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