First of all, make sure you scroll all the way down because there are a lot of pictures that I posted yesterday and I want to make sure the time it took to upload all of those was worth it! Also, everything that I write about below has pictures that accompany it :).
The first set are from our trip last Wednesday to San Salvador. We got to visit the Peace Corps headquarters there and met the Peace Corps staff, who were all so nice. It was cool to see that, as one of our trainers said, "we are about to enter into one of the coolest brotherhoods out there, the Peace Corps," exciting stuff.
Then we went to the huge mall in San Salvador which was really overwhelming because the mall really had everything you could want from the US (though everything American was more expensive, especially now that I am on a Peace Corps salary). On the one hand, it felt very exhilirating to eat sandwiches and drink good coffee, but there was a little part of me that was sad to know that I can´t really escape the US here (if that makes any sense). In any case, where ever I will be living will be far enough away from San Salvador that it will be more of a monthly (if I'm lucky enough) treat to come into town and taste American products rather than a normal part of my life.
There is a lot more to tell, but I really have to get home soon so I will try and sum things up.
Last weekend was really fun. On Saturday, we went back into San Salvador again to go to the anthropological museum there. This time we were unaccompanied by the PC staff, we had to navigate the buses by ourselves, which was quite the feat considering how chaotic the city is and how random the bus lines and stops seem. I was quite proud of us! The museum was not too impressive, but it was fun to travel outside of our little community here again. I had been feeling a little frustrated that I had been in the country for three weeks without seeing anything outside of this little town!
In the afternoon we headed back to our town in time to get to the wedding that was happening that day. Not all the host families were invited to it, apparently people tend to only invite others who are members of the same political party, which apparently my host mom was. The wedding was very beautiful and fun, though in order to get to the fun reception I once again had to sit through two hours of church.
In the evening, after a couple dances at the wedding, we all loaded into a minibus I had organized to take us to a neighboring town, where there was a PC party. This town was having its annual celebration to crown the queen of the town, which included a carnival and a giant party with live music. It was a ton of fun, because we finally got to drink and hang out together as one big group and we all had an amazing time dancing at the party. Oh how I love latin parties...
Our minibus took us home at 2am, where my host mom was still awake and waiting for me (I felt so bad), but she didn't seem to mind. The next day I, along with my friends Betsy and Stephanie got up early to go meet my friend Danielle from Seattle and her family in Suchitoto. They are visiting Danielle's sister down here and invited us to join them on their day trip. Suchitoto is a beautiful old colonial town on a lake, a couple hours north of where I am living right now. It was so nice to visit other parts of the country finally (I feel like I have been trapped in a bucket, I've been here for three weeks and only seen my town and just finally San Salvador!). Plus it was amazing to see Danielle and her family who so generously took us to lunch and invited us to go on a beautiful boat tour around the lake. We were supposed to be learning about the massacres that had occured around the lake during the Civil War, but our tour guide seemed more interested in talking about the birds that had migrated from Canada, which somewhat changed the tone of the boat tour.
All in all it was a wonderful weekend.
Today I am back at the training center for a full day of training. I am excited because we just found out where we are going this weekend for our "immersion trips" where we get to visit a current PC volunteer. This is not the same site we'll be placed in later on, but will give us a better sense of what current volunteers do (it is still somewhat of a mystery to me) and what kind of site we want to request to live in for two years. I feel really lucky because I was assigned to Chalatenango (in the hilly north, which should be much less hot than down here which is currently having record highs) and am going with my friend Betsy, which should be awesome. We are planning to go to the beach on Saturday on our way home too, I am dying to go swimming already.
Anyways, I must get home for dinner, but love to all of you and again, I would love to hear from you if you guys have the time.
Monday, March 31, 2008
suchitoto
the cathedral in suchitoto, all of us posing with our new cool bags (the tall blondes are Danielle and her family), Danielle´s sister negotiating our boat ride, the boats, and the lake
all in all a beautiful town and day
in town
davíd posing on my street (in front of his house) and the view of the volcano from my front door (with the church)
mangoes - for mimi and julia
stephanie´s host brother climbing the mango tree, catching the mangoes in a towel, posing with stephanie´s host family, cutting the mangoes and enjoying them
living it up in the big city
our trip to san salvador, eating good food, drinking good coffee, and umberto - our stylish italian 70 year old volunteer
waiting in the PC office to head to san salvador
waiting in the PC office excited to head to el salvador, David and our Spanish teacher lilian (with the bus map), Betsy and me, stephanie, linsey and andy
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
a short little post on development
I only have a little time before I need to head back to my home stay for dinner but since the computer was free in the training center I thought I would share some of the interesting facts we learned today in training about El Salvador.
Remittances to El Salvador make up $3.5 billion dollars a year, which is roughly between 17-20% of the GDP. Currently, 30% of the Salvadoran population is living outside El Salvador, mostly in the U.S. About 2.5 million Salvadorans now live in the U.S.
I just wanted to share those numbers to help understand how strongly emigration affects the Salvadoran communities. In my town that I am now staying in for training there are lots of families with grandparents and children and with the parents living in the U.S., which greatly affects family structures. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of emigrants are male, leaving a very skewed gender breakdown, which has interesting and varied consequences for communities.
As most of you probably know, migration is one of my passions (before Ben started to claim it has "his thing," though I guess he is the genuine immigrant) and I feel so lucky to be in a country like this where the effects of migration are still new and to have the opportunity to learn more about the process.
In general, we had a really interesting day of training today where we talked and learned about development in general and specifically about the Peace Corps' "capacity building" approach. The Peace Corps philosophy has changed many times over the years, but now they insist that we work "bottom up." That all ideas are supposed to come from the community and we are in the business of long-term, sustainable development, which means working with the people, rather than building infrastructure, which can often be more "paternalistic." I am not entirely sure that it's possible, especially in the positions we have as municipal development workers, who will be by nature working in some sort of leadership role, but it was definitely interesting to learn about and got me very, very excited to get out into the community already and be able to work in this field. Particularly, there are two programs in El Salvador I am interested in learning more about, Red Solidaria, which "pays" families to send their children to school (paid for by loans from the Inter-American Development Bank), which reminds me of a program that a professor at Columbia developed in Brazil (Xavier Sala-i-martin) and FoMilenia, the El Salvador chapter of the UN Millenium Development Goals, which just won a major grant to build a highway across the northern, very rural and isolated, part of the country.
OK I must run home to dinner, but I will be posting soon after my trip to San Salvador!
Remittances to El Salvador make up $3.5 billion dollars a year, which is roughly between 17-20% of the GDP. Currently, 30% of the Salvadoran population is living outside El Salvador, mostly in the U.S. About 2.5 million Salvadorans now live in the U.S.
I just wanted to share those numbers to help understand how strongly emigration affects the Salvadoran communities. In my town that I am now staying in for training there are lots of families with grandparents and children and with the parents living in the U.S., which greatly affects family structures. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of emigrants are male, leaving a very skewed gender breakdown, which has interesting and varied consequences for communities.
As most of you probably know, migration is one of my passions (before Ben started to claim it has "his thing," though I guess he is the genuine immigrant) and I feel so lucky to be in a country like this where the effects of migration are still new and to have the opportunity to learn more about the process.
In general, we had a really interesting day of training today where we talked and learned about development in general and specifically about the Peace Corps' "capacity building" approach. The Peace Corps philosophy has changed many times over the years, but now they insist that we work "bottom up." That all ideas are supposed to come from the community and we are in the business of long-term, sustainable development, which means working with the people, rather than building infrastructure, which can often be more "paternalistic." I am not entirely sure that it's possible, especially in the positions we have as municipal development workers, who will be by nature working in some sort of leadership role, but it was definitely interesting to learn about and got me very, very excited to get out into the community already and be able to work in this field. Particularly, there are two programs in El Salvador I am interested in learning more about, Red Solidaria, which "pays" families to send their children to school (paid for by loans from the Inter-American Development Bank), which reminds me of a program that a professor at Columbia developed in Brazil (Xavier Sala-i-martin) and FoMilenia, the El Salvador chapter of the UN Millenium Development Goals, which just won a major grant to build a highway across the northern, very rural and isolated, part of the country.
OK I must run home to dinner, but I will be posting soon after my trip to San Salvador!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
my host mom´s grandchildren
my host mom's grandchildren and daughter who are visiting for the weekend.
more semana santa
So not much has changed since the last time I posted. As the Holy Week has continued I must admit I have become a little less enthusiastic about the processions and church services as I realized that they were actually every day this week and the novelty wore off somewhat. Though I must say I did enjoy the quick church service yesterday morning where the priest blessed all the animals. There were dogs and parakeets in the church, it was really cute. Also Friday night there was a huge procession in the dark in honor of Jesus´ death. They carry a coffin around the town that is decorated with flashing christmas lights and fake flowers (see pictures). The youth of the town made ¨carpets¨ on the ground of various scenes of Jesus made out of salt and food coloring, they were actually very beautiful (see pictures).
It´s funny because today (Easter) there are actually no church services or processions at all, it´s not very important (for example, this internet cafe is open), unlike Good Friday (AKA Viernes Santo) when everything shuts down. Last night was the last major hurrah, all day everyone had been warning me and the other Peace Corps trainees that ¨we were going to stay up ALL night til one am!¨ so I was very curious what was going to happen. I asked Ernesto (the boy pictured earlier dressed as an apostle, a role he resumed several times over the week) and he said something about burning a jew, but I was sure I hadn´t understood correctly. In fact, that was indeed part of the party. After a beautiful ceremony in the church where everyone starts out in darkness and then lights their candles from the flame that the priest holds, to symbolize the resurrection of Jesus, there is a huge party in the church. At this party they burn effigies of the jews who killed Jesus, I wanted to protest that Jesus himself was a Jew, and no, we did not kill him, the Romans did, but I felt it may not be the best time to do so. In any case, I took some pictures for your enjoyment.
Otherwise, life here has been proceding as usual. As I think I mentioned earlier, for the first time, Peace Corps has decided that we the trainees should do a project in our host community as a sort of practice for what it will be like to be in the field and furthermore as a way to thank the host communities for having us all these years. I think it´s a great idea and have been really excited about it. After a somewhat rough start due to the fact that my group hadn´t quite understood what Peace Corps was asking us to do (we thought we were supposed to come up with the idea ourselves as opposed to having the youth do it) and having to learn to work with 5 other different people who had very different visions of what our meeting should look like, we ended up having a very succesful first meeting with the church´s youth group last Wednesday. We started with an icebreaker that I love (Honey I love you, will you please smile for me?) which got everyone laughing, which was great and then had some really productive small group discussions about what part of the town had needs and how what kind of projects could be done. There was somewhat of a consensus on needing to work in the park and we will be meeting this Thursday again to discuss what are the top priorities there. It was amazing to me how much more enthusiastic about the whole thing the young people where than I was expecting. I am used to dealing with American college students who wont attend anything that doesn´t have food or can´t be put on their resume, but these kids actually seemed really happy about being part of the project. I think some of it has to do with the fact that they are generally a little bored as there is not much to do and also maybe that people think that the gringos (us Americans) are cool and exciting and want to be involved with us. In any case, it made me feel really lucky to be working in an environment like this where people are responsive and motivated, I am continually grateful that I was placed in this country. The whole experience made me really happy to be here and to be a Peace Corps volunteer. I love organizing people and pushing projects forward, not to mention doing something that feels really meaningful. I feel so lucky to have this opportunity right out of college and not to be working in an entry level job that I would be really bad at since I am not detail-oriented. I am really happy that I made the decision to come here. It´s amazing to think that the US government is paying to me to be trained and work in international grassroots development.
What else, I am missing the other volunteers who are not in my town, but it was nice on Friday because a group of us from my town went to go visit our friends in the next towns over. The walk was about an hour each way, but it was so beautiful and we were rewarded by being able to eat in the delicious ice cream store they have in their town. They are further spoiled because they are all going to the beach today. I am very jealous, but will be able to go soon when we have our weekend off. I am planning on walking down to the river today instead, because it is so hot and am dying to go swimming finally! The whole situation is not helped by the fact that we have not had running water in our village for three days. The explanation being that the man who turns the pump on is on vacation! I have been learning to love the bucket bath, or at least to appreciate the cooling effect of cold water.
OK I should be getting back to my host family soon for lunch so I must run, but again, please do email me, I would love to hear from you all.
It´s funny because today (Easter) there are actually no church services or processions at all, it´s not very important (for example, this internet cafe is open), unlike Good Friday (AKA Viernes Santo) when everything shuts down. Last night was the last major hurrah, all day everyone had been warning me and the other Peace Corps trainees that ¨we were going to stay up ALL night til one am!¨ so I was very curious what was going to happen. I asked Ernesto (the boy pictured earlier dressed as an apostle, a role he resumed several times over the week) and he said something about burning a jew, but I was sure I hadn´t understood correctly. In fact, that was indeed part of the party. After a beautiful ceremony in the church where everyone starts out in darkness and then lights their candles from the flame that the priest holds, to symbolize the resurrection of Jesus, there is a huge party in the church. At this party they burn effigies of the jews who killed Jesus, I wanted to protest that Jesus himself was a Jew, and no, we did not kill him, the Romans did, but I felt it may not be the best time to do so. In any case, I took some pictures for your enjoyment.
Otherwise, life here has been proceding as usual. As I think I mentioned earlier, for the first time, Peace Corps has decided that we the trainees should do a project in our host community as a sort of practice for what it will be like to be in the field and furthermore as a way to thank the host communities for having us all these years. I think it´s a great idea and have been really excited about it. After a somewhat rough start due to the fact that my group hadn´t quite understood what Peace Corps was asking us to do (we thought we were supposed to come up with the idea ourselves as opposed to having the youth do it) and having to learn to work with 5 other different people who had very different visions of what our meeting should look like, we ended up having a very succesful first meeting with the church´s youth group last Wednesday. We started with an icebreaker that I love (Honey I love you, will you please smile for me?) which got everyone laughing, which was great and then had some really productive small group discussions about what part of the town had needs and how what kind of projects could be done. There was somewhat of a consensus on needing to work in the park and we will be meeting this Thursday again to discuss what are the top priorities there. It was amazing to me how much more enthusiastic about the whole thing the young people where than I was expecting. I am used to dealing with American college students who wont attend anything that doesn´t have food or can´t be put on their resume, but these kids actually seemed really happy about being part of the project. I think some of it has to do with the fact that they are generally a little bored as there is not much to do and also maybe that people think that the gringos (us Americans) are cool and exciting and want to be involved with us. In any case, it made me feel really lucky to be working in an environment like this where people are responsive and motivated, I am continually grateful that I was placed in this country. The whole experience made me really happy to be here and to be a Peace Corps volunteer. I love organizing people and pushing projects forward, not to mention doing something that feels really meaningful. I feel so lucky to have this opportunity right out of college and not to be working in an entry level job that I would be really bad at since I am not detail-oriented. I am really happy that I made the decision to come here. It´s amazing to think that the US government is paying to me to be trained and work in international grassroots development.
What else, I am missing the other volunteers who are not in my town, but it was nice on Friday because a group of us from my town went to go visit our friends in the next towns over. The walk was about an hour each way, but it was so beautiful and we were rewarded by being able to eat in the delicious ice cream store they have in their town. They are further spoiled because they are all going to the beach today. I am very jealous, but will be able to go soon when we have our weekend off. I am planning on walking down to the river today instead, because it is so hot and am dying to go swimming finally! The whole situation is not helped by the fact that we have not had running water in our village for three days. The explanation being that the man who turns the pump on is on vacation! I have been learning to love the bucket bath, or at least to appreciate the cooling effect of cold water.
OK I should be getting back to my host family soon for lunch so I must run, but again, please do email me, I would love to hear from you all.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
en mi casa
my host mom and i cooking, my host mom cooking, and a picture of the tienda I´ve been working in!
on the bus from the airport
this is a horrible picture of me, but it shows some of the people in the group. Plus I can contrast it later with awesome tan pictures of me.
the beginning
As I was coming into town today, all eager to start writing in my blog because I feel like I´ve been here forever and haven´t written nearly enough and have missed out on all sorts of important changes, it suddenly dawned on me that I´ve actually only been in the Peace Corps a week, which seems crazy as so many different things have happened already. I guess I should start at the beginning.
To be honest, I was dreading the "staging" we had in D.C. I´ve started new things several times in my life and the first awkward days with a new group of people are usually so painful and slow. Sure, the lessons we had in DC about culture shock and safety 101 were definitely not the most interesting in the world, but in general, I was surprised to find that I actually had a wonderful time. Most of that was because our group of 39 volunteers were all so fun, nice, and funny and made the two days pass so quickly. Generally, most people are in their twenties, easy going, and up for adventure, not too surprising I suppose. The most obvious exception to our young group is a 70 year old volunteer (to be sure, he looks much, much younger, and acts generally quite youthful). He´s Italian and formerly worked for a major Italian network, which is now doing a documentary on his experience in the Peace Corps - which I think is very exciting.
There was just a really good feeling in the group, everyone got along. It made me so excited to know that I will be spending the next two years (well more or less) with these people. It felt very right.
So after a couple fun days in Washington, we left our hotel at 3:30 in the morning for the airport, I was very tired and slept the whole way to San Salvador, unsurprisingly. The only thing worth noting from the flight was that on the plane the flight attendent made an announcement that there was a group of 39 peace corps volunteers on their way to El Salvador and everyone cheered, I thought that was cute and felt very proud.
When we got to El Salvador, we immediately went in to the center and had our shots and Spanish tests. I was sure I was going to cry and not remember anything, but then my interview ended up lasting for half an hour and I passed the requirement we have after two months of classes so I was happy with that and pleased to know that somewhere in the depths of my mind my Spanish had somehow survived. We were greated at the airport by three smiling former volunteers who know work at the Peace Corps Headquarters and are all so tan, fluent in Spanish and so excited about and familiar with working and living in El Salvador it made me very much look forward to the day when I am like them, two years from now.
Our groups spent one last night together in a hostel in San Vicente, our town where the training is, before we were divided the next day into our host communities. Parting was actually pretty sad because we had (or at least I had!) gotten used to being together in our big group and now were placed in different villages with about 5 other volunteers. We will spend the next 8 weeks living in this village and taking Spanish lessons 4 days a week there and come into the training center all together 1-2 days a week.
When I was first placed in my town, I was a little disappointed in my home stay situation because everyone else seemed to get giant families with a million little kids running around, and I was placed with an older woman with no kids living at home. She owns a store which keeps her quite busy and I spent the first afternoon sitting in the hammock not really sure what to do, and ended up going over to visit my friend, who is staying across the street with a woman who owns a busy comedor or diner. The next day, however, I got to talking with my host mother more, and found that she is indeed a very talkative woman, with a lot to say and I think is very pleased to have someone there to talk to about, which is great. Plus, she has taken to heart my request to learn to make Salvadoran food and I have already been cooking with her quite a bit, which is awesome. I learned how to make rellenos do guaquil the other day, I think that´s how you spell it, which is a pretty typical dish. Also, I have taken to working in the store, which is fun. I love how they use the US dollar here, it reminds me of the stories you read from the 1920s when a candy is two pennies and a soda is 10 cents. I got confused the other day when someone asked for what I thought was a cola, but they were actually saying "una cora" - Spanglish for a quarter. A similar story is when my host mom was saying something about a pika, when I said i didn´t know that word she explained it was like a car - what she was saying was a "pick up" (truck), haha.
In general, my host mother is really sweet and I suppose there are definite advantages to living in a calmer household and having some quite time and privacy to myself. Not to mention that I have a shower (no hot water of course, but a shower is better than a bucket bath).
It´s funny to me that we have only spent a couple nights in our town, because I already feel quite at home there. I really have to say, everything I have heard about Salvadorans being incredibly nice and generous is true. I cannot stress how wonderful everyone has been to us. For example, my friend was on the bus yesterday and a little girl came up and gave her cookies, because she was a foreign American and she was so curious about her. No where else in the world are people that excited and interested in meeting Americans. I feel so lucky to be here.
Part of this, of course, is the fact that literally every family I have met has at least one, if not more, family members in the US. My host mom for example has a son in Houston and in L.A., which is pretty typical. The host family of another one of the Americans even has family in Washington state, in Yakima. The mom had gone to visit there and said she thought Seattle was very beautiful, so she was instantly on my good side :). It´s been really interesting though to hear my host moms stories about how people get to the US (her answer is mojados or wet), and the difficulties they face at the boarders. It´s fascinating hearing the stories from this side.
OK this post is getting really long and I still want to talk about one more thing. Today is Palm Sunday, which is the beginning of the Holy Week here. My host mom is religious so I spent this morning taking part in a procession around the town (see pictures) and went to church on Friday and took part in another procession then too. I am spending more time in Church than I have in Synagogue for a long time, haha. It´s good to go and learn though, it´s such a huge part of the community that it´s important to participate in it.
Also, for the first time, us Peace Corps Trainees are being asked to put together a development project in our village, though we only have two months there! But the people in my group are all so pumped about it, it made me really excited about it and proud about the real reason we´re here. I just keep thinking to myself, I can´t believe I´m getting paid to do this. Obviously, not getting paid very much, but still! In our training the trainer gave us this quote from Kennedy I think saying that the Peace Corps represents all that is good about America. I couldn´t agree more. The more I get to know about the program, the prouder I am to be part of it and the luckier I feel to have this opportunity to participate!
OK on that positive note, I must sign off because the internet cafe closes in a couple minutes and I want to post pictures! Please send me emails, I would love to hear all of your comments!
It now, when I am like them.
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