Friday, June 30, 2006

estoy triste!

well, like i said, it was a good game. but in the end argentina lost. on penalty shots though, so basically what it came down to was that the backup goalkeeper, franco, (the regular goalkeeper, abbondanzieri, was hurt during the second half), didn´t play so well. during the penalty kicks from germany, every time he went the opposite direction of the friggin´ ball. argentina played awesomely and held out 1-1 through the regular game and into the extra time, and then like i said, it went to the penalty kick phase and there they lost it. germany had the better goalkeeper. they also fiercely stepped it up during the second half so i´ll hand it to them. it didn´t hurt also that they were playing in front of a stadium of fans in GERMANY. so yes, i´m sad today, but oh well! at least the detroit tigers are kicking ass!!! tomorrow´s july 1st and they´ve still got THE BEST RECORD IN BASEBALL.

you know though, while baseball will always be my favorite sport, followed closely by hockey, i think soccer has moved up in front of both football americana AND basketball. i´ve always been into sports (well not really boxing or curling or stuff like the tour de france) so it´s easy for me to follow a sport even if i´m not particularly all that interested. i was like this with soccer before, like up until about 5-6 years ago. i started paying attention a little more year after year, and when i finally moved here, it all accelerated and now i think it´s such a great game. not a lot of screwing around....somebody´s hurt? well they have to get their ass off the field real quick because the clock ain´t stopping. i think that´s the think i HATE most about basketball is those last 3 minutes of the game when all they´re doing is fouling to take their chances on the other team missing foul shots. what a bore. and football - yes, it can get pretty dramatic, and those beautiful long passes that get caught are a great part of the game. but it seems too easy to score in football. seriously, you only have to be within about 35 yards or so of the goal to score a field goal, so it´s like almost all the time if a team can move the ball at least to the 45 or 40 they at least have a shot if their kicker doesn´t suck. i don´t know. maybe i´ll feel differently once i´m back in the states and i´m laying on the couch on a saturday or sunday fall afternoon and the hum of some game is on in the background, or it´s a good michigan vs. whoever game.

but right now, fútbol is where it´s at! well, behind baseball and hockey which are where it´s REALLY at!

so who´s gonna win the world cup? odds are for brazil. i think germany´s good, but i don´t think they can beat brazil...... we´ll see!!

adios for now.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

argentina vs. alemania

tomorrow, june 30, 2006 - not sure what time in the states, but somewhere ´round nine or so here. seriously, even if you don´t like soccer all that much, it will be a really exciting game. germany kicks ass, but as you all know, i´m all about argentina who also kicks ass. they rolled all over mexico last saturday, well maybe not ¨rolled over,¨ the score was only 2-1. find a t.v.! my soccer conversations are really limited, because if i try and talk to any guys over 16 years old about it, then they think i want to go out with them. so basically any talk about soccer that i have is with 4th, 5th and 6th grade boys, and antonio, so somebody needs to watch the game! por favor!

anyways, things have been kind of busy here lately. i have a bunch of things to write about, but have been working like crazy lately - i did the most amazing charla today! so i will try and post something soon. if i don´t before the 4th, have a great one and don´t shoot anybody´s eye out (rudy, steve, mark, bryan) with crazy fireworks! have fun eating hot dogs and s´mores and baked beans and potato salad and picture me back in molineros at dayana´s birthday party eating salvadoran cake and swatting at some kind of crazy piñata in the ten million degree heat. my friend might have a 4th party the weekend after on the beach, so that would be really swell. we´ll see.

not much else to report right this second, but i´m sure that´ll change real soon. i´ll just post a couple pics.

saludos!

Friday, June 16, 2006

tales from the mold

for those of you that though mold only grew on leftover food – food that you had no intention of eating even as you were putting it in a bowl and covering it with saran wrap and shoving it in the refrigerator only to be discovered a couple months later (or in my mom’s case, for her two children to discover when she gave them the ungodly task of cleaning out the refrigerator back in the day) – you’re wrong. oh sooo wrong.

so i think i already touched upon the fact that i found clothing hanging in my “closet” (what passes for a closet here, at least) that had spots of white mold on them. it’s pretty much found its way to most everything i haven’t washed in the past three weeks or so....making my temper just a little more elevated that it already has been lately – what with being sick and the rain and all that. so that was the first place i discovered mold.

well, i also found it on nearly everything that is in my closet – not even kidding – boxes, shoes, bags. seriously. can it be any grosser than this? wait – before you answer that – let me tell you – it CAN be!

so last saturday (after i just got back from sonsonate to go for my re-examination to make sure i don’t have parasites anymore) i started to get this yuk feeling in my stomach again, and by about 5:00 i was well aware that i didn’t need the lab to call the peace corps and to tell them whether or not i still had parasites – i KNEW that i still had them. i know this sounds like a bad 60’s science fiction movie critiqued on mystery science theater 3000, but the parasites totally returned! but you know, i’m not even going to go into it because it was basically the same sick-to-my-stomach feeling i had before only stronger and more ridiculous. so whatever, after feeling like i was going to die a really slow death, i decided to buck up and not be such a baby about it. so i was trying to clean up my room – find all the moldy grossness and figure out a way to at least prevent it a little – but i’m thinking it’s probably impossible in a country that has a rainy season. anyway, so i was making my bed – i know, why i’m doing this at 5:00 p.m. is beyond me, but somehow, a made bed seems to make a room look neater, doesn’t it? – and i was moving my pillows around and the one that i have against the wall most of the time felt damp and i thought – are you effing kidding me? so i look at it and goddamn if it isn’t wet and then i took the pillowcase off and it’s TOTALLY covered with moldy dark spots and i about vomited on the spot. ugh! thank god it wasn’t the pillow i had been putting my head on every night. so i feel the wall and it’s friggin’ totally wet. see, houses here obviously don’t have siding or anything to prevent moisture from getting in them or anything and so when it has been raining here for two and a half weeks straight, well, water’s pretty much gonna get inside the walls and eventually get into the house or room or whatever. so i’m all pissed off about one of my pillows being infested with mold and i’m trying to figure out what i can do now because i obviously can’t have any part of my bed touching that wall, right? so i pull the bed out and i’m trying to figure out another way to situate things – but you know, there’s really no way to change the room around.

so i think maybe i can use this woven mat that the previous volunteer left for me that’s been rolled up and sitting next to this shelf-thing i have in my room since i moved in.....i haven’t had the occasion to use it. i think maybe i can put that inbetween the bed and the wall and it can at least block the moisture from getting onto the bed. so i pull this thing out and unroll it and like a cruel, cruel joke being played on me to see if i’ve really chilled out at all during this peace corps experience, THIS THING HAS MOLD ON IT TOO! i see these little white fuzzy things all over it on the front, on the back, in the middle. i’m like – how is this happening? this was nowhere near a moisture-covered wall or anything. i wanted to scream. so i sat down on the bed and wondered if this was going to be my snapping point.

oh no, i still had more surprises in store for me. so, as i could hear the rain outside getting STRONGER, i decided – alright, enough of this. i’m going to take a hot shower and pretend none of this just happened and i’ll figure out the solution for the bed situation later. so i went and got my towel that hanging out on the back porch – the only place it stands a rat’s ass chance of getting dry – and i brought it in so i could use it after my shower. so i did that, got out of the shower and got the towel, dried my hair, you know the usual after-shower routine. i put on PJs and i was thinking – ok, i feel better, i can figure out this anti-mold-on-the-bed thing. so i went to hang up my towel on the only clear space on the lines in my room that have all my other clothes on them and i see this white thing on the towel. i looked more closely and what is it? well, i’ll say this – it wasn’t mold. but it was something probably even more gross – if you can imagine that. it was this big, fat disgusting worm that had made it’s re-birthing home on my towel. you know, it was covered with its white substance – i don’t even know what the hell that’s even called in english...oh, a cocoon - so that it could come out a moth or butterfly or whatever. you know what i did after seeing that – i seriously for real threw up. i’m sure some of it had to do with the fact that i was still sick, but part of it definitely had to do with the thought that i was just wrapping this towel around my body and drying my hair with it and all that. and the whole time there was this wriggling worm probably hanging on for dear life inside its little temporary home.

and, as if things could NOT get any worse, i then got a cold. and at the time when i went into my peace corps medical kit to get some much needed cough drops - as my throat was on FIRE - i found every single one of them to be a moldy, mushy, cherry-flavored mess. mmmmm...cough drops that give you every ounce of their strength at one time so you feel like you´ve just swallowed a liter of gasoline. good times.

seriously – this is my life right now. i have newspaper and plastic taped (TAPED) to the wall behind my bed in some lame attempt to keep mold away from my bed. i had to buy another towel because the thought of using that other one just really makes my stomach turn – although i’ll probably still keep it and use it once the image of seeing that worm goes away. seriously, please people, do NOT take for granted the fact that you have a dry place to lay your head at night.

some good things have come to pass though – i found someone to wash my clothes for me, so i think i’ll just throw that gross towel with my load of clothes and i’ll let her deal with it. i bought a fan and it has turned out to be the best thing i’ve ever purchased in my life – my pants i lamely tried to wash on friday (before the woman who is now going to be washing my clothes stepped in and basically told me i was doing a really crappy job of washing my pants and finished them for me) were actually dry by mid-day sunday. also the fan drowns out the sound of the crazy loud insects (that i found out are NOT cockroaches – thank god, but grios that live either in the ceiling or the floor) and about half the sound of roberto’s insanely loud truck. i also got a pair of oh-so-pretty rubber boots to wear while i’m working in the huertos – which may or may not survive after this bout of rain. i went to sonsonate to buy the fan and the boots and antonio came with me and we went into this shoe place and the woman there could not understand that i was the person that wanted the rubber boots and not antonio. no joke! i told her what size i wanted and she went and got the boots and brought them to antonio and i’m like – uh, no, hello, over here – ME!

when i was in sonsonate, though, i did get to visit this church called la iglesia de san antonio del monte and it’s this church that everyone comes to visit that is supposed to be the church of miracles. it’s a really low-key church, with a really beautiful mural painted near the ceiling towards the front. it also has this other painting of san antonio in the front of the church. out front there are all these market vendors that sell candles that you can buy and take them into the church and you know, pray for some kind of miracle – like your sick grandma, or yourself, or whatever it is you want help with. then, around back, there is this area that you climb these steps up to and it’s got this wall of all these letters and paintings and signs from people over the years that have had their prayers answered – saying thank you to san antonio for answering their prayers. isn’t there something like this in rome or in italy somewhere? anyway – it was kind of neat to just see all the different ways people expressed their thanks – there were some paintings showing grandpa or mom in the hospital and then on the side, san antonio watching over him. some were just letters on notebook paper. some were wooden signs with just the name of the person and the month/year etched into them. just all kinds of stuff. a favorite was thanks for watching over someone’s daughter, son, father, mother as they made their illegal trip to the united states. some had pictures of the people who were cured or who had their prayers answered accompanying the note of thanks. there was one that made me smile – it said, “gracias san antonio del monte por curando nuestro perro spike.” (thanks for curing our dog spike) and these notes of thanks went all the way back to the 60’s. so that was a nice little diversion to all this other stuff that’s been going on lately.

so we’ll see how the rest of june shapes up. apparently there was some kind of tropical depression hanging over central america (alberto) and this crazy amount of rain fell on the country – especially last week. although, it seemed like apaneca was shrouded in this veil of depression for at least 2 ½ weeks. it´s been way nicer this week was a lot better – blue skies and sunshine – i might be dreaming though. i wonder how long it’s gonna last?

saludos!


the front of la iglesia san antonio del monte





a beautiful flowering tree outside la iglesia

we were sitting outside waiting for the rain to stop and this dude comes up carrying this. apparently he sets up outside the church with his instant camera and tries to get people (with kids mostly) to have their pictures taken on this donkey? zebra? no idea what it´s supposed to be...something from the equine family.... anyway, it´s actually a good idea for a business here because people are nuts about getting their pictures taken, but not many people have cameras.

the inside of la iglesia during a small service

the inside when it was completely empty

one of the carvings of the stations of the cross inside la iglesia

Monday, June 12, 2006

world cup action

so are any of you watching the world cup? do you even care?

while i haven´t bought into the whole *real madrid vs. barcelona* insanity that everyone here is crazy about, i am totally into the world cup and there i still stand behind argentina. sure, they´re only ranked number 9, but that ain´t bad. i suppose at all other times i should be rooting for barcelona because argentinan lionel messi plays for barcelona.......but all that´s not important. anyway, it´s hard not to get wrapped up in all of this as now i´m a resident of a latin american country. i´ll be wearing my shirt on friday when they take on serbia y montenegro. so with that being said, GO ARGENTINA!

Friday, June 09, 2006

i´m in el salvador??

so it’s basically looked like this here in apaneca and san jorge for the past three weeks:






these are pictures i took at the school - the one right above is the football cancha. i’m not kidding you, every single day for about three weeks or so, it’s looked like this, más or menos. no sun or anything! it’s been raining like mad every single day and it is next to impossible to wash clothes because it takes them like a week to dry. it rains during the night. it rains during the day. during the night again. during the morning. all day long. so we begin the rainy season. the thing is, i went to anna’s site this past weekend, which is on the beach in ahuachapán, and at her site there was sun and blue skies and everything. it rained during the night, but it wasn’t dreary or anything. the same for when i was living in san vicente during the rainy season...it rained every day for one or two hours during the day/night and it was really tranquilo rain. that is totally not what we’ve been having here. what’s been happening here reminds me of the rains from hurricane stan that rolled through el salvador last october. hard rain all the time, every day. plus there’s all this mold and mildew that accompanies this rain. everything’s perpetually damp now - i had clothes hanging up in my closet and when i took them out they had all this mold on them, so not only do i now have to wash clothes that i wore, but clothes that i didn’t wear that have mold on them. and they’re probably never going to get dry because i can’t hang them outside because it rains all day long. so i have them strung up on lines that i’ve got draped across my room.

and here in apaneca, because i’m in the mountains, when it rains, it’s cold – especially at the school. this fog, like in the pictures above, rolls in and it sweeps into the classrooms and i’m not kidding you – the teachers and i wear sweatshirts and fleece and put up our hoods. mirna wears a winter hat. no shit! and the rest of the country is sweltering. isn’t that funny? i think if salvadorans from other departments and pueblos were to see the people of apaneca/san jorge, they’d not believe they were looking at citizens from el salvador. in the morning, like around 7:00 or 8:00 a.m. people wear coats and winter hats here in apaneca and san jorge. women wear pants with skirts over them to work out in the cafetales so that if it gets warmer during the day, they can just lose the pants. i would have NEVER imagined it being like this before coming here.

but i’ll say this, i’d rather have fresco temperatures and cool rain than what it’s like at anna’s site. it’s hot and humid as hell there. i was laying in the hammock at whatever time of night it was and i thought i was gonna roast. i don’t see how she gets anything done there – its sooooo humid and steaming hot. you sweat and everything sticks to you, including loads and loads of dirt. if you scratch your skin, you’ll have all kinds of dirt under your fingernails just from your sweat attracting anything and everything. it’s gross and i’d always rather be cold than hot.

anyways, i think i’m over my sickness thank god. that sucked big time. i spent pretty much all last week carting myself on buses to different medical examinations. finally i got some medicine from the peace corps medical office and it was making me sick too because it was so super strong. but finally on sunday, i started to feel close to normal again. i never realized how gross it is to feel sick to your stomach like that all the time. hopefully i won’t have any more bouts with that disgusting illness ever again. but man, i just kept thinking how nice it would be just to have a car to drive to these medical appointments. ugh. a bus to sonsonate – 1 ½ hours. bus to san salvador – 3 hours. then one to the office – another ½ hour. then to the lab – another 20 minutes. to the estancia – another 20 minutes/half hour. back to apaneca – 3 hours. back to sonsonate – 1 ½ hours. goddamn was i sick of the bus.

so like i said, i visited anna’s site for the first time this past weekend. her site is really tranquilo and nice and actually looks and feels like we´re in el salvador – meaning, it´s hot and sunny. she’s got a crappy pueblo – cara sucia – which i’ve already written about before. she, megan and i had a molineros reunion and met up in cara sucia on saturday a.m. i was still feeling gross, but it was nice to be hanging out with my friends, so at least that made me feel a little better. we ended up having to walk a lot of the way to her site which was super hard because it was so friggin’ hot! when we got to her house, carly, another volunteer from our group, was there. she lives super close to anna, so i guess she often just shows up at anna’s house. anyway, so we all then walked down to the beach which was so beautiful. the ocean looked really scary – the surf was just tearing it up, but back on land the whole beach was just lined with these big huge palm trees that were swaying gently in the ocean breeze. we walked pretty far down to this inlet that was warm and tranquilo and just hung out there in the water, albeit fighting the current, for a couple hours. it was really beautiful, and totally tourist-free. there was nobody on the beach (except for a couple of fisherman), no obnoxious condos, nothing at all. just giant palm trees and the occasional house. that’s what’s so strange here – the poorest people live on the beach, unlike in other countries where the rich people hoard up the oceanfront properties. anna was saying that there were some nice houses down a little ways, but for the most part, lots of the coastline of el salvador has the poorest people living in beach houses.

anyway, so we hung out there for a while then walked back and just chilled out. we kept saying how it was nice to just hang out with other peace corps volunteers because we can sit and read and not talk to each other and it’s totally fine. but what’s funny is that salvadoreños that see us doing that probably think we’re crazy – we’re just sitting there, not talking to one another. they must think it’s just so weird – because the concept of reading a book is not something salvadorans understand at all. i think it´s a safe bet that the only book most salvadorans read is the bible. when you’re reading a book – like a novel or other work – salvadorans always ask you if you’re studying. it’s really hard for them to understand that we’re reading because we like to read stories and things like that. another nice thing about having other peace corps volunteers visit, according to anna, is that when you have visitors from the states, they don’t understand that there’s not that much to do and lots of time is just spent sitting around doing nothing. that’s just how life is here....huge chunks of time where you’re not able to divert your attention with anything else like you can in the states – things like television, being able to hop in the car and go somewhere else, etc.

so we three just read books and magazines (my friend sent me a bunch of mags like people, us weekly, etc. filled with hollywood tabloid stuff just to let us know what important stuff we’re missing in the states...ha) and chit-chatted about what’s going on in the peace corps community the rest of the day. then on sunday i came back to my site – well to juayua anyway. i met antonio there and we went to the cemetery there and i took a bunch of pictures. the architecture and decorations are so different from cemeteries in the states. if i don’t get a chance to post some of them in this entry, i’ll definitely do it in an upcoming one.

anyway, so that’s about it. other than the rain there’s nothing crazy happening here, at least for now. well, the gals that are reading this might be interested to know that i spent most of yesterday afternoon drooling over the 21 and over year old guys from san jorge playing soccer in the cancha next to the school. um, yeah, they play soccer really well too. dayum!!! ha ha.

more photos below. adios for now!





the neverending gigantic palmas lining the coast





the inlet where we chilled out (that´s megan in the pic)






this is anna´s house