So Peace Corps training is now officially over for good and I am a legitimate Peace Corps Volunteer. I suspect this means I am supposed to start working…on what I am as of yet unsure. This past week we had 3 days of Spanish “reconnect” classes at the training center, Thanksgiving with host families from the US Embassy, and our swearing in party with all the current volunteers. On Wednesday afternoon, Ashley, Morgan and I (and most of the rest of our training group) hopped on the bus from San V to San Sal and headed to our host family for Thanksgiving. The 3 of us stayed with a woman named Michelle, who does economic development work for USAID and served in the PC in Ecuador in the 90s. We stayed with her, her Peruvian husband, her Peruvian sister in law, and her 2 daughters. The family was amazing, and so friendly and warm. They made us feel at home immediately and were incredibly kind to us lowly, dirty volunteers. At midnight on Wednesday Michelle took us to the midnight premier of Breaking Dawn (the newest Twilight movie for all of you who are not in the know), and on Thanksgiving we had a Christmas cookie decorating/wine and cheese party with some neighbors and then a huge dinner with about 30 people all together. All the people we met were incredibly interesting, and almost all of the Americans present had been PCVs at some point in their lives. Therefore, they were also very sympathetic and understanding of our plight (aka, our desire to eat 9 plates of Thanksgiving food each) and we received many offers to spend weekends at San Sal apartments, beach houses, etc. They may live to rue the day they made those offers.
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| snowmen in the embassy neighborhood |
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| christmas cookies!!! |
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| my thanksgiving dinner |
On Friday we said goodbye to the glorious house and family with a sigh and headed to the hostel that PC uses to prepare for our swearing in party, with a short stop at the Sheraton hotel to lie by their pool and have a Bloody Mary first. Our swearing in party involved dinner and then drinks and dancing in Zona Rosa, which is a really nice upscale area of San Salvador that basically looks like any American city. We all had a really good time and definitely celebrated hard.
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| morgan and i being george and martha washington at the sheraton pool |
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| tyler, jamie and i at dinner pre-swearing in party |
Now, I am back in Santa Paula to start my real service. I have 22 months left in site, and no more trainings, so basically no more excuses to not be working. While I was gone I missed the last weeks of school and 9th grade graduation, so the next 2 months of “summer vacation” I will most likely spend trying to figure out exactly what it is I will be doing next year. While PST2 definitely loaded me up with lots of good ideas for potential projects, I still feel pretty lost as to what I want to focus on in my site. A lot of that will need to come from the community members, so I need to get back out on the road and finish visiting all the houses here in Santa Paula and figure out what we need here. Also, in about 3 weeks my family will be arriving here in El Salvador to spend Christmas in my site and then travel around the country a bit! I cannot WAIT for them to be here! While I could handle Thanksgiving alone in a strange country, it will definitely be nice to have my family here for the most magical time of the year! :)
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| ready for xmas in el salvador :) |
One character that I have not given nearly enough attention to on this blog recently is Manny. My malnourished, on the doorstep of death kitten has transformed into a rambunctious, gangly adolescent cat in my 3-week absence. He now spends his nights bounding around my bed, alternately attacking my toes, iPod, fingers, and face, instead of sleeping curled up in my arms. Yesterday I received a package from home that included some kitty toys, and he has officially turned into a psychopathic nut job, bouncing around my small bedroom chasing balls with bells in them and a hot pink mouse.
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| my devil kitten trying to attack me through the mosquito net |
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