1st Blog from El Sal!

Ah, the long awaited blog.
First of all, I’m sorry for taking so long. I promise I can explain. For now, I’ll say that I’m sitting on my bed in my host family’s home, surrounded by the green mosquito netting that protects my sleeping area not only from mosquitoes but also from the rat droppings that fall from the roof. Dengue and malaria aren’t fun to get, so we take great measures (aka wearing lots of DEET-laden products and taking vitamin B to shoo away mosquitoes) to avoid being bitten. I have so much to say, I’m not sure where to start. (Side note: no, I don’t have internet here, I’m just typing this on my computer so I can take it to the training center and put it up on the blog site!)

First a little background. I left Iowa City, along with my best friends, fiancé, good coffee and hot showers on February 5th. I was in Washington, DC, for two days of “staging,” which was a boatload of basic information that I’ve all but forgotten by this point. February 7th, we finally made it to El Salvador, amidst an indescribable array of emotions. We left DC at about 4am. It was snowing. Our bus (which held all 24 of us) slid around in the snow, but we made it to the airport. Less than 12 hours later, we landed in San Salvador and stepped off the plane into a dusty, hot, bustling country. We loaded a bus and headed to San Vicente, where our training center is. After a few days in a little hotel (our first experiences with cold water showers), we split up into groups of 3 and 4 into separate communities to meet our host families.

I live in a little community about 20 minutes away from our training center. I live with a mother, father, 2 sisters and a brother. They are pretty fabulous. Unlike many of the families who host Peace Corps volunteers during our 10 weeks of training, my family has never had a volunteer before, so I’m striving to leave a good impression!

My basic week consists of the following, with some variation:
Sundays I generally go to mass in the nearby town with my host mom and sisters. I am by no means Catholic, but it’s sort of interesting to watch people during church. I usually just space off and think of other things. After church, sometimes we get choco-bananos, my favorite food here. Sometimes it’s just a frozen banana on a stick, dipped in chocolate. Other times it’s banana ice cream covered thickly in chocolate and nuts. SO good! The rest of Sunday I spend generally being lazy (striving to continue the Iowa City tradition of excessive and lazy Sundays- some sense of personal tradition sort of helps to keep me sane. Then I help make dinner or do laundry (by hand, hung on lines). Doing laundry pretty much sucks. It took me forever to do mine…Most volunteers pay people a couple dollars a week to do their laundry once they get into their sites…I want to try to do mine, but I’m really not sure how long that will last.

Monday through Saturday, we do a combination of the following:
Some days we stay in our communities and a Spanish teacher comes out to give us classes. They are usually divided into 2 groups since we are on different levels. Peace Corps tries to get everyone to an “Intermediate Medium” level before sending him or her out into the fields. I tested at that level when I got here, so I’m just trying to talk more and practice so I can advance… Some days we catch a bus into San Vicente for a full day of training. We have medical classes, technical training (how to treat water, build latrines), and do lots of little group activities. Some days we go visit volunteer sites (people who have already been here for like a year). Last week, we went to San Salvador to visit the official Peace Corps office (which is where we go if we get sick or anything crazy like that).

Animals are fun. Let’s talk about animals. My family has bueyes (oxen, I believe), horses (which I think they are going to teach me to ride), lots and lots of chickens, black ducks (which just had like 8 duck babies), way too many roosters (which crow at about 3-4 am and wake me up every morning), goats, and dogs. A little puppy recently found its way into our yard, so we’ve sort of adopted her as well. Her name will make some of you chuckle…..Pecas (freckles)….she is little and scruffy, and I’m not sure how much she’ll grow eating nothing but tortillas, but she is cute and sweet and likes to follow me around (as well as chew on me).

Culture…it’s different. Really different. But I suppose I’m starting to adjust. The first week here felt like a month, and went by SO slow, and I was so frustrated every night…but now I feel like I might actually make it, and I’m starting to have more faith in Peace Corps and what it’s trying to do. During a “charla” (like a talk) last week on development, something caught my attention. The presenter was explaining what makes PC special. Unlike so many of the NGO’s that have come to El Salvador since the Civil War ended (in 91?), we have different styles and objectives. So many NGOs just come and put in a water system and leave without teaching anyone how to maintain it….or they come and give gifts….basically like giving a man a fish without actually teaching anyone how to fish.

With us PC kids, we don’t have money-related motives…we have no families to pay for or protect here. We are just here to help people become better leaders, to ask them what they want to improve in their own communities, and then to help them organize and do it. We’re just trying to make sustainable projects, and we have 2 years to get these projects in motion. So what we really do (as Rural Health and Sanitation volunteers, which is my specific program), is make community groups like health comities and youth groups. What happens beyond there totally varies by where you are and what your community’s problems are.

The biggest adjustment for me has been realigning my opinion of personal success. You really have to take things in little steps here and celebrate the small changes you make in people’s lives. Peace Corps is hugely about the cultural exchange—people here learning from me, but also me learning from them and taking that back to the states with me.

I won’t find out my specific site for about 5 or 6 more weeks. And if all goes well, I’ll swear in as an official PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) on April 19th (9 days after my bro’s 30th b’day!)

That’s all I can think of for now. Please feel free to post comments or questions in response to any of this, or email me if you want me to talk about specific stuff. Now that the background is down, I’ll try to come up with more specific stories for the next entry! It’s a crazy world down here….and what I miss most at the moment is hot showers….so enjoy them for me! (I bathe by scooping water out of a large cement holding place with a bucket…it’s cold, even in 75 degree weather! If you go to google images and type in “El Salvador Pila” you can probably see a picture of what I’m talking about.)

Finally, and briefly, I wanted to thank all of you for being a part of my life thus far. So many people had roles in leading me to where I am now, but the biggest thing is that everyone has always been so supportive of me (especially my mom and bro), pushing me to pursue something greater…so that’s what I’m trying to do here. Giving something back, right? But also, I definitely shoved myself out of every comfort zone I ever had, and I guess that was sort of the point in doing this. It’s just something I decided I had to do. So. Yeah. More soon. J

Much love to all.

Monday, Monday, Monday

Well, it's time for another brief update. So much has been going on in the last few weeks, and they have been some of the greatest weeks of my life. But I'm leaving on Monday! It's crazy...This is my last Thursday in Iowa City, at least for a long while. People have been asking me why I'm joining the Peace Corps and what I'll be doing and how in the world I could leave this lovely city for 2 whole years (+), so I thought it might be a good idea to remind myself exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing, and I'd share it with you all at the same time.

When I applied, I needed a plan, something to do with my life. So instead of trying to find another newspaper to work for, a grad school to apply to, or a menial job in the United States, I decided I should try to find a job that would allow me to do two things: fulfill my wanderlust and my love of volunteerism, while somehow avoiding student loans and learning a language at the same time. Everything that happened after I applied to Peace Corps went so quickly and smoothly that it could only be right. The acceptance was quick, and I was placed in a Latin American country where I'll be able to use my Spanish, and, I get to work with Rural Health issues. It couldn't really be any more perfect.

So I'm leaving the town where I sort of grew up (arguably much more so than grants pass), the place that now feels like Home, on Monday, to pursue a goal: to give something back to a community while placing myself in a situation that will force me to bend or break. Needless to say, I'm pretty thrilled for the challenge.