August

I just got back from an amazing trip to Costa Rica with my uncles John and Travis, my parents and brother, Jake. Costa Rica is so beautiful! We saw tons of animals including three species of monkeys, poison dart frogs, and macaws. We were able to see many parts of the country. We went to the Tortuguero on the Caribbean coast, Lapa Rios (in the middle of a rain forest) on the pacific coast, Monteverde cloud forest, Arenal volcano. We went on a tour of a coffee plantation and the guide knew EVERYTHING about coffee. I learned that most companies add sugar to the coffee to make it look better, and in the states they are not required to say that they have added it. Our guide told us that the only brands he knows that don’t add it are Stumptown (I think its called) and another one I don’t remember. I also learned that you should only drink decaf coffee if it has been decaffeinated a special way with water (it will say so on the package). Most decaffeinated coffee is done so by chemicals and may cause cancer (but what really doesn’t these days). Also on our trip Jake and I did a canopy zip lines in Monteverde that included a Tarzan Swing, which was sooo much fun!

In June I began watching another volunteer’s dog while he is on vacation. He is an 8-month-old husky. My community thought he was so beautiful and everyone wanted me to give him to them or breed him with their dogs. There is not really an enclosed space where I live to keep him, and everyone told me that someone would steal him. because he was easily the nicest dog in the community. He usually stayed around so I didn’t really worry about it too much. When I left for Costa Rica I gave the dog, Tristan, to another volunteer to take care of him. While Tristan was staying with this volunteer, a guy from outside of his community came and stole Tristan. The crazy thing is that the volunteer saw it happen and the community knew the guy and where he lived. The volunteer went the thief’s house with the police to try and get the dog back, but it turns out that the thief used to be a policeman and is buddies with the police that came with the volunteer. They talked to thief and he admitted to stealing the dog, but said that the dog jumped out of the car before he got back to his house. This is a lie because they later talked to his neighbors who said he had a new dog and confirmed it was Tristan when they showed them a picture. Even though he admitted to stealing the dog, the police did nothing. So now there isn’t much we can do. Some volunteers are thinking about staking out the house or posting lost dog posters by his house. We will see what happens, but I don’t expect we will ever get him back.  

The week before I left for Costa Rica some doctors and medical students from the states came to do a study on Chagas disease. I helped translate for them while they were in the area. Some volunteers and I were going to go camping and hike to a waterfall and we invited them to come with us.  They brought along an American nutrition student that they met at the hotel. Everything was great we went to the waterfall, went swimming, came back, ate dinner, and the students and doctors left to return to their hotel. Us volunteers stayed and were hanging out at the river, as it was getting dark. About an hour later some police cars came, which was weird because we were in the middle of nowhere. They told us that someone called 911 and said that there was a lost American in this area. We said it wasn’t us because all us volunteers were here and the doctors all left and we were pretty sure that they were all there too. After a few minutes of arguing that it couldn’t be one of us we called the doctors just to make sure. Turns out we all had forgotten the nutrition student that was with us and she was lost somewhere between the waterfall and the campsite. By now it was dark and we had to go looking for this lost student in the forest with the two policemen. I stayed at the campsite with a couple of volunteers while the police and the other volunteers went to search for her. None of us really knew or had really talked to her, so we didn’t even know her name. For some reason the policemen and the volunteers split up. After about 45 mins of running around a dark forest the volunteers found her off of the trail and returned to the police truck. The policemen had locked the truck (which has a loudspeaker) and left the radios inside, so there was no way of contacting them and telling them that they had found the girl. So they just returned to the campsite. It was so crazy! She could have just followed the river down but instead she was walking around blindly trying to find signal. She had been the one to call the police but only told them what color her shirt was and not her name. We still don’t understand how she got separated from the group because there were a lot of us and we weren’t walking fast. She said she fell, but that it doesn’t seem like you could get that far behind. Anyway it was the craziest thing that has happened to me here.

My stove project has been very successful. We built 18 and have 2 more to go. My community loves them and I have a list of 22 more people that want them. We are going to do another round of stoves. I just have to close this grant and turn in another grant asking for more money this week. The NGO Trees Water People is from the States and was started by a started by a retuned Peace Corps Volunteer. They are one of two NGOs that are working with me on this project. They came and trained a guy in my site to build the stoves. They are coming again next week but are bringing people from the States to see my stoves, pretty exciting!

Also next week I will be travelling to the States for my cousin Emily’s wedding! It will be so nice to see friends and family! I am very excited! I have had an eventful summer so far. Also exciting news is that I got an interview for the PA program at the University of Colorado. I am very excited about going back to school and PA school is very competitive so getting an interview is so exciting, hopefully I get invited to interview at the other 4 schools that I applied to.

Tristan 

Building the stoves

Inside the stove. The square is where the fire is the space in the middle will be filled with ash to help maintain the heat and the slit to the far left is where the smoke will exit out of the chimney

Where the wood goes.

Completed stove

Putting in the Chimney

Completed stove with ceramic

Jake in Costa Rica

Sloth

Im on a boat...

Tortuguero

Arenal Volcano

Zip lining in Monteverde

Lapa Rios

Me helping build my host mom's stove

Summer Fun

You know you are a Peace Corps volunteer when you just pick the beetle out of your beans and continue eating instead of throwing out the whole plate. That hair in your food doesn’t look so bad now does it?

It has been a while since I have posted last, things have been pretty much the same here. I had IST (In-service Training) at the beach mid-May. We have two during our service and this was my last one. We had lectures during the day and the evening hung out on the beach, played beach volleyball, or swam in the pool. We played this great game in the pool called “Dibble Dabble” it was created apparently by a past volunteer. To play you have two teams standing on the edge of a pool. One person from a team starts out by swimming and placing a white water bottle cap somewhere in the water. Then the people on the outside of the pool jump in the water trying to catch the cap. The thing is you must jump into the water and catch the cap you cannot jump and then search for it. If the person didn’t catch it they can splash the water making it harder for the other team or splash it towards your teammates. They can also get out of the pool and try again. We had a great time playing the game and all scratched and bruised ourselves getting out of the pool.

I have turned in my application for PA school! Each school has a sub application and I have turned in 3 out of 5 of those. I am very excited to start applying! I have been looking at schools and knew I wanted to be a PA since sophomore year of college. I will be applying to University of Utah, University of Washington, University of Colorado, Oregon Health and Science University, and Idaho State University. I know it is very competitive to get into these schools, so hopefully I get in somewhere!

I have a lot of very exciting summer coming up! July is going to be packed full of fun! First we have a volunteer Fourth of July celebration at the beach where we are going to rent a house, then Zehra a PA from New York is coming to my site with some medical students to do a health fair in the school, and then I get to go to Costa Rica with my family! Two weeks after getting back I will head to Idaho to be a bridesmaid in my cousin Emily’s August wedding!

My stove project is finally progressing! I just received the grant money and will be buying the materials for the stoves this week. I also was accepted for a grant for a nutrition workshop I will be doing with mothers. We will start the workshop after I get back from the wedding. I only have 9 months left here in El Salvador!

2nd grades girls

They had an all school activity outside

A beautiful waterall that I went to with some other volunteers.

pinapple

Witch doctor curing the Jason of parasites. She squeezed his arms and legs.

Then hit the bottom of his feet upside down.  Then  tied my  bandana  on his head

Checking Jason´s brother, David for parasites.

All cured!

David and Daniella my host mom´s great grandchildren

They had a talent show to raise money for a man who needs a kindey transplant. 

Its started raining in the middle of it and the community house where it was held has problems with its roof. It flooded the whole place but didn´t stop the show.

They had a good turn out from multiple communities.

One year in site!

• I forgot to put this story in my last blog post. I gave my puppy Canela away. I got her thinking that she would be a good buddy to have around that would make me feel more at home. I was wrong. People here are accustomed to treating dogs like trash. They don’t feed them, they kick them and punish them for being present. I thought that my host family would treat my dog differently because she was mine, but I was wrong. When they would shoo, and kick her I would get angry with them. Having Canela was hurting my relationship with my host family, so I decided that it would be best if I gave her away. I gave her to a guy whose puppy died the week before. She comes over to visit me once in a while so that is fun.

• I was at the river with Brenda and three of her nieces and nephews. The kids brought some chips and soda. We all ate the chips while in the river and then they just dropped the bags in the river and let them float down stream. Not five minuets later another boy throws a large stick in the river and Brenda yells at him for throwing “trash” into the river. I couldn’t believe that she had just dropped a plastic bag in the river and then scolded someone for putting a stick in the same river.One of my neighbors has this little baby bird that hatched in a tree near her house. She captured him and put him in a birdcage. To feed him she pries his beak open, then hold it open with two fingers, shoves food down his throat, and jiggles him so the birdseed falls down his throat. After the food she uses a little syringe (without the needle) to force water into his stomach. It was the saddest thing to watch that poor bird being force fed.

•  When people learn that I wear contacts, they are convinced that they are the reason my eyes are green. I have to take them out to show them that my eyes are really green and that the contacts are just clear. I guess most people here that wear contacts wear them to change their eye color, not to see.

•   I was teaching English in the fourth grade class and a student came up to the desk while they were copying the board to sharpen his pencil. In the cup on the fourth grade teacher’s desk is a straight edge. He took the straight edge and used it to sharpen his pencil. I just thought of how in the states that would never ever happen, but here they don’t even think about how dangerous it is. 

• March is the month of elections, so they have been campaigning here for a while. Here they have about seven parties. Around town they have put up the party flags to advertise. I thought it was funny that every poster with the party’s flag on it had a big black X on it. I thought that it was someone vandalizing it. Turns out that on their ballots have pictures of the flags and even the candidates because there is a large population that can’t read. The flags have big Xs on them because they are showing that people should vote for them. 

• Whenever I am pealing a mango or some vegetable with a knife people are always really nervous that I am going to cut myself. One time amom made her fourteen-year-old daughter finish pealing my mango for me.

• There is another room right next door to mine where Brenda has her computer and printer. This is also where we can hook up the Internet. She lost the key to the door and we haven’t been able to get in. The other day she decided that she was going to try to open the door with some random keys she has. As she is doing this, all I can think is that there is no way that she is going to be able to open that door, until the door opens. She unlocked the door with the key to her husband’s house. I couldn’t believe it! Apparently it is pretty common for one key to work on other locks here. Doesn’t sound very safe to me. Luckily I brought a combination lock for my door. Combination locks are not common here and almost nobody knows how to use them

•   I am sure most people (at least women) have had the experience where they feel something tickling their arm or under their shirt and find that the culprit is a piece hair that must have fallen out when you were brushing your hair. Before Peace Corps I was very accustomed to this happening, however here in El Salvador it is never a hair! I have found that about 90% of the time the little tickle is an insect walking on me, usually a big fat ugly one. Now I no longer calmly try to find the harmless hair that is somehow entangled itself in my clothes, I frantically search all body parts knowing that it is most likely a huge ugly bug, it will probably bit me if I don’t kill it in time, and I will most likely contract some tropical disease and die. (note to family and friends: there are not that many bugs here that will give you diseases, but there are a lot of bugs that look like they would. 

• I was in the Super Selectos (an American-like grocery store) and I was waiting in line to pay, when I see this guy open up a beer and start drinking it in the next line over from me. You then look in his cart and he has two other empty bottles of beer that he has drunken in the store at 9 am. He put everything on the little conveyor belt and the cashier guy rings up everything including the three empty beer bottles with out so much as a flinch.

Staying Strong

At the beginning of the month we had an All Volunteer Conference in La Palma. La Palma is up in the mountains, so a great vacation from the heat. Many people from Peace Corps Washington came to talk to us about the security issues here in El Salvador. We didn’t really learn anything new, but it was great to see everyone before most of them head back to the states. The two groups in front of me are being forced to leave early. They are trying to reduce our numbers here in order to restructure the program. They want to introduce a transportation system for the volunteers, because travelling on buses is our biggest risk. The buses that travel from our sites to where we shop are safe, and I really hope that they continue to let us ride those. I can’t see how we can work here without that freedom. They expect us to integrate into the community and if we had to have private transportation, it would severely interfere with that. How would I explain to my community that because I am American I couldn’t ride the buses that everyone else in the community rides. If they take away all buses, they may as well shut down the program. But as of right now we are able to ride our local buses. Security people from Washington are doing a review of the country right now, and we will know next month what the new changes are. We are told we will be clustering in a safe area in the country, as in the area where I live. This would mean that volunteers would have to move sites. Many are not willing to do so because of the amount of work and time it takes to become integrated enough to start projects. And to start that all over again after being in your site for a year would be awful! With two groups leaving in April we will only have my group of 22 and the 12 in the group after me. After people learn that they will have to move sites I believe we will end up with less than 20 volunteers in country. Right now we have 120. It is going to be a very different Peace Corps than when I came in a year ago.

Because we are waiting for the results of this review, all the grants are on hold. So my stove project and nutrition group can’t continue until mid March. Tomorrow I am starting classes in the school. I am teaching out of this book call “How to Plan my Life.” The activities are supposed to help kids in 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th grade think about their future and reach their goals. I am very nervous to work with the older kids. Last week I went to translate for some eye doctors. It was so awesome! I have translated for some doctors before, but I felt that they didn’t make much of an impact on the communities that they went to and were really just there to take pictures. This group of doctors were giving eye exams, eye glasses, and cataract surgery.  They were here for two weeks and seeing hundreds of people a day. I helped translate for the eyeglasses station and it was so much fun.  People were so excited to get glasses, I got many hugs and kisses. The glasses were donated and people were unable to pick their frames. Most people didn’t care, and were just thankful to be able to see. This one very old man was given sun glasses with sparkles on them and the doctor said, “I don’t think he will like these, we can try and find some others,” but as he gave them to the old man his face lit up. He loved the sparkles and took that pair home. I found it very rewarding to help them out and hope that I will be able to translate again when they come next year.

There is a water project going on in my community, which means that we rarely get water because they are replacing the tubes. We get enough to drink but not enough to wash clothes, dishes, or sometimes bathe. The other week I was forced to wash my clothes in the river. I hated seeing all of the soap just run into the water where all the little fish were swimming, however it was much easier and quicker than washing them in my little pila. I had pictures but I accidently left my camera in the hotel at the All Volunteer Conference so they seem to be gone. As for bathing, I refuse to bathe in the rivers, because they are very dirty filled with sewage, soap and trash. So with limited water resources I have been forced to replace some showers with baby wipe baths.

I now have internet in my site. My friend Brenda and I are sharing a Claro modem. In order to get a good signal we have to tape the USB to the end of a broomstick and prop it up sticking out of a hole in the roof as far as it will reach. I am very excited because the signal is good enough to skype. So let me know if you want to skype.  

I am happy to say that I am very comfortable with my Spanish. I can understand almost everything that people say. I have even received many compliments on my Spanish from my host family and teachers at the school. I do have more problems speaking but people understand what I am saying. Our Spanish teachers from training are offering to give more classes so I signed up for more classes. Hopefully I will be totally fluent by this time next year when I am headed home.

Funny animal things:

• If you want to make a dog go away (which people here always do) they make kissing noises. Which is funny because if we wanted a dog to come we would make the same noise.
• I think I have mentioned this one already but I’ll say it again. When you are herding your cows to make them move/go in the direction you want them you say “vaca” in a loud low voice. Vaca means cow, so just imagine someone herding cows yelling, “cow” in a deep voice.
• This one is a little hard to explain without making the sound. If you need to feed chickens all you have to do is roll your tongue singing a high note. When you do this all the chickens will come running to where ever you are.
• There are about 12 different names for pig, and they use them all. If they are talking about animals and I haven’t heard the word before I usually just assume that they are talking about a pig. 

I made it back to The Savior after a glorious two weeks at home! I had the best time spending Christmas with family and New Years with friends. I did everything that I wanted to do before returning, except skiing. Sadly there was no snow, and it sounds like it was unseasonably warm across the country. My vacation was exactly what I needed! I now feel refreshed and more motivated to get work done here. I brought back Christmas cut-out cookies to share with my host family and other families that have been very good to me. They loved them and have asked that I teach them how to make them.

Since the last time I posted my blog there has been some concern with security in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Some of you may have read in the news that Honduras is sending home their volunteers. Right now it isn’t certain whether PC Honduras will shut down, right now they are being reviewed and after they will determine whether it is safe for the volunteers to continue their services. As for us and Guatemala we will also be under review, however we volunteers will stay in country. Talking with the Peace Corps Security guy for this region, he says that the difference between El Salvador and Honduras is “night and day.” He said that in Honduras everyone carries guns, their police is corrupt and unreliable, and overall much more unsafe than El Salvador. Here we can rely on our police and I feel very safe here in my community.  Americans are not being targeted,their worry is that we will be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The most risky areas are the capital, which we are no longer able to travel to, and buses. PC El Salvador is now requiring us to ask permission every time we leave our sites and are trying to come up with alternatives to public buses. After our review in February we will know more about what the “new” PC El Salvador will look like.

On a happier note I got a puppy! She is a girl and I have named her Canela meaning cinnamon in Spanish. I got her yesterday and the first night went better than I thought it was going to, she only cried a little. She is very skinny so I am trying to fatten her up right now. She has a lot of fleas so Mom, I would love some flea collars. My host family thinks that I am crazy for treating a dog like a child and even for just touching one. I have to keep in mind that I have to get her used to the life here so that when I finish my service here that she will be able to survive without me.

Water hasn’t run here for six days! It trickled a couple of days ago, enough time for me to get water to drink, but that’s about it. I have gotten water from my host family’swell to shower and clean some dishes but haven’t had any to was my clothes. Most people will go to the river to wash their clothes but that river is so dirty I would rather wear dirty clothes than have river water dirty clothes. Always be thankful that when you turn on your facet that you never have to wander if water will come out of it. That reminds me that while I was in the states for Christmas my family would leave on lights in rooms that nobody was in. I went around turning them all off. You always hear “save your electricity/water, it is a precious resource,” but you don’t really understand that until you live in a place where its not constant. So everyone, turn off your lights and conserve your water!

Toasting the seeds for the drink that I brough to the states

This is the tree that the seeds come from. The fruit is called cutuco (green balls).

Over Christmas we went to the Sand Dunes and the lake was fozen over. It was great to be in some cold weather.

This is what horchata (the drink that I brought to the states) looks like before we grind it all up.

The day I left for the states my bus wouldn´t start so they had to push it into the road where there is a slight hill and let it go down the hill in nuetral and start it at a run for it to work.

Sand Dunes with the family!

My new puppy Canela! She loves her box!

Me preparing the drink.

Pictures I have been Meaning to Put Up

Making tamales de elote (corn)

Snack at the conference I went to. The fruit is called liches.  On the inside they have a white sweet center with a big seed.

Maylee, the daughter of the teacher that went to the conference with me in a town called Suchitoto. 

Brenda and her niece Daniella. This is how women here carry things, always on their heads.

Walking to the river to have lunch and celebrate my birthday with the kids.

My birthday cake that I made myself. Everyone was so surprised that I could make a cake (although it was from a box). 

Kids at the river.

This is at a war museum in Perquin. This is where most of the fighting occurred during the civil war (1980-1992) and where the rebels hid. 

Going to my friend Helen's site with the doctors. We rode up on military trucks. Her road is so crazy that the trucks couldn't make it down and we had to walk halfway down the volcano.