la biblioteca

well i thought i´d get one last entry in before may 2008 is gone forever. i can´t believe june is practically here..... may was supposed to bring a bunch of rain and it really hasn´t yet. the weather has been really odd this year. right now as i sit here and type this entry, clouds are rolling through the pueblo and into the windows and doors here at the internet place, making it look like i´m in a haunted house. the past couple of days have been dry and really windy, which is not that normal for may in apaneca. we were on alert yesterday for tropical storm alma, but it never really materialized here, which is good. of course, right after i typed that it hasn´t been raining here, it starts pouring. anyway.....

we finally got the school library up and running. well, not completely up and running, but the kids can at least now come into the classroom where the libary is and read. it was actually quite a lot of work to get the libary ready. we had to cover all the books with plastic to protect them. then we made up cards to put in the fronts of the books so that when the time comes to introduce the borrowing system, we´ll be able to take the cards out of the pockets and keep a physical record of what books have been taken out without having to write all the info down. we´re planning on making i.d. cards for the kids so that when they want to take a book out to take home, they can leave their card with the card from whatever book it is at the school. i drew some pictures and stuff to put on the wall to make it less industrialized. we still have a couple things to do yet, but for the most part, it´s a wrap.

this system may sound arcane to you, but this whole library system is completely new to the teachers and the kids. they´ve never experienced being able to take books home with them, and i will admit, i´m a little nervous about the whole thing. but i guess my feeling is that they can´t be prohibited from doing this forever. kids don´t really care for books here like we do, or like most of us do. they write in them and tear the pages and steal them. but not all kids do this, just like not everyone who is familiar with a library takes care of the books they take out. but i guess my feeling is that maybe they don´t know how to take care of books because they´ve never had a lot of books around them. i don´t know. it´ll be a learning experience, that´s for sure. and i know some books will be lost or whatever, but that just goes with the territory.

anyway, after getting all the books covered and put on the shelves, i looked at the library and i was like ¨it´s so small!!!!¨ we have maybe 200 books in all, including some reference books as well as some books in english. 200 books doesn´t sound like much for a library, in comparison to what we have available to us in the states, but believe me, 200 books to these kids is a lot! so i think all in all it can only be a good thing.

mirna and her first graders were the first to have ¨lectura¨ in the library. it was fun to hear all the kids reading. the plan is to have some kind of project where we work on comprehension, because a lot of kids just like to look at the pictures. there´s nothing wrong with just wanting to look at the pictures, but they also should be reading. so i´m gonna help mirna with some kind of comprehension project where she can get the kids to talk or write about what the book was about. i´ve been doing this a bit (last year and this year) with the first graders. i take a group of like 5 kids and we read a book together, then i ask them questions about the book and they write the answers in their notebooks. hopefully, she can start doing this with the whole class.

anyway, so here are some pictures from the new library! adios for now...... (oh, p.s.....i´ve finally learned how to add video! i added a video to the ¨carrera de cinta¨ post at the end to show exactly what happens there. hopefully i´ll be able to upload more videos of more stuff in the future.)






first graders reading

leydi telling everyone why she liked her book ¨¿Qué ve el sol?¨

carrera de cinta

my friend eric says that all girls go through a ¨horse¨ phase of their lives, you know where they want a horse and read books about horses and all that stuff. well, i never did (at least that i can remember). i remember going to my friend lisa´s house in grade school and riding horses there which was fun. i remember having a couple of those ¨my little pony¨ toys at some point. i wanted to be a veterinarian, but i didn´t want to focus on just horses, i wanted to treat all animals. growing up, i wanted a goat more than i wanted a horse. i think horses are great, but the closest i´ve ever had to owning a horse is here in apaneca, where a group of five or six of them (and sometimes their offspring) gather right outside my window every night and chomp on the weeds growing in the street and whinny and clop around and then top it off by peeing all over the place. sometimes they come right up to my window and nudge the glass and scare the friggin´crap out of me too. anyway, so i don´t know much about horses or horse competitions or any of that.

here in el salvador, carreras de cinta are very popular. i had no idea what they were when someone first mentioned one to me. i´m sure we have these competitions in the states, it´s just that i´ve never been to one or knew they existed before living here, and i don´t even know what they are called in english. in case you don´t know what they are, i´ll explain. it´s a competition where whoever has a horse and wants to enter the competition pays an entrance fee. the competition includes one thing: charging your horse between two poles with a line hanging across it. from the line hang these small rings, about the size of a quarter or so. when the horse and its rider charge the line, they have to try and get one of the rings on this small piece of wood that the rider holds as they go under the line. the piece of wood is pointed at one end to make it easier to go into the ring.

if a rider is successful in nabbing a ring, he gets a present. girls dress up in their sunday best and each have a present to give to the riders who are successful in grabbing a ring. they do this over and over and over again, trying to accumulate as many rings as possible. at the end of the competition, whoever has the most rings, wins the grand prize which is the sum of the entrance fees to the carrera. and that´s about it. the length of the competition doesn´t depend on how many riders there are or how many rings are collected....it depends on how many presents there are to give away.

i attended my first carrera de cinta a couple weeks ago at my school. the teachers are trying to raise money to build a comedor at the school so the kids have somewhere to eat (they currently take their plate of rice and sit on the ground or the brick wall surrounding the garden). so they decided they´d have a carrera de cinta on the fútbol cancha. they got a bunch of moms to come and cook carne and pupusas and we sold beer and soda and cigarettes. i told them i´d help out, so they put me in charge of the ticket booth....people came to me, bought a ticket for whatever they wanted and then presented their ticket to the women making the food and serving the drinks.

it was alright. i liked watching the horses, but couldn´t help but feel sorry for them. people generally don´t care for their animals here like we do in the states. i mean, i know not every single person in the states takes care of his or her animals (hello michael vick), but the majority of us do and it´s hard to see how people here care, or don´t care, for their pets. there are salvadorans that treat their animals with love and affection and what-not, but the general rule of thumb here is that your dog or horse or cat is there to do a job and not for you to have any sort of affection for it. you don´t pet them, you don´t set a bowl of food in front of them every night, you don´t talk to them or anything. it´s ok to kick your dogs around....they´re dirty (people don´t stop to think that the reason they´re dirty is because their owners don´t feed them, leaving them to scrounge around in ditches and in people´s garbage and what-not in order to eat). i´ve seen starved horses tied up on the side of the road so they don´t run off, with no vegetation or anything to eat. i´ve seen more than my fair share of dead dogs laying in the street, people just walking by not fazed in the least that there is a dead dog laying there. i´ve heard puppies yelping and crying because little kids are hitting them. i´ve seen a squirrel locked up in a bird cage (this was at courtney´s site....the squirrel´s name was pancho.)

i guess what i´m saying is the carreras de cinta here aren´t filled with horses that get treated like the horses in the kentucky derby do. if the riders don´t actually ride the horses to the carrera, they get hauled in pickup trucks (a couple of guys brought their horses in pickups and coming down the steep, hole-filled road in front of the school to the cancha was sheer terror for the horses. one almost fell out of the pickup, it´s hind leg fell outside the pickup and was hanging there until it was time to unload the horses). i´m one of those people that feels bad killing spiders...i generally just try and shoo them out of the house. i hate snakes, but would feel bad killing one, unless it was attacking me (which i assume all snakes want to do...ha).

gracias a díos, with the exception of the horse almost falling out of the pickup, all the horses in our carrera looked ok health-wise. they looked tired and worn out, but they didn´t look starving or anything. the carrera was fun for a couple of rounds, but after that i was bored! it was the same thing over and over again for hours. i was out in the blazing sun selling those damn tickets and half the time i couldn´t hear what people wanted because there was a DJ out on the field announcing all the winners and playing music sooooo loud....ranchera music over and over and over. ugh. the same k-paz de la sierra songs over and over and over again. i like k-paz, but after the fiftieth time of the same song, enough already. plus, the DJ was so totally inappropriate for the crowd (a lot of kids) that was there. he was saying stuff about how different women of different religions sound in bed. he talked about how women want their men to come home drunk after a night of drinking and debauchery.....that they´re sexier that way. i was like ¨whaaat?¨ i couldn´t believe it.

but the thing that really just about sent me over the edge was the trash. antonio came for a bit at the beginning and bought a plate of food. he was sitting next to me and when he was done asked me where he should put his plate. i looked around and there was not one bag, trash can, box anywhere to put the trash from the carrera. at the end of the whole thing i asked mirna what we were gonna do about all the trash and she gave me what i call the salvadoran shrug....this patronizing shrug that says ¨i don´t really give a shit.¨ elba and maria laura at least had the sense to clean up some of the plates that were on the ground and put them in an extra box we had which had been holding the presents. but after we took down the tent and had gathered up all the chairs and generally packed everything away and took it up to the school, NOBODY took that box of trash. they just left it sitting there. besides, the cancha was still covered with plastic bags and plates and whatever that hadn´t made it to the trash box.

mirna saw an empty box from one of the prizes and thought there was something in it. she picked it up and seeing that there was nothing in it, threw it back down on the ground. i picked it up in a complete rage and i muttered ¨it´s not that hard to put it in the trash box.¨ finally i picked up the trash box to take it up to the school and i asked mirna why she didn´t have any shame leaving all that trash there and she said ¨these people are uneducated.¨ meaning, that she, a teacher knows better...but all these poor people don´t know any better. i couldn´t help it....i blurted out ¨you´re just as bad as they are....you´re uneducated too.¨ she gave me this look like she couldn´t believe i said that...hell, i couldn´t believe i said that. but i swear to god, i couldn´t help it!

but seriously, THE DAY BEFORE was the day we had had the earth day celebration. she went on and on about how it was so great and the kids did such a great job. we had cleaned up that cancha the day before as part of the project with the 6th grade girls. and when we packed up after the carrera the cancha looked WORSE than it did before we cleaned it up the day before. i was pissed. i couldn´t believe that after my almost 3 years there the teachers had no sense to provide something, ANYTHING, so that the people had somewhere to throw their trash when they were done eating. they made sure there were enough chairs there. they made sure there was enough food. they made sure there were two tents set up. they made sure there was a DJ. everything else they prepared for. but the cleanup was left totally by the wayside, not even a THOUGHT in any of their minds.

i took that box and threw it in the entrance of the school and left without saying anything to anybody. for a couple of days i was just really feeling down, like my whole time here has been a waste. i know that it hasn´t, but it´s all part of that glass half full/half empty thing, you know? see the forest for the trees, blah, blah, blah.

after a few days i was feeling much better. i had time to analyze the situation. mirna´s comment about everyone else being uneducated comes from a general social inequality here. she truly believes she´s better than the poorer people simply because she is a teacher. she doesn´t question HER actions....she placed all the blame on everyone else, simply because they aren´t professionals like she is. she doesn´t think she needs to be educated on the trash thing because she´s already got her teacher´s degree, she´s already as educated as can be. never mind the fact that some of the poorest people here, some of those people here who can´t read or write, are very conscious about their trash and picking it up and not littering. that thought never, ever crosses mirna´s mind. ugh. sometimes it can be so difficult here.

anyway, despite all that, i did take some pictures and so here they are!


one of the competitors charging his horse



kevin and wendy

selena

niña domy´s granddaughter, paola

one of the competitors getting his present for snagging a ring



me and maria laura




here is a small video of what's going on at the carrera

kids and earth day 2008

we celebrated earth day back in april, a couple days later than actual earth day (the 22nd) because they were still fixing up the school roof. anyway, i told mirna that the kids in her class (5th and 6th grades) should be in charge of earth day this year. not that i was being lazy and didn´t want to organize anything, but because our supposed job as volunteers is to work with communities in schools in the hopes that they will be self-sustaining by the time we leave. so i figured it being my third year and all, that it was a good time to put the whole self-sustaining thing to the test.

i will admit, i was the one that had to light the spark under mirna´s butt to move the responsibility for earth day activities into the kids´ corner. but once i did that, she absolutely took over. she talked to the kids and asked them how they thought we should celebrate earth day and they suggested having groups put together charlas and activities for their class about protecting the environment. she decided to call it a ¨gran exposición por día de la tierra.¨ in addition, i asked them if they were interested in doing something fun as well, and they of course said ¨síííííí!!!!!¨ so i suggested that we have piñatas or something, but i told them that we weren´t buying any piñatas, that we could make them. of course, all the girls wanted to participate in that, so i scheduled times for them to come into the school on their off days. we decided that the girls in 5th grade would make one and the girls in 6th grade would make one. i asked them what they wanted to make and they decided on a planet earth and a sun.

now, let me tell you, the last time i made a successful piñata, unsupervised, was back in high school in señor krummel´s 9th or 10th grade spanish class. this is when i first was anointed ¨lauuura¨ (which me and my friends erroneously spelled ¨laúra¨....i was eventually corrected of this in college when i put laúra on the top of my paper and the professor crossed out the accent mark with this huge fat X making me feel like a big dummy. since being here i´m still called lauuuura, just without the accent...) anyway, in señor krummel´s class, we made piñatas for some kind of fun activity...other ¨fun¨ activities included watching the movies ¨el cid¨ and ¨la bamba,¨ as well as making mexican food and watching señor play pocket pool during every class. (sorry señor if by some unheard of coincidence you are reading this blog....you were actually a pretty tranquilo teacher and i´m way glad i took your spanish class instead of the hoity-toity french one.)

so the piñata project 20 years ago...oh my god, it was really 20 years ago, WTF????....we were put into groups of two and my parter, rochelle, and i made a mr. peanut piñata. let me tell you, this thing turned out AWESOME. we won second place in the judging of the piñatas...i think we lost to a pair that made a california raisin. anyway, our mr. peanut piñata was not that big...we used balloons and some kind of powdered paste and tissue paper. it was so damned easy.

the next time i made a piñata was back in molineros when megan, anna and i made a mosquito piñata. we tried it with balloons first (my idea, since i was obviously the piñata expert), but it failed miserably. we were finally pushed out of the way so mama rosa and ana could teach us how to make a piñata the salvadoran (and obviously correct) way. they took newspaper and wire and some OTHER kind of powdered paste and formed it into what we wanted...the shape of a mosquito. it seemed so easy! all the stuff ana had in the tienda and in a matter of an hour or so, we were finished and ready to show it off to the rest of the pc group in training.

so i thought, as i suggested this piñata project to the 5th and 6th graders, piece of friggin´ cake! good times, good project to get the kids doing something fun, everyone can participate in tearing apart the piñata when it´s done. in short, it´s a win-win situation.

yeah, right. i got all the materials...including the mysterious powdered paste called ¨almodon¨ or something like that. i didn´t care that i was spending a few dollars getting the materials. the point was to have the kids doing something creative and seeing the fruits of their labor realized. first off, it was a complete disaster trying to get the wire to be in a round shape. FYI, don´t ever try to make anything resembling something round if you are making a piñata. the girls started off making these piñatas huge and by the time we realized they were too big to form the rounded shape, the wire was all weaved together and cut and basically just a huge mess.

but we pushed on. i kept saying stuff like ¨it doesn´t need to be perfect, the point is the fun in making it!¨ that worked the first ten times i said it. finally i just said ¨think of all the candy we´ll all get afterwards!¨ so next came the whole newspaper debacle. i finally decided to split up the two groups because it was too hard trying to work with them both at the same time. while i was helping one group of girls, the other group was scouring the newspapers and finding all the pictures of the surgery before and after photos that can be found in the mysterious ¨middle section¨ of the newspaper, you know, right after the classifieds end and the social scene pictures are. yeah, there in that no-man´s land are all these photos of people´s private parts that weren´t quite right, but after miraculous surgery now look only slightly better. the girls would go around giggling and running around with these gross pictures and i was like ¨seriously....,¨ knowing full well that at that age (or older even, i wasn´t the maturest of kids growing up...) i would have been doing the same exact thing.

anyway, the 5th grade girls and i all tried every which way to use that god awful almodon to paste the newspaper to itself and the wire. no luck. we finally just ended up using regular old glue. we pasted and pasted and pasted and when we got it all covered, it looked like an asteroid that had already made contact with earth. but i figured, ok, the problem was we didn´t have ENOUGH almodon. so antonio was going to ahuachapan the next day and i ordered him to bring me a butt load of almodon this time. he did and so i figured the 6th grade girls´ piñata would turn out excellent. everything went on great, it stuck and looked beautiful....not a perfect round planet earth, but good enough. i left it that night to dry.

the next day, the 5th grade girls came in the morning and we started putting the tissue paper on. this was the one part that worked fabulously. the girls loved putting it on and seeing the sun become something that slightly resembled a sun. i took a step back when they were working on it and when they were done they were like ¨it looks so great!¨ and i thought ¨ok, that´s what i was shooting for....something that they made that they were proud of.¨

in the afternoon, the 6th grade girls and i went to work on their piñata and all my ¨excellent¨ expectations turned to goo. all the damn newspaper started falling off in strips. so out came the glue again, but this piñata was much weaker. we slapped on the tissue paper, trying to make it look like earth. we filled it with candy and i prayed to god it would at least hold until the first swat at it the next day. but again, both the girls and i were proud of their work.

the following day we started off the gran exposición by having the various groups give their charlas. they all talked basically about the same thing....that we don´t take care of the environment so let´s start doing something about it. the 6th grade girls had us all go out on the fútbol cancha and gather the trash that had collected their since the last time we cleaned it up.

the last group, the 5th grade boys, did their charla about recycling. then at the end of the charla they had an activity that was really similar to the activities i have done with the kids in the lower grades (where we make flowers and butterflies using old toilet paper rolls and construction paper). one of the boys in the 5th grade group has a sister in 3rd grade and he must have seen her flower one day because their activity was making the same kind of flower. only instead of using toilet paper rolls, they used popsicle sticks stuck together for the stems and then we put the flowers in cut off plastic bottles and sand. i loved it!!! they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. well, i believe it!

after all that, the 5th grade girls shared their sun piñata with the 3rd and 4th graders. we finally strung up the hanging-by-a-thread planet earth piñata and just as i suspected, after about the third swat, the whole thing burst open and the candy all came out. it actually did turn into a win-win situation after all, just not the win-win i had expected.

don´t worry, i did do activities with the other grades too! i printed off a small book that had words about earth day that the 1st graders could write and color in. i had a flower activity book for the 3rd and 4th graders, as well as a book about why plants are important. and in 2nd grade i gave all the kids a copy of a book about how seeds grow into flowers that we read together. if it ever starts raining we are going to plant some flowers that they can take home. but for the time being, we need rain!

last but not least, i went to the old stand by with the kindergartners....activity making things out of toilet paper rolls. the kids absolutely love this activity which is good because it´s something simple maria laura can do with each new kindergarten class.

anyway, all in all it was a fun earth day and i was glad that i didn´t organize it. hopefully when i´m gone they will continue to celebrate earth day in some way, shape or form.

delmy cutting ¨papel de china¨ for the sun piñata

selena pasting the paper on the piñata

more cutting and pasting

ruth, lety and jenifer

kindergarten kids with their flowers



1st graders working on their little día de la tierra books



6th graders irene, ingrid and deysi cutting paper for their ¨planeta tierra¨ piñata



5th and 6th graders giving their charlas about protecting the environment





ok, so the piñata wasn´t exactly round, but it worked and a lot of candy fell out!

the girls´ cleanup campaign on the fútbol cancha





me with the flower i made as part of the activity that the 5th grade boys put together

technology....i love it, i hate it

let me first explain that i´ve been having trouble updating the blog, which i´m sure you´re all (those few that are still keeping up with it...don´t worry, you only have about 6 or 7 months more of it!) aware. first of all, i already told you about my computer woes. well, that problem didn´t get solved. i took it to this out-of-the-way place in san salvador and the tech guy was this dude that seriously needed to take voice lessons, like learning how to talk above a whisper. it didn´t help that the store was blasting this cumbia music, ALONG with the barça vs. real madrid fútbol match on an overhead television. the guy took the computer back into the ¨shop¨ area and came back and says that he couldn´t get it working, but he thinks he knows what the problem is. it took about five times of him telling me this until i could understand what he was saying, because all he did was mumble and whisper. so i ask him if he is sure he knows what the problem is and he just smiles. then i ask how much it costs and he says, ¨i don´t know. probably around $800.¨ again, i had to wrestle this information out of him. finally, i told him to write what he thought the problem was and how much it cost on a piece of paper. then i told him i didn´t think i´d get it fixed just yet.

so incidently, what he wrote he thought was the problem was the logic board. i did some searches online and found many a forum and message board saying that this specific computer (mac) that i have has had a gazillion problems with this. that made me feel somewhat better, as most of the websites said that even if that part is f%)!´ed, the hard drive is probably still ok. so then came the decision about what exactly to DO with my computer. not many people have macs here, and i just really felt uneasy about handing over my computer to this tech that couldn´t describe for me clearly what exactly the problem was and exactly how much it was going to cost. and i´ll be honest with ya, i don´t HAVE $800 for anything right now. i ended up going over to the brand new fed ex office in col. escalón and asked about sending it back to the states.

i must have spent an hour with the workers there trying to dechiper the process of sending something from el salvador to the states. if you send something over a $500 value, you have to pay duty on it, and with that, a bunch of friggin´ paperwork that makes absolutely no sense to me. it´s like it´s written in sanskrit. i wanted to insure it for the full value with fed ex, but didn´t want to have to pay customs on it because it wasn´t something new i was sending home or whatever. all i kept thinking was ¨i just want my computer fixed!¨ so finally the women there helped me out in a big way, and they said if there were any problems they´d call me. so we went to pack up the computer and i´m all in american mode, in this brand spankin´ new fed ex office, thinking they´d have bubble wrap or something to pack stuff with and they´re like, ¨no, we don´t have any of that.¨ so they gave me these confusing directions to some hardware store a million blocks away.

finally, i got the thing shipped off. you know, i don´t even care if i have the computer here, i just don´t want it broken and here. i ended up tracking the package today and un milagro, it actually has made it´s way to northwood, ohio. now all my mom has to do is pick it up or be home when they try to deliver it, and i´ll be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

while i love technology....having the computer, being able to track packages via the internet, being able to write a blog, etc., i really hate it as well. the fact that my computer is less than 3 years old and all of a sudden the logic board goes out for no reason is ridiculous to me. the fact that companies don´t make computers to last, just because they want you to get a new one, absolutely sucks. i can understand if my programs get outdated or it starts running slower or whatever....that´s just to be expected the older it gets, just like a car or whatever. but for it one day just to quit working, when it´s only 2 1/2 years old? so stupid. and it´s a friggin´ mac! i suppose i just have to go with it because there are millions of other people going through the same frustrations with whatever bit of technology they have in their lives.

so writing the blog has become a bit more difficult as i have to sit here in front of the computer screen and decide what i want to say and how i want to say it on cue. also, because i don´t have my computer, i obviously can´t upload any pictures from my camera. i have to save them on a flashdrive, but my flashdrive is super small and so i´ve had to start putting them on other digital cards from my other TWO cameras that i had previously (one broken, one stolen). but thanks to lovely technology, i have a digital card reader, so i´m at least able to use whatever card i want.

and finally, i´ve been extremely busy as of late. i was asked by rolando to participate in a taller in san salvador with 7 other volunteers and a few salvadoran counterparts. we redesigned the peace corps agroforestry and environmental education programs to more fit the goals of peace corps as well as the needs we have seen in the salvadoran communities in general. i´m also working on a huge campaign regarding health in san jorge. antonio and i are working on presenting a nutrition and health program to whoever is interested, focusing especially on risks associated with the salvadoran diet. i´ve mentioned before that people generally don´t drink water in their homes. they buy these 3 liter bottles of soda like 3 times a week, pumping sugar and carbonated water into their bodies. i´m all for the yucca frita and pupusas or whatever, but not every day. all this fried food and grease is basically the diet here, and it´s running a toll on the health of the salvadorans. rates of diabetes are high, as well as high blood pressure and other problems. the ministerio de salud really doesn´t focus much on diabetes, but more on mosquito borne diseases like dengue fever and malaria. thing is, there are higher rates of diabetes than there are malaria and dengue fever in most areas (at least those not on the beach).

don´t worry, i´m still at the school. our library still hasn´t gotten up and running yet because i had the list of ALL the books in my computer and now we have to start over because, well, you know....the computer and all. but we celebrated earth day and i´ve been teaching english regularly. plus the work with the environmental committee.

anyway, i promise to post pictures either this week or next. i can´t believe it is the middle of may already. i´m seriously ready for a vacation......

that´s all for now....