing my fingers because i don`t want to have to spend any length of time in the latrine!!

i learned how to wash clothes the other day and proceeded to make an ass out of myself doing it. ana and her mom kept telling me i was doing it wrong and taking my clothes and showing me how to do it. i was trying to be a little gentle with the scrubbing brush and they were yelling that i wasn`t going to get them clean enough. my clothes are never going to last here. i swear it`s like they think my clothes are infested with bugs.....wait a minute, they probably are infested with bugs.

about the bugs. the fact that there are a gajillion types of bugs here crawling and flying around everything really doesn`t bother me the way it would some people (like my mom). but the other day i was doing my spanish homework in my bed, under my mosquito net, when this huge ass bug flew into my room.......no, hovered over my net. this thing was like something out of a science fiction movie - i am not kidding you. i kind of swatted at it and it fell on the ground and started crawling around. finally ana came in my room and i pointed at it and she told me it wasn`t dangerous, but i`m not sure if i believe that or not.

by far the most hysterical thing so far is the "party bus" that takes us from san vicente to our village on tuesdays and thursdays (or any other day we need to go from our village to san vicente). there are 4 other volunteers (besides the 3 that live with me in molineros) that have the same route as us. their town - las cañas - is closer to the pan american highway than our town, so they have a shorter ride than us. anyway - our bus comes complete with christmas lights and pink/blue florescent lights on the inside. our bus driver has about 20 hair clips on the mirror which we recently found out is something bus drivers do to show how many women they`ve slept with. but the best part of the party bus is the mixed cd that is always playing when we get on that is chock full of horrible love ballads that were popular in the 80`s and 90`s in the States. i`m talking songs like "everything i do, i do it for you," "how am i supposed to live without you," "careless whisper," "girl i`m gonna miss you," "lady in red," "eternal flame," etc., etc. they do play a crowded house song that i like so that works out for me. but it`s hard not to totally crack up while hearing all those lame songs. what`s even funnier is in the morning, at 6:00, everyone is sitting there in silence. i feel like i`m at a high school dance when i`m on that bus. we are trying to remember all the songs so we can make a mixed cd, just because it is so funny.

our technical training is getting interesting. we went out to this abandoned school and learned how to do composting the other day. it was my first chance to use the machete and i have to say it was pretty fun. by the end of the day we were ankle deep in cow crap so that made for an interesting ride home on the bus. it rains here every day - duh, because it`s the rainy season. it`s not so bad, except for everything smells like mildew ALL THE TIME.

we went to san salvador yesterday which was totally overwhelming. i`m still not sure which bus we`re supposed to take, but i suppose it`s something that will only come with riding into the capital alone a few times. we visted the main peace corps office there and met with the director. i was excited to see that the anthropology museum is super close to the peace corps office, so i`m looking forward to going there. we hung out at some super mall for a while. we all needed stuff that we forgot to bring, and the last thing i thought i`d want to do was spend time at a mall. i don`t even go to malls in the States, but i was glad to be able to get some things. on the bus ride home, the 8 of us got off the bus at this intersection on the pan american highway where we could catch the bus that would take us to our towns. the volunteers living in las cañas just walked to their town. ours is much farther away, but we knew we`d have to wait for like 45 minutes for the bus. melissa was sick and really wanted to get home, so we just started to walk. it was 5:00 and still light outside, but after it took us like 1/2 hour to get to las cañas, we knew we were never going to make it back by dark. we figured though that because there were 4 of us, we`d be ok. next thing we knew two rural police officers drove up in a truck and asked us where we were going. we told them molineros and they told us to get in the truck. we were so sick of walking we figured it was ok. and it was. although they kept yelling at us for walking home. they kept saying that 4 gringas on that road at night was muy peligroso. but then they told us if we ever needed help to call them. i told ana about it later and she`s like "la policia loves gringas!!" ugh. anyway, we went running over at the police station`s soccer field this morning and they were all out there making comments. good times.

other than the volcano that`s finally erupted in santa ana, that`s pretty much it. that volcano is way to the west of where we are, but we do have a pretty huge volcano near san vicente called "chinchontepec." apparently explorers named it that because it has two peaks and chinches in caliche (the indigenous language in el salvador) means "breasts." what is up with these idiot men explorers??? each set of explorers (ala the guys who named the grand tetons) must have thought they were brilliant for naming mountains after women`s physical attributes. sheesh.

adios for now.....hopefully i`ll be able to upload some pictures next time.....