then and now

this past saturday, antonio and i decided to visit panchimalco, one of the oldest towns in el salvador. unlike the majority of the rest of el salvador, panchimalco is one of those quiet little pueblos that has managed to hang on to a few of it´s indigenous roots. panchimalco, nahuizalco, izalco, santo domingo de guzmán, and other pueblos scattered throughout the country are welcome sites sometimes. it´s easy to forget that el salvador was once filled with nahuat-speaking peoples dressed in colorful clothes and carrying on their lives without cars, cell phones and roads. while these pueblos have moved forward with technology and modern-day conveniences just like the rest of the world, they´ve also managed to preserve the almost extinct antiguan salvadoran culture.

we didn´t stay for long as it was quite a bus ride from apaneca to panchimalco, which lies to the south of san salvador, hidden away in the hills. it was very quiet, a few women selling fruits and vegetables on the street, and even a few movie pirates, selling their peliculas for $2 a piece. the main attraction in panchimalco is it´s 250+ year old church which is the oldest standing colonial structure in el salvador. antonio mentioned to me after walking through the church that apaneca´s catholic church was of similar antiquity before it was destroyed in the 2001 earthquake. (believe it or not, they are STILL not finished with the church in apaneca. in fact, it doesn´t look that much different than how it did when i arrived in december 2005. i don´t know what´s taking so long, but i mentioned before in a previous post how the father of the church has refused to accept any money from the government in repairing the church, so it is taking longer than if it were a government-sponsered repair.)

it´s floor was a mixture of bricks and dirt and the adornos were sparse and very, very distressed. but that´s what made the church so interesting. to think that this church was standing that long ago was something to think about. it´s transformation over the years, while physically probably hasn´t been much, the people that have congregated there have changed so much. whenever i´m traveling through el salvador on the bus (bus travel gives you lots and lots of time to ponder things) i sometimes think about what it was like here 200 years ago, or more. a lot of people here talk about how things were better ¨before,¨ the country was safer, the colón was still the national currency and things were much easier to buy. i can imagine for some nahuat-speaking indian who was living here all those years ago, they must have thought they were living in a paradise. i´m not talking so much about things like the fact that thousands upon thousands of indigenous peoples were murdered in the 30´s by el salvador´s then-president, but just in terms of the environment and daily life here. women ground their corn and made tortillas and spent a lot of time cooking food and taking care of the children - often breast-feeding one while the other sat and played in the dirt. the men went off to the forest to hunt or grow corn, using machetes. the only difference between then and now is that the forests have all but disappeared here, so men who do go out are finding less and less leña to start cooking fires with, families are preoccupied with how much ¨saldo¨ they have on their cell phones while they also try to come up with enough bus fare to get themselves to one of the bigger cities to take advantage of cheaper vegetable prices. everything seems to be such a struggle here, now, in the present. they essentially are doing the same things they did all those years ago, yet things are just so much more different. of course i´m speculating because i have no idea what it was like emotionally to live here 200 or 500 years ago; just the daily tasks that we know to have existed, through archaeological evidence made available to us.

i´ve just felt so pensativo lately with the fact that everywhere i turn in this world, what it all comes down to is money. i´ll have conversations with people here and inevitably, the topic turns to money....lack of it, price of food, bus fares, how someone in their family is in the states making more money. all this business with my computer....it´s all about how much money companies can get you to spend. you can spend much of your life without a computer, but once you make that leap to start using one, you can´t live without one, no matter how hard you try. and with that, comes the need for money. and companies know that and they prey on that fact. education is almost entirely grounded in money nowadays. tuitions are sky high, books for classes are some of the most outrageously priced items i have ever seen. i thought education was supposed to be about learning. it´s sad to see poor people be suckered, and i see my fair share of it here. vendors sell some of the shittiest products (batteries, clothes, shoes, toothbrushes, you name it) in the markets here, and these people who are struggling to clothe their kids or put batteries in their flashlights in order to see at night because there is no electricity in their house end up buying these crap items over and over and over again because the products are so shoddily made. i´m not even going to go into health care. i´ll just say what everybody knows - it´s all about money. most people here are willing to risk their lives to cross the u.s./mexico border, not because they want to be americans and celebrate 4th of july or see the grand canyon. they do it for the jobs that net more money than they´ll ever make here.

recently there was a news article on cnn.com that showed photos of these indigenous indians in brazil, who those taking the photos believe have never been contacted by ¨outsiders¨ before. the photos showed the indians waving things at the airplane as it swooped down over their village. apparently those taking the photos are part of a group that tries to protect the rights of these indians as their way of life is in jeopardy as a result of the destruction of the amazon. i didn´t know what to make of those photos. on one hand, i understand the mission of the group trying to protect them. on the other hand, i felt sad that those indians had to look up and see such a spectacle: the strange airplane flying over while a photographer leaned out and snapped photos of them....like they were animals on a safari in africa or something.

with that being said, sometimes i just think it´s nice to sit back and imagine what it was like in the past. a past without all these things that cost so much money that cause us to create our own obstacles to overcome. i´m not saying things were always so much more fabulous in the past or that progression is a bad thing, but i think somewhere along the way our societies have become somewhat misguided. i wish there was a way we could get back on track where we focus more on the good things like health and education and those things that, at their core, make a society a great one. money isn´t everything, we all know that, so i don´t know why it has to dictate our lives so much.

oh, and germany lost to spain in the euro copa final! antonio and i made a harmless bet of ice cream, and so i had to buy ice cream for antonio on sunday. what did i buy it with? yep, more money.

here are some photos of panchimalco. adios for now!





























el salvador has the most amazing trees. the trees here are something i will remember forever.

a fun day for everyone

yesterday i made a fool out of myself, but in a good way! i had english class with the third and fourth graders and we talked about clothing, so i thought it would be a good activity to bring a bunch of clothes from home and put them on. i had a big bag of clothes and i gave each kid a chance to pull out a piece of clothing and if they could tell me what it´s name was in english, i would put the piece of clothing on. i had everything from huge sweatshirts to underwear to big flannel pajama bottoms, and i had them on all at once. it was hilarious. i didn´t care that i looked like a complete idiot because the kids were in stitches and they were actually learning the names of the clothes in the process. elba thought it was funny too. then i asked if there were any kids who wanted to put the clothes on and so abby, this really outgoing girl, volunteered to come up front and put on my gigantic clothing and it was even funnier. good times.

i know these pictures are a little dark, but here´s abby with my clothes. totally hilarious!









this brings me to my almost end of service evaluation of my work here. i´ve discovered that i´m a much better teacher than i ever thought i was. while i don´t feel like i want to teach in a traditional school setting, i´ve learned from my work here that i do want to work in some kind of educational setting. the things i´ve been most successful with here have all been related to working with the kids and teaching the teachers new techniques in the classroom. for example, anytime i do an activity with elba´s kids where they´re participating and being creative and having a good time, she notices whatever activity it is and makes really positive comments about it. with mirna it´s completely different because i´ll notice things she changes about how she teaches and she never inferences that it´s because i taught her this different methodology, but like she came up with this idea all on her own. which is a great thing because it´s exactly how it´s supposed to work! she needs to think it was her idea because she´s going to be the one teaching here forever (well, maybe not forever, but for a very long time). the deal is, as environmental education volunteers working in schools we teach the teachers in a way that they start emulating what we´ve done, but also in a way that they are thinking of these things on their own (when we are gone), making changes in their teaching styles in order to get the kids participating and being creative.

i never ever thought i´d enjoy teaching english. i always said that i´m not here to teach the kids english, they need to learn spanish first. this is why at the beginning of the year i told elba and mirna that i didn´t want to teach english to the kids in first and second grade because i thought they needed to spend the few hours they are in school learning spanish grammar. but i agreed to teach 3-6 grades and although i was a little reluctant to do it at first, having an actual english class with those grades every week, i have come to really love it. i like being creative and thinking of new activities and teaching methods in order to make teaching english more than just giving them a list of vocabulary words every week. i´m not trying to get them to be english speakers or anything, but just introducing them to english beyond the whole ¨i love you¨ and ¨goodbye¨ and ¨hello¨ that they normally remember is actually quite fun. i really enjoy doing environmental activities with the kids too....it´s such a good way to be creative and get the kids to be more outgoing and participatory.

being down here and having salvadoran men yell stuff like ¨goodbye¨ and ¨i love you¨ and ¨hello¨ because that´s all they have ever actually learned of english makes me think how dumb we americans probably sound (or at least i did before i learned spanish) when we go to mexican restaurants in the states and say ¨gracias¨ and ¨adios¨ or whatever. latinos probably think we sound like idiots. i´ll never forget that tourist i saw in ataco who was had just got off this big, clean, almost antiseptic tourist bus in front of one of the artesanias there. he was wearing one of those big, bright hawaiian shirts and was drinking the beer and in front of the artesania were these little wooden chairs (i might have written about this before, so if i have and it´s a repeat story, you can stop reading here….i hate it when people repeat the same stories over and over again and i don´t want to be a hypocrite!). anyway, one of the salvadoran workers from the artesania was outside and the tourist walked by and in this really southern accent drawls ¨that´s pequeyyyyño right?¨ and laughs heartily while pointing at one of the wooden chairs that was small. the salvadoran working in the artesania just gave him a look like ¨uh, yeah¨ and i was thinking that salvadoran probably thinks americans are sooooo weird! i just cringed and turned to walk the other way so i wouldn´t be mistaken for being with this group of people.

anyway, nobody´s perfect, and i don´t expect them to be. but, my point is, if i have a chance to teach these kids something in a way that they´ll more likely remember the information and not be those salvadorans that only yell out ¨i love you¨ at whoever, i´m all for it. i´ve definitely felt more successful educating in the school than with the adults in the community. i know i´ve made a difference in terms of the trash and forming the committee and all that, but i feel like i´m not the greatest at motivating people on a community-wide basis. i guess i have motivated people, but it´s been more on an individual basis. actually, though, most peace corps experiences come down to that….it´s not the big projects you work on that end up making the difference, it´s the little, everyday relationships that do it. i feel more effective in the classroom, working with the kids because i can be there on an everyday or weekly basis. and let´s face it, it´s easier to motivate kids than it is to get adults to change their ways of thinking. i mean, i haven´t avoided working with adults, i´ve put myself out there, worked with the community. but i definitely feel like i´ve made more impact on the kids and teachers in the school.

and you know what? these salvadoran kids are great. they´re all super smart and creative….they just need to be given the chance to work at their own pace and actually be given the opportunity to work creatively. there are so many kids here that i can see going on to university and i just hope that they and their families find a way to make that happen. people give peace corps volunteers all this credit for what we do, but it would be impossible to do it without the participation and willingness to learn and teach by the people of the countries we are working in. so, you know, i have to say, i´m really proud of the kids in my school. they come to class every day (if they can) and they are ready to learn. with the classes that i teach, the kids are excited about english and environmental classes and reading. they come prepared and with their minds open and i just feel like the least we teachers and volunteers can do is spend our time making their educational experience a great one. so one of my biggest priorities before i end my peace corps service here in el salvador is getting the teachers, who will continue teaching the kids when i´m gone, to foster that idea of giving the kids a great educational experience.

adios!

p.s. noticias importantes!! so the euro copa is down to the final two......germany and spain. who´s gonna take it? i don´t know, but i´ll be cheering for germany as my family name makes it impossible not to. antonio´s grandmother´s family was from spain (actually his father´s last name literally means ¨spaniard¨), so i guess it´s safe to say he´ll be cheering for spain. sunday´s the day!

let´s talk fútbol!

ok, well i know that many of you don´t follow fútbol, or soccer as it is known up north, but let me re-cap the ups and downs of what´s been going on lately with this sport in el salvador.


long live once!!

first, back in may, i was totally bummed because the soccer team for the department of ahuachapán got demoted to the ¨segunda división¨ of the national league. for almost the entire year, once municipal (11 municipal), the canarios, were playing without a head coach, or without the players receiving any paychecks. through some political battling being waged by the owner of the team and the other members of the front office, the owner simply decided that he wasn´t going to pay the players anymore. as the season continued, the team kept tying their games, neither winning nor losing, and ended up at the end of the season having the lowest number of points in the entire league. not only were they not receiving any money, their head coach quit (or was fired depending on who you ask) sometime before mid-season, and so one of the players was trying to be coach and player at the same time. so when the final game of the season came to pass, once needed to win the game in order to say in the 1st devision. well, they gave a mighty effort, but ended up not winning and being demoted. it was hilarious after the game though because all the players, including the captain of the team, went off on the front office during interviews and were actually smiling and laughing and whatever because they knew they gave it their best shot and were just glad to be rid of the disasterous season. most of the players will now either be scattered throughout the rest of the 1st division league, a few will end up playing for the team as it participates in the 2nd division (kind of like the triple A in baseball). mind you, this is the same team that actually WON the closing national championship (clausura) in 2006! and now they are no more, at least as far as the national level is concerned.


11 municipal, before they were demoted...

on to el salvador´s national team......last night´s match between el salvador and panama was probably one of the most exciting matches i´ve seen in a long time in any sport. i´m not sure if any of you follow the world cup (i posted about the world cup back in 2006...how argentina lost and italy went on to win....). right now the ¨euro copa¨ is going on which is super important, right up there with the ¨copa sudamerica¨ and the world cup. television channels here pre-empt telenovelas, even the news, to air these matches. spain beat italy yesterday and the day before that, russia beat holland. so it´s down to germany vs. turkey and spain vs. russia for the semi-finals.

anyway, in order to qualify for the world cup, the granddaddy of all fútbol tournaments, countries like el salvador can´t simply just show up for the games. big teams like italy and france and germany and spain and argentina and brazil can pretty much do that. the style and quality of play is different in those countries. first off most of the big talent comes from these countries - many of the most talented players on the european teams (and in the world) come from brazil and argentina. so when it comes time to compete for the world cup, there´s no way brazil (who has ronaldinho and lionel messi) is not going to be competing. but tiny el salvador? no, they´ve got to fight for the chance to compete, even though it´s not likely they´ll make it very far. but it´s such a thrill to be able to play in the world cup it doesn´t matter if they go far or not.

so last night was do or die for el salvador´s team as they participated in the first qualifying tournament (with the ultimate prize being a spot on the world cup rotation). both el salvador and panama were playing for the right to go on to the next qualifying round. they previously played in panama and lost 0-1. panama then had to come to el salvador and play. because panama won the previous game by 1 goal, they only needed to win by 1 goal in order to qualify for the next round. el salvador, on the other hand, needed to win by 2 goals (since they lost by 1 in the previous game). it was a tall order for el salvador, it would be for any team, to go into a game HAVING to score 2 goals more than their opponent.


estadio cuscatlán during last night´s game (this photo is from el diario del hoy, one of the national newspapers here)

so they started the opening and played panama´s national anthem. then they played the salvadoran national anthem (¨saludemos, la patria orgullosos.....!!!¨) and i have to admit i was somewhat emotionally proud, seeing all those salvadorans in blue and white, stuffed into estadio cuscatlán. the game started and about 15 minutes into the game panama scored a goal. antonio was watching the game with me (of course he was watching the game, he´s male and he´s salvadoran, and more importantly, a latin american) and was like ¨they´ve lost it!¨ i was like ¨don´t say that yet, they´ve still got another whole half an hour, and then the other 45 minutes of the last half of the game.¨ but in all honesty, it was looking even more grim for el salvador because now they had to score 3 goals, not just 2. if the thought of scoring 2 was hard, 3 was almost an impossible order.

so the first half of the game eventually passed, it had poured rain for most of the time. there was even cloud cover on the field and i was wondering how the players could even see each other. half time was over and they started the second half and it was like el salvador couldn´t move the ball on the rain soaked field. panama was basically just trying to eat up the clock as they pretty much had the game in the bag. well, about 20 minutes in, el salvador scored a goal on a penalty kick and it was like ¨ok, yay!¨ but still, they needed 2 more goals and with only 20 some odd minutes more, that was a lot to ask. but after that goal, el salvador started to play much better....they were managing to move the ball, despite the puddles of water all over the field, they were passing better and they just seemed generally more ¨with it.¨

then by some miracle, at about the 38 minute mark, panama, who had started to play a little dirtier, committed a penalty in the box on el salvador. panama´s player was issued a ¨tarjeta roja¨ (red card), meaning he had to leave the game and panama had to play with only 10 players. on top of that, el salvador was given a penalty shot (when the penalty is committed in the box, the free kick is from a very short distance, where it´s just the goaltender and the guy getting the free kick...this is opposed as to the penalty kick i mentioned above, which was committed from farther away, so the kick was made in front of a line of players). whenever a team gets a penalty kick from close up like that, it´s like a 90% chance that it´s gonna go in. well, i guess it´s less than that, but it´s so random. the goaltender has to know which side the guy´s gonna kick the ball as well as if he´s gonna kick it low or high. this is how they end games that are tied...with penalty kicks from a very short distance. and it just seems like such a farce, because then it doesn´t really show how good a team is....it just shows whether or not the goaltender can read the mind of the guy kicking the ball. for example, in 2006´s world cup, argentina lost their game not on the game itself, but on penalty kicks.

anyway, so the pressure was on eliseo quintanilla, who was the player to make the free kick. anything could have happened, really, but in the end he was successful and the ball floated in the goal perfectly. so now it was 2-1, in favor of el salvador and they needed to score just one more goal in order to not only win the game, but to go on to the next qualifying round. so the game continued and we´re yelling at the television ¨come on!!!!!¨ like crazy people. the minutes were winding down and there was literally no more time to score a goal when all of a sudden, luis anaya of el salvador had the ball and from 89 or so feet, kicked it towards the goal. the ball sailed through the air, hit another salvadoran player, chepe martinez, in the head and before we knew what had happened, the ball went into the goal. i kept yelling ¨no friggin´way!¨ and antonio was like ¨si es la verdad!¨ (it´s true!). it was completely insane. everyone who had fireworks in apaneca let them off and it was like christmas day or something. it was so unbelievable. seriously, i just kept yelling ¨no puedo creerlo!¨ and it was like i had just watched a badly scripted inspirational movie or something. it was so bananas!  the thing is, they had to play the game for like 3 more minutes because of the extra time the árbitros put on the clock so it was like ¨please, for the love of god don´t let panama score!¨ because even if el salvador won the game, if it wasn´t by 2 or more goals, they´d not make it to the next qualifying round.  but the minutes wound down and they did it.  as all the papers said today ¨sí se pudo!¨ (yes the team could!). 

here is a video of the highlighted moments from el gráfico, the sports paper here. remember, el salvador is BLUE, panama is RED!

here´s another one...if you´re into the whole thing. i can´t stop watching highlights of it. it was so nuts! 

anyway, so now el salvador gets to compete in the next tournament to see if they can make it to the world cup (which isn´t until 2010 believe it or not, in south africa). but i´m sooooo excited!

so that´s what´s going on in deportes here in el salvador. basically that´s what i´ve been doing instead of writing blog entries....watching loads and loads of fútbol!

adios for now and felicidades a el salvador!

on why i would make a lousy meteorologist

besides the fact that i would be horrified be taped, live, standing in front of a green screen, trying to coordinate my hand movements with a map of the united states and clouds and suns and temperatures that are visible to the viewers, but aren´t actually visible to me, with a smile plastered on my face and my hair formed into an updo, i would never, ever, be able to make a correct enough prediction as to what the weather will do in five minutes, let alone overnight or the next day.

what i´m getting at is the fact that last friday, if you readers will recall, i talked about how tropical depression alma, didn´t really affect us here at all. and i also wrote about how it hasn´t rained very much at all around here, despite us being a month into the rainy season. let´s just say i was pretty much waaaaay off the mark on that one. remember how i said that it started pouring while i was typing my last entry? well, it hasn´t stopped. it is STILL raining, and it´s TUESDAY! i haven´t seen the sun since friday morning. school has been all but cancelled, not because the ministerio de educación has cancelled school, but because no kids have come to school because it has been pouring rain every single minute of the day. and the cold.......holy mother of god is it cold. you know, when i visited lago atitlán in guatemala back in 2006, i bought this wool blanket in the market. i remember after we visited the lake, we went to the beach in monterico, and i as i lugged that bag with my new wool blanket in it, i thought ¨what in god´s name was i thinking buying this damned blanket?¨ it was 100 million degrees with a 100 million degrees of humidity and i was carrying around a WOOL BLANKET? but am i ever glad i purchased that thing. that and the scarf i knitted (i finished it on thursday, as a matter of fact) have been my saving grace in this cold, november-like (well, november in ohio) rain.

seriously, i haven´t seen so much rain in one continuous stretch since hurricane stan, back when i was living in molineros and trapped in my host family´s house for two weeks. let´s pause for a minute while i remember that lovely lockdown....me and anna trying to get to spanish class at megan´s host family´s house, me going out of mind with the constant sound of rain for a week straight, my first experience with mold growing on not only everything i own, but on me as well, a volcano eruption, me not being able to speak spanish......ahh, such good times! so why all the rain now? well, it IS the rainy season. but aside from that, apparently, after ¨alma¨ dumped it´s share of agua on us, next came ¨arthur¨ with it´s buckets and buckets of cold, sleet-like rain. after the news channels here decided to stop airing footage of the salvadoran airplane that crashed at honduras´s airport on friday, they were kind enough to start reporting on ¨las lluvias¨ that have been inundating el salvador for five days. they stated that the parts of the country that have been most affected are the western departments and the higher elevated areas. bingo! where´s apaneca? the westernmost department and lucky for us, it´s at one of the highest elevations in the country! i´m not complaining though. for the most part, i was waiting for the rain to come and it´s not like i have to go anywhere. not like back in the states when i had jobs with time cards or only a certain number of ¨days off.¨ if the weather is crappy here, most likely everyone else is staying at home, indoors, because of the ¨mal tiempo.¨ i called the school on monday to see how it was and elba is like ¨DON´T COME HERE!!! IT´S TOO DANGEROUS!!!¨ ok, ok, i get the message! anyway, i don´t know if it´s dangerous as much as it´s just a hassle.

the good thing is because we live in the mountains, all the rain basically just flows downhill after it hits the ground. i would HATE to live in the lower-lying areas, where everything eventually ends up. the only scary thing about the rains is the fact that the ground here is really susceptible to ¨derrumbes,¨ or landslides. the highway that runs past apaneca is basically a mountain road, and either way you go - to sonsonate to the south, or ahuachapan to the north - the highway weaves around and around, hugging the mountain. all the earth and rocks and trees that make up the beautiful mountains can fall at any minute.

i´m supposed to go visit courtney on thursday (not sure if i´ll end up swimming there or taking the bus), and once again, i´m left with what i like to call ¨the clothes decision.¨ you see, every time i have to go to the capital or i´m going up to visit courtney, i´m at a loss of what to wear. not because of my non-existent fashion sense, but because when i get up in the morning here in apaneca it´s so COLD. i´m talking scarves, gloves, winter hats and coats cold. sometimes it´s also raining like cats and dogs. so i dress accordingly.....hiking shoes, jeans, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt. by the time i´ve made it to san salvador i´m sweating like a pig, obviously. all i want are my flip-flops and tank top. i end up making the return trip with all this cargo in clothes and shoes that weigh my backpack down and leave me wishing i´d have not worn jeans or brought those heavy shoes. then the bus starts making it´s ascent just outside of sonsonate, and by the time the bus has left juayua and is climbing, climbing, climbing the mountains to apaneca, i wish i would have worn the jeans and put on the hiking shoes.

like i said in the beginning, i´m horrible at predictions and being prepared. good thing i´m just a peace corps volunteer and not a meteorologist! adios for now!