cabañas it is!

so i finally found out where i am going! I will be spending the next two years in the department of Cabañas, which is in the northern zone of El Salvador, actually not too far from where i am now (I will post a picture with the map and me tomorrow).

To be honest, when we found out yesterday I was really, really upset. I had been hoping for a bigger site, where there currently was a volunteer I would be replacing, and most of all, to be close to people from my peace corps group, or at least other PC volunteers. As I watched the giant map on the wall get filled up with clusters of stars (representing volunteers) in Morazan and Santa Ana, I grew more and more worried as no one was placed close to me. Also, I found out that the last volunteers in my site were a married couple who had left after a month and that it was supposed to be extremely hot. Did not seem to be what I was hoping for at all. Unfortunately, the woman in charge of my program is new and as such was not familiar with our site placements and so couldn't really tell me much and the guy who was heavily involved wasnt there. I left the training center sorely disappointed and extremely anxious about the next two years. It helped that Betsy and I (she was also a little disappointed) went to comiserate over pizza, licuados (delicious smoothies) and shopping, making me feel a little better.

I am feeling much better today though. The main reason is that I had a chance to talk to Bri, the coordinator of the health program and she gave me some great info. First of all, the mayor is supposed to be awesome. He's on the board of the FoMilenio project in El Salvador, which is wonderful because I specifically requested to work with it (probably why they placed me there). For those of you who don't know what it is, FoMilenio is the Salvador organization formed to administer the Millenium Challenge Grant that El Salvador won in 2006. The grant, by the Millenium Challenge Corporation (http://www.mcc.gov/) is for $400,000,000, which makes it one of the largest of these grants won by any country in the world (second only to Mali). The grant is given by the US govt and is meant to be a new type of aid giving, it's pretty interesting. All the money will be spent in the north, half goes to building a new highway, which will connect the north (all the roads currently basically lead to San Salvador) and the other half will go into development, including microfinance, crop productivity, capacity building, access to clean water, electricity and other good stuff. It makes me really excited to be involved in this type of work, I feel really lucky to have the opportunity to be in the Northern region at this time.

Also, Bri was telling me that the town is pretty close to the capital, you can get there and back in one day. Which is great, because then I can meet up with friends there. And she said that there are a lot of great volunteers in Cabañas and they have a pretty solid network and do activities together, which is great.
The last thing she told me which made me feel good is that apparently before the married couple that left early was another volunteer who was apparently amazing and the town loved him. He got a lot done in the town, and is the town's motivation for requesting a new volunteer. It means I have big shoes to fill, but also that they have a lot of confidence in me that I will be able to follow in his footsteps.
Oh! and the town I am going to apparently makes awesome cheese, famous throughout El Salvador. Can't wait...

Plus I decided to stop listening when Salvadorans say that places are really hot or really cold. This country is so tiny, and as far as I can tell, it's generally been pretty hot everywhere I've gone. Thankfully, it's still less humid than NY in the summer, and this time of year is supposed to be the worst it gets so I should be fine. I guess I will just spend the next two years wearing tank tops, and that's OK.

So all in all today, I am feeling much better about the placement. In any case, I will be there in a week (!) so I will be able to see the place for myself finally!