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. 

Home for Christmas

           Wow it is already mid December and 5 days until I make the long journey home to Boise, Idaho! I am so excited! I dream about mountains and snow at night, and daydream about being with family and friends and all that we can pack into a two-week period. Top things I want to do while home besides see family and friends (because those are always number one!): take a bath, sleep on a mattress, go skiing, walk in the foothills with the Zeke and Koda, be cold, eat real Mexican food, eat a salad (I think I have only had one in the last year and it was when I went to the states in Sept.), drive a car, make Christmas cookies. Pretty basic stuff but haven’t done since I have been here.

            Thanksgiving was GREAT! Two other volunteers (Alex and Carolyn) and I stayed with a family that had three kids. One is in Switzerland at boarding school, but we met the other two, a 7-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy. They were fun we played botchy ball, Candyland, and Sorry. It was really interesting to hear about where all the family has lived while working in the Foreign Service. They have lived on a tropical island, which I forget the name of, and Brussels. The wife is the one in the Foreign Service and then the embassy will hire the other spouse on doing other types of work. We ate dinner at another family’s house. It was so great! We ate everything that makes and American Thanksgiving dinner delicious: turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli salad, etc. Dessert was even better: apple pie, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin bars. Needless to say we ate ourselves sick!

            I didn’t end up going to any of the activities for my communities patronal saint celebration, because they were all at night and there had been some incidences, but ended up going to a rodeo in my pueblo Yamabal during their celebrations the following week. It was quite a show. They begin with some “fireworks.” Fireworks is in quotes because there is no pretty lights and colors, they are just little bombs that make a VERY loud noise. I hate them and they are always lighting them off and scaring me to death, they sound like guns going off. Then begins the rodeo. They had 2 men dressed as Spanish matadors (the guys that bullfight in Spain, which is kind of an art and they spend their whole lives doing it). These men looked like they had somehow bought the traditional Spanish bullfight get up, but it was very worn and looked like he had resized it himself due to a growing gut (sadly I forgot my camera). Also in the ring was a man dressed as a woman, a “rodeo clown” I suppose. The bull is let into the ring jumping around with a cowboy on the back. Then after the bull stop jumping around the cowboy will jump off and the “matador” will begin taunting it with a red cape. In imitation of a Spanish matador he will begin with a pinkish cape and then switch to a red cape with a sword. I find this funny because in bullfights the matador will kill the bull with the sword, but here is has no purpose. After the “matador,” the rodeo clown does some kind of trick with the bull. During this particular rodeo a “bolo” or drunk guy decided he wanted to be apart of the show and climbed through the bars to get into the circle. He then proceeded to taunt the bull, but lucky for him the bull didn’t come after him. After about 15 mins of people telling him he needed to leave, although they didn’t stop to wait for him to get out, he left. All in all it was pretty funny.

            On Dec. 5^th we had an activity in the school to celebrate Volunteer day. We played games and gave out prizes. There was a soccer game, chess, and coloring. I did musical chairs, duck duck goose, and then my school director did this funny/dangerous game. You have three kids blindfolded and take off their shoes and spread them around the circle. Who ever finds and puts on their shoes first, wins. The thing is that the people on the sides want to help, so they end up throwing shoes, the kids are knocking heads and everyone is screaming. The first round this little boy was playing, and spent the whole time untying, putting on, and retying his one shoe. It was very cute. We gave out little nick nacks that my mom had sent me like bracelets and other little trinkets. THANKS MOM!

            I have been talking about starting this stove project for a few months now and the grant is due in January, so I decided I was going to finish it before going home for Christmas. I have written all of it and just needed to get prices on supplies, and decided I would call my boss to see if there is anything else I need to do. He tells me that Trees Water People (the NGO that I am working with for the project) is building 300 free stoves in volunteer’s sites around El Salvador, so I don’t need to write a grant. Plus they will do 40-60 stoves, which is a lot more than the 20 that I was going to do. Although I almost had the grant done, this will be much easier for me to coordinate, plus they pay for everything and I won’t have to worry about money. The Monday before I leave for home I have a meeting with the stove guy in the capital to learn more about this great project! Hopefully everything works out!

            Some exciting news, I will be getting a puppy when I get back from the states. A neighbor has a dog that had puppies. They said that I could have one, and super excited to have a little buddy!

Here Comes the Holidays

It is already mid November and I am looking forward to Thanksgiving. We get invited over to American Embassy family houses and get fed a real Thanksgiving dinner! My community’s patronal saint party starts this Saturday. This is a big celebration that everyone looks forward to every year. There is a rodeo, parades, music, dances, and little fair rides. The big dance is on the night of the 23^rd and I am planning to go to the capital a day early for Thanksgiving in order to avoid being forced to dance with drunks to a mariachi band.

My first birthday out of the country was pretty fun. A group of kids, Brenda and I went to the river and ate lunch, and the Betty Crocker cake that I made. (You can buy the mix and frosting in the super here but it is really expensive. Like $7 for the two!) Everyone wanted me to teach them how to make cake!

I wanted to start a walking group for the women in my community because the majority of the women here do not exercise, are overweight, eat terribly and have high blood pressure at very young ages. I made invitations and hand delivered them to houses a couple of days ahead of time inviting them to the meeting. The meeting is at 2, and at 2:45 one lady shows up. The lady and I make plans to walk twice a week starting the next morning. She shows me her shoes that she is going to walk and tells me that they are new and comfortable. I get a call from her later that evening and she tells me that she has ruined her shoes and that she will be unable to walk the morning and will let me know when she buys new shoes. I am pretty sure she was lying because I doubt she could have ruined her shoes walking from the meeting to her house 1 min away, she doesn’t go far from her house. But later some kids said they were interested in forming a kids group. So we have been walking to the river and swimming once a week (well more them than me, see funny stories below.), some women have started coming so that is promising.

One of my teachers and I went to a conference for the new pilot program that we are starting in my school. The program was created by Response Peace Corps Volunteers (they are volunteers that have finished their 2 years and wanted to help out more) and the ministry of education. It is called the National Volunteer Program. The idea is to form a group of kids in 7^th,8^th, and 9^th grade and they choose projects or activities that they want to do in the community. I don’t have high hopes for the project to be succeed in my school because my school director is a crazy person and the teachers don’t like to do anything more than the bare minimums that their job requires, if that.

Right now I am trying to start a stove project and writing a grant through ECPA to fund it. Looking over another volunteer’s grant, the project is pretty big! I am nervous for it to be my first project here in the community, but also excited to get more involved in the community. Plus families here really need them.

More funny things:

•    Brenda pointed out a lady with a scarf over her head. A lot of women wear white lacy scarves on their heads if they are Evangelical, but this woman had on a white cloth scarf. She told me that women wear them during pregnancy to prevent air from getting into their blood, causing swelling in their feet. They also wear earplugs and special shoes. It is really hard for me to hear things like this and not try to explain that air is not causing your feet to swell. I want to inform her, but I don’t want to offend her by saying what you believe is all wrong.
•   Last night Brenda asked me if it was true that in America we take away the virginity of our kids before they choose to. I was like WHAT? Then she asked if boys get circumcised in the US. I said yes. She says that performing a circumcision is considered taking away a boys’ virginity, then asked if we do the same to girls.
•  The other day someone asked me if I had a little American blood in me. I told him; yup I have a whole lot of American blood in me. I don’t think I had spoken to him before he asked me that, or else he would have known from my accent and Spanish ability that I am 100% American.
• We swam in the river with the kids and I learned three things. One there are tiny little leaches living in the river. Two, many toilets and gray water (soapy water) are dumped in the river.  Three, after swimming in the river Brenda was combing her hair with a really fine tooth comb, and tells me sometimes when you swim in the river you get pulgas (fleas/lice) in your hair. I will never swim in the river again!

I had pictures but for some reason this stupid internet cyber computer tells me I have no pics on my memory stick. Next time then.

Missin Fall

It has been officially a year since I found out that I was coming to El Salvador. I remember waiting everyday for the mail to come after I was told my invitation was mailed. I was at my apartment and Booeycalled to tell me that I had something in the mail at the Kappa house one evening. After putting down the phone I sprinted from my apartment to Kappa and ripped open the package, even after my friends and I decided that we would have a party and I would open it there like the Mormon missionaries do. Time really has flown! Starting this blog after reading so many other Peace Corps blogs I told myself that I would write way more often then most of these other volunteers who only wrote about once a month, because it didn’t make sense that they didn’t have time to do it. Being here I realize that internet time becomes very precious when you have to pay per hour, you only get it about once a week, and your life moves 10 times slower than it did in the states resulting in very little news accumulation. I now realize why these volunteers didn’t write much more than once a month.

            I recently returned form a visit in the states to attend the wedding of my Uncle Chris and his new wife, Blair. The wedding was in Vermont, which was beautiful!(The wedding and Vermont.) I was so happy to see my family and also be able to experience Fall. To get to the states is such a trip! It was exhausting traveling for so long but definitely worth it! From my house I took a 5 hour trip including three buses to the capital, San Salvador. (Its no party towing around luggage on and off of very full buses) I then killed time until my flight at 1am. It was then an hour taxi ride to the airport located outside the city. Two flights and five hours later (not including layover time) I made it to Boston. The following day was a three hour drive to Vermont. Can’t wait for my flight to Idaho, which will be much longer, but again worth it! I don’t even want to know how long it really takes Peace Corps volunteers in rural Africa to get to the states from their sites, El Salvador is only the size of Massachusetts.

Some funny things that happened during my travels:

·         Usually you are supposed to make sure that the taxi you are taking is from a company, you do that by finding an A on their license plate, not a P for private (meaning they have just painted their car yellow). When getting off the bus in the terminal in San Salvador you are bombarded by taxi drivers wanting to take you to your destination. In the past I have been lucky and chosen company drivers without seeing their license plate, however this time I happened to pick a private driver. He not only was not from a taxi company, he had the oldest car I have been in. I was afraid that we were going to fall apart before I got to my destination. He also had to stop twice and ask people directions to where we were going (the Peace Corps office). At least one of them was a policeman.

·         Returning to my site I was on the bus. Along the highway police occasionally stop cars and check their drivers’ licenses and buses for gang members. On this trip my bus was stopped, all the men had to get off the bus and have their backpacks and persons checked for weapons. I guess that makes me feel safer, but god forbid there is a girl gang member (which there are) because she will get right through. Sometimes I just think that this country doesn’t think things through.

·         On the flight back into El Salvador from the states I felt like I was already in my community because there were men in their usual button down shirts and cowboy hats. All they were missing were their machetes, which apparently they must have checked on account of security.

·         Paying $14 for a sandwich and drink at the airport. That would feed me here for a week or more.

·         I felt the most culture shock in the airport once I landed from El Salvador. People were speaking English, everyone had out their expensive electronics, and the prices of everything was crazy! (which I know, I was in the airport). I had just come from bucket showers, dirt floor houses, and cooking over fire. When I finally was with my family however, it felt like I had never left at all.

Today I deep cleaned my room. I should probably do it every month because I had molding magazines, bugs growing in my black flats (which I just had to throw away because it was too gross to clean) dead scorpions and spiders, and cobwebs everywhere. (And I am a pretty clean person)

It has been raining for the past five days straight, creating some big problems for some other parts of the country, but has really cooled the place off. It has been low 80s and I am not sure if I can go back to high 90s. One thing I have learned about myself being here is that God didn’t make me for tropical climates. Someone the other day asked me what my favorite season is. Now that I have been living in chronic summer, I realize it is more of the change that I like the most, not a particular season. From March 2013 until the day I die I will always live in a place with all four seasons.

I am now looking forward to Christmas, which I get to spend in Idaho. Hopefully enjoy some snow! Only two months and time is going to fly. I have a training at the end of October for a project we are starting in my school. It is trying to promote voluntarism in kids. Beginning of November the doctors from New York will come again. They will be coming to my site to hopefully do some trainings with the nurses and health promoters that work out of my clinic. There is a fair in my community for their patronal saint at the end of November. Also at the end of November I will be spending Thanksgiving with an Embassy family (they are American) eating some great American Thanksgiving food! After that there is only about three weeks until I leave for vacation. In between then and now I will be working on a few things:

·         Fumigation of the houses to prevent dengue

·         Collecting the old tires that usually sit around and collect water where mosquitoes grow and put them in the soccer field as seats.

·         Help the venders that come to sell food for the fair learn about clean food preparation techniques.

·         Write a grant to build stoves that burn less wood.

·         Help put together a kids creativity and music camp

·         Help put together a soccer tournament with teams from other volunteers’ communities.

·         Write a grant for health lessons and activities in the school.

Here is a little something to make you all jealous you don’t live in El Salvador:

• ·         I bought 25 oranges for $1
• ·         Great watermelon at all times of the year!
• ·         Great tamales made by at least 10% of your neighbors, 5 for $1
• ·         Fast and cheep (but not quite to US regulations) public transportation throughout the country.
• ·         Feeling like you are the smartest person alive when everyone is amazed that you know how to wash dishes, cut vegetables, wash clothes,learn how to make tamales and tortillas. Sometimes I wonder what they thought I have done for the past 22 years of my life.

A picture from our All Volunteer Conference, about 80% of El Salvador Volunteers went. I am in the fourth row from the front in a pink shirt. 

Chris and Blair

Emily and I at the rehearsal dinner

Emily, Zoe, Me, Ellie, and Sarah at the wedding reception.

            

Three Week Countdown

It is already September, and a little more than three weeks until I get to go to the States for Chris and Blaire’s wedding! I am so incredibly excited to be with my family for a whole week! (with the exception of Katie who is in France, will miss you sis).

What have I been up to for the past month…well I wrote a grant with the dentist that works with my clinic. She wants to have an oral health day in the school. Each class will prepare a presentation (dance, skit, poem, etc.) on a variety of oral health issues and present it in October, that is if we receive the money. We started writing this grant the first week in August, and I was like this will be easy to turn in before the deadline of August 29^th. It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. I don’t have Internet, unless I take a bus an hour away from my community. My dentist actually works out of a clinic in another municipality. Oh and the grant was in Spanish making that much harder to write. We didn’t get it turned in until 28^th of August.

I had another training the third week in August, they call it In Service Training (IST). (Like most government organizations Peace Corps uses many >>>> for example, APCD, PST, PCV, ET, RPCV.) We had it at a really nice beach called Costa del Sol. There were lectures from about 8-3 than we swam in the ocean, played beach volleyball, played games in the pool, and hung out in the air conditioning, watching cable TV and enjoying the Internet.

Yesterday I helped my host mom remove the crenels from dried corncobs. I did it for all of 45 min. and had some pretty great blisters on my fingers, while they did it all morning. I guess my hands are still pretty soft, however I have spotted getting sores on my hands after washing my cloths, so they aren’t that soft. Many people in my community have milpas (corn fields). With most of the corn they dry it and then use it later for tortillas, quesadillas, tamales and for the animals.

On the 19^th I am reproducing a training that my Health Promoter and I went to in July. We are giving it to the five other Health Promoters that work out of my clinic. Some of the things we will cover are how to give the himlick, how to remove a ring from a swollen finger, and how to identify an emergency in a child. This should be very challenging because I am no good at giving presentations and even worse in Spanish, butpractice makes perfect.

My health promoter has a “nutrition” group for women and their young children. I use quotes because mostly the women just make food for their kids. The food is mostly like rice and something fried. I would like to write a grant so I can make this group a real nutrition group, where they learn about nutrition and other health topics relating to children and pregnancy.

I am also looking into starting a stove project. Many people here cook over fires because gas prices are too high. Using wood to cook results in deforestation and many health problems. Women cook all day inside their houses without chimneys. The stoves that I want to make are specially designed to burn less wood but are able to cook just as hot as the other ones.

With the training, stoves, teaching English, making shampoo, and the nutrition group I should be busy the three weeks until my long awaited vacation!

Here is a list of funny things people believe about health, some of them I think I have said before in my blogs but it’sfunnier with all of them together.

1.      Watermelon is bad to eat when you are anemic.

2.      Watermelon is bad to eat when you are on your period.

3.      You can’t look at a newborn baby when you are on your period.

4.      A hot shower when you are cold will make your hair fall out.

5.      The chlorinated water in the states will make your hair fall out.

6.      Eating eggs and chicken will make a girls period come earlier in age.

7.      Taking a shower right after working out will give you a heart attack.**

8.      Putting a wound in hot water will make the pain go away.

9.      If you have a sore joint or something, putting gasoline on it will help the pain.

10.  Every child wears this red and black beaded bracelet to ward off evil spirits that can invade a child and cause Mal Ojo (bad eye).

**More on number seven. During training my group climbed a volcano. It was super hard and we were sweaty and tired when we got home and all most of us wanted to do was take a shower and go to bed. Most people in my group were unable to take showers because their host families said that they would get a heart attack and die. One host mom even rubbed a volunteer down with rubbing alcohol, because the volunteer wanted to take a shower so bad, but her host family was afraid she would die. I however was lucky that my host family wasn’t home when I got there, so I was able to take a shower before they got home.

I cannot believe that is it August already! July just flew by! I want to thank everyone who has sent me packages and letters! One of my favorite parts of my week is going to the post office. I have such great family and friends!

I am doing really great here, I finally feel like I can call my community home. I have made really great friends too. My host mother has about 11 kids all who are grown up and have their own families. Two live in my community, 3 in surrounding areas and come to visit regularly, 6 more in the states, and the youngest named Brenda(who is my best friend) rotates between living here in San Juan and San Miguel (a big city) with her husband (who I have never met, he doesn’t like to come to the “campo”). Brenda is 36 and the President of the ADESCO (town council) and is also a lawyer. I hang out at the house every night and another one of my host mom’s son (Rene) and his kid (Marvin who is 15) come and hang out too. We talk and drink coffee and bread. Last week they told me that I am part of the family and that if I need anything that they are there to help me and if I feel unsafe or if someone bothers me Rene has assured me that he will take care of it. He told me that he is “loco” and the community knows it, so they will listen to him. It is so great to have a family away from my family! 

When I first arrived here I was really nervous about teaching English but so far it has gone pretty well. In the beginning the kids didn’t want to participate in class because most are very shy, but now they are beginning to get more comfortable with me. They love learning it and are always begging me to teach in their class.

            The other day I gave a class on numbers. After teaching them in English I wanted to play BINGO to practice, but that turned out to be much more difficult than I anticipated. I drew a bingo card (5x5) on the whiteboard for them to copy and then put their own numbers in. Somewhere between my Spanish and their copying skills they made tiny boxes of varying sizes ( 15x10, 5x10). I had to help each individual student fix their box. Then I tried to explain that when you get 5 in a row you win and to yell BINGO, but every time I said a number and they found it on their boards they all yelled BINGO. Even though it didn’t go how I planned it still worked out, they practiced English and had fun.

            The same doctors that I helped in May came again and I translated for them in one of my friend’s site for two days. She is said to have the most isolated site in Peace Corps El Salvador. You have to take a two hour pickup ride on the worst roads I have ever been on to the top of a volcano. Her community is much poorer than mine. Her site is also much cooler than mine so it was a nice break from the heat. We visited houses doing Family Planning surveys. We talked to a variety of women, one had eleven kids who were all born in the house. We would ask if she had any problems with the pregnancy or after and she told us that she didn’t because she followed the diet of tortillas, chocolate, and cheese after giving birth for a month. We also met with a sixteen year old girl who was 8 months pregnant. 16 isn’t that young, there are many sixteen year old girls in the states who have kids but the youngest mother in the community is 14, not so common.

            The ADESCO and I made aloe shampoo and are selling it as a fundraiser. It has been selling really well we only have four left out of 40, and we made it four days ago. They want to raise money for a “casa cultural” a little building where they can have a mini library, cyber, and a copy machine for the communities use.

Random things:

·         People always ask me if both of my parents are American, if they are together, and if all of my siblings have the same parents as I do. Its because it is very normal for people to not get married and be “accompanied.” So in many cases women have kids from different fathers.

·         They also ask if I speak to my parents in Spanish, and sometimes are surprised when they find out that they don’t.

·         Somebody thought that I was a volunteer from Spain the other day. I think it is because my Spanish was so good…haha

·         Someone from my community asked me how old I was the other day, then told me that he thought I was 30. I will say it is because most women my age don’t have jobs and don’t travel away from their families.

·         When people ask where I am from in the states, most have no idea where Idaho is, which is no surprise because 50% of Americans don’t know where it is either. So I tell them it is close to California, because they all know where LA is, and end up thinking I am from Cali.

·         In my room I killed this HUGE cockroach and was going to sweep it out of my room but when I came back with a broom it had disappeared. Then I found a huge toad next to the spot, it had come out of now where and ate it.

·         You know sometimes when you get a feeling that something light is touching you and usually just think it is a hair or something and don’t really worry about it. Well here I have learned that is always a bug and almost always big and ugly and have learned that I must always react!

·         There are plastic chairs everywhere here. Everyone has them, if you are going to sit in a chair in this country 8 out of 10 times it will be in a plastic chair. 

·         Also if you want to see some more pictures of my community go onto facebook and search “San Juan de la Cruz Morazan” the community has a page with lots of pics of the community and community members.

A lightning bolt hit really close to our house and fried my host family´s TV and phone, but my fridge was spared hopefully another doesn´t hit close!

Things I will be doing in August:

·         I have about a week of training. We are going to a beach! Super excited!

·         Helping plan an Oral Health Day at one of the school in the area for September. I will hopefully apply for a grant to help fund it.

·         Going to San Salvador to get more shampoo ingredients. After showing the ADESCO how to make it many other women from the surrounding neighborhoods have asked if I could come a show them how to make it too.

·         There is a water project that is being started in the community. However there have been some complications because the guy who owns the land by the tank doesn’t want to sell the land so we can expand the tank. His reason is that he thinks that the community is getting money from the states to pay for the land, which it is not. They have to pay $20 each house, which is a lot of money for them to put out at one time.

·         Going to Ataco (a touristy place) for my friend, Carolyn’s birthday!



Me, Sarah, Shelby, Morgan, and Helen (left to right) at Helen´s site translating for the doctors




Kids at the school in Helen´s site




The doctors putting varnish on the kid´s teeth




Brenda filling up the shampoo bottles




Rene also filling shampoo bottles




Shampoo, I made the labels



4th of July Weekend

Today I am in San Salvador relaxing with friends and getting some American food. Every year there is a tournament for the four programs in Peace Corps El Salvador on the Forth of July weekend.  We play three games of basketball and soccer. My program has won the last few years, so we had a title to defend. We ended up winning once again which was a lot of fun!

I am starting a shampoo project with my ADESCO (community government) so I am in San Sal buying the ingredients. We will make shampoo out of Aloe and sell it in my community to raise money for other community projects. You cannot buy the ingredients anywhere but in San Salvador and we had to go to three shops all over San Sal to get them. It was exhausting but I finally have everything I need.

            In El Salvador they have these beliefs that if you rub a broken arm or leg it will help it heal. This guy who is the healer guy (I forget what they call him) was rubbing this little kids arm because they had said that his bicept muscle had fallen and they needed to rub it back into place. During this they were all bashing modern medicine and asking me why I don’t believe in it. It was very frustrating. So when I jammed my finger the other day playing softball they wanted to take me to this guy and have him rub my jammed finger but I was like, no way is that happening so somehow I talked my way out of it. My friend in my community is also always telling me funny things like she can’t eat watermelon because she is anemic and she can’t look at newborn babies when she is on her period. I wonder where they came up with all of these ideas.

            I have been teaching English in the school the last couple of weeks. It has been hard to get the kids to participate because they are all so shy about speaking English, but they are all so excited about learning it. They all ask me when I am going to come to their class and teach, even the ones who already get English class. Being in the school really shows you how terrible the school system is here. They have classes from 8-12 but every 40 mins of class they have like 20 mins of recess. The teachers are always are celebrating something(family day, teachers day, moms day, dads day, day of the cross…you name it they have a day for it and miss school) or have teacher’s softball tournaments so the kids have free days very often. During class kids are usually running in and out of classes screaming. It’s not really an ideal learning environment.

            Winter has officially come and it rains almost every day. I have a tiled roof and water leaks a lot. If you are in my room during a rain storm, it feels like someone is spitting on you because water gets through the tiles. One of the bigger leaks is over my bed, which is no good but I recently put up plastic over my bed, which should help with the rain and also with all the junk that falls from my ceiling onto my bed everyday. Good news is that it isn’t 100 degrees everyday anymore, more like 90s.

            So I thought that I had a cat but apparently I miss understood (once again) that one of the cats was for her son and not for my friend Helen, so when Helen came to pick up a kitten she took mine instead. I wasn’t to torn up about it because I am not really a cat person and would only have it for the rats. On the rat problem: the poison that Emily sent me has been working like a charm! My health promoter also gave me some poison but they only eat the stuff from the states. THANKS EMILY!!

            Things that I am doing this month: starting my shampoo project, teaching English, teaching a women’s group about self breast exams, translating for PFCAF doctors, taking my health promoter to a workshop about how to identify emergencies in kids in a rural setting.

THANK YOU to everyone who has sent me letters and packages!!! They really mean a LOT and I LOVE hearing about what everyone is up to in the states.

Funny Stories:

1.      There is a little girl in kindergarten that has light hair and skin. They call her my child because she looks more like me than her mom.

2.      The little girls in 4^th grade had me sign their notebooks after English class, I felt famous. Haha

3.      Here many people call each other gorda  (fat) or flaca (thin) as descriptive terms. They don’t have the same harsh meanings as they do in English so I have gotten used to people saying “estagorda” and then others telling me I have lost weight. One of my host mom’s grandkids goes to an American school here to learn English. One day he told me I looked “a little fat” and let me tell you it hits a lot harder in English than it does in Spanish.

4.      My host mom has a tienda (little store) and has men who come to work for her during the day. They are usually the town bolos (drunks). So after working during the day they will buy alcohol from my host mom and hang around the house. My host family usually makes them do funny things like dance with each other or paint each other’s faces with nail polish and then video tape them with a digital camera, then proceed watch it on the TV right after.

my host mom´s cows

the kittens, the black and white one on the right was going to be mine

making pupusas...Brenda is hiding under the stove because she didn´t want her picture taken

delicious pupusas...inside they have cheese and meat and whatever else you would like

some little girls at the school...they are dressed up for a 5 of May celebration

at the school

5th of May party at the school. Girls dress up in traditional dress and one is named the Queen. The little girl in the front with blond hair, she is ¨my daughter¨

My posters for my General Assembly in May

About Peace Corps and a FODA (strengths, oppotunities, weaknesses, and threats in the community)

Raining outside...you can see that there is a little river outside my door

Cooking over a fire

Host mom slaughtered one of her pigs and these are chicharones that we are making, mostly pig fat boiled in oil/butter and then fried.

This is what quesedillas are here...bread. They are made from maiz (not wheat flour), cream, cheese, and sugar. I think they are really gross. 

Making another type of quesedillas, these ones have more cream and sugar in the middle.