A Salvadoran birthday

For my first bday in El Sal my family got up and sang to me at 6 am. Then I spent the whole day at the training center where we learned about the STDs we may contract and then had a lecture on the economic development (or lack thereof) in El Sal. They were pretty depressing lectures. But after 3 current youth volunteers came in and did a panel with us, which was great. They were all super positive about everything and I’m excited to start working! It was also great to get back together with all the volunteers and hear how everyones weekend went. We all have such different communities. Some people have latrines and bucket baths. Overall, I think I am very very lucky with my placement in Tecoluca.

When we got home from training, my sisters and cousins (5 kids under the age of 8) had gotten me a penguin piñata. The piñatas here are hard – they have a wire spine rather than our flimsy ones in America, so everyone got to take a hit and it still took forever to break apart. The kids were very excited and I only got 2 pieces of candy haha. But it was a very fun and festive event.

Everyone is busy in Tecoluca preparing for the fiestas, which start on Sunday, and last for 10 days. Apparently the dancing goes on until 3 am – and the majority of it takes place on my street. Needless to say I will not be sleeping!

In other news, the heat wave here finally broke. Apparently the last few days have been abnormally hot (as in, you start sweating the minute you get out of the shower and have to change your underwear many times a day). Today was much cooler (aka 85 not 95), so if this is how the weather stays it will be muchhh better. 

bday pinata!

Tecoluca family

Candy madness

Tecoluca

For the rest of training I am living in Tecoluca, a "suburb" of San Vicente. I lucked out because some of the volunteers are placed in cantones (which are little clusters of houses), whereas I am in a pueblo (set up more like a city). There are 2 other volunteers here with me, Ashley and Jeremy, although we each have our own family. Ashley's host parents are the parents of my mother, so technically Ashley is my aunt. 

Living with a host family is hard! I have a madre and a padre, Lupita and Zeniff and two sisters, Nathaly (5) and Victoria (almost 2). Also, for pets I have 3 rabbits (a mother and 2 very tame and brazen babies) and 5 turtles. One of these turtles lives under my bed and enjoys crawling through my suitcase daily. He also leaves droppings all over my floor.  

Lupita is a 5^th grade teacher and Zeniff is a health promotor. This means he goes to the very rural villages where there aren’t doctors or anything and assists with any medical problems and also educates. On the side, he hosts a ranchera radio program at 5 am daily and also works as a clown. They are extremely nice and helpful and fairly young. Lupita’s mom, Selena, is the host mom of another volunteer, so we see each other a lot which is nice (and they have wifi...which I am using now). I have a room to myself and a double bed which is nice, and Zeniff helped me hang my mosquito net so now I have my little cave. 

  

Saturday I got to go to the grocery store with the family. The super (supermarket) has tons of stuff! They have mac and cheese, cereal, peanut butter, shampoo… it’s great! The peace corps gives our families money for our food but nothing else, and I feel bad because some of the things I prefer (i.e. diet coke instead of regular) are pretty expensive, so I think I may try to supplement them or something. I also want to try to find a battery operated fan that I can put at the end of the bed. It cools down well in the nights but my room has a tin roof and concrete walls so it retains the heat of the day pretty well.

 Yesterday I got up at 3:30 to leave for church at 4:30. I did this because on Saturday I got up at 6:45 to go to my lesson at 7:30 and the whole family had waited for me to eat breakfast. Sunday, though, there was nothing to do (we weren’t eating breakfast before getting on the bus) so I just sat there for an hour. The bus ride was miserable. 3 hours on a packed (3 to a seat), old American school bus. But the scenery was amazing!!! We traveled to Santa Ana which is in the mountains and it was so pretty! The cathedral there is beautiful too. Mass was a pretty relaxed affair. The church was packed to the gills and people were kind of just milling about and talking and stuff. My family ate breakfast in the church (bologna sandwiches on white bread). After church we walked around the festival which was absolute madness but very cool. I tried various fruits preserved in sugar. After this I thought we were going straight back to Tecoluca bu they brought us all to a water park near Santa Ana for 5 hours. Luckily Ashley, one of the other volunteers in Tecoluca, was with me too so I didn’t have to do it alone. We finally got home at about 7.

Training starts back up tomorrow after our weekend with the families. I'm excited for the "city life" of San Vicente...ha

some bunnies

cathedral/celebration in Santa Ana

my bedroom. the crib is my dresser

my sisters, Nathaly (5) and Victoria (almost 2) 

my roommate  

Day 2

[see below for photos that correspond with this entry!]

Another great day of training! We got up at 6:30, had a delicious breakfast of cooked and somehow carmelized plantains, fried egg, salsa, and liquefied beans (sounds gross but is great). Then we headed to the training center for 12 hours of sessions. Eek. The sessions were pretty interesting - we covered personal safety and security, proper treatment of food and water, diarrhea and dehydration, adn some basic spanish. We also had spanish interviews to assess skill level and interviews with the resident doctor and our first immunization - typhus. All in all it was a very productive day. A few PCVs (Peace Corps VOlunteers) who live close to San Vicente came in and talked to us about safety which was good and helpful. We also took a trip into downtown San Vicente which is actually fairly urban. There are lots of stores and restaurants and a great looking market that I can't wait to explore! One thing I have noticed is that all doors and windows here have a covering of really beautiful and intricate iron work. I took a photo of the building across from the PC training center (see below) to try to show it. I really love this style and I wonder if it is specific to San Vicente or if the rest of El Sal looks the same. We were downtown in San Vicente to get NIT cards, which are some form of identification that we need in order to get bank accounts opened. We were given our first pay - $40 in cash (we are earning about $2.50 per day - which is actually a decent amount of money here)

We went to the same restaurant we ate at last night for lunch. The food was not as good today, but still pretty good. One thing that will definitely take getting used to are the corn tortillas. At home I love corn tortillas because they can get so crispy - but here they are about 1/4 of an inch thick and very mealy and heavy. They really sit in your stomach after eating them and don't have much flavor. But all the current volunteers say you get used to them fast and I'm sure I will too! 

Training sessions were fairly boring and I must get to the true star of my day - the pupusas. This evening a local woman and her daughter came to the training center and made us all pupusas! They are very very delicious. The combinations we had tonight were cheese, cheese and loroco (local produce - some kidn of vine that actually looks like flower buds), and cheese and beans. We covered them in red salsa, then curtido which is basically a vinegary cole slaw, and then some pickled vegetables. You pull apart the pupusa and eat the entire mess with your fingers. So good, but very very messy! With this meal we were served delicious hot chocolate that basically tasted like a melted chocolate bar. (Apparently, all women gain weight during training... I can see why).

Now we are back in the hotel. We move to our host families tonight. Iw ill be with that host family for the next 2 months, before moving to my permanent site. The host families are not right in San Vicente. Rather, there are 5 surrounding communities that will have volunteers. There will be 3 volunteers in each community, and we will all live in a different town. We will have our spanish lessons in those communities, traveling to the training center in San Vicente only for our group training sessions (about twice a week). Therefore, it is likely that for the next 2 months I will only have internet when I travel to the training center. After today I'm not sure how often I will be updating this or in contact in general. So hopefully I will update again soon, but who knows!!

breakfast: carmelized plantain, fried egg, salsa, liquified beans

dining room at the hotel.

some san vicente scenery

outside of the PC training ctr

the famous clock tower in san vicente

volcano from the streets of san vicente

i didn't know boston had special carnitas...

typical SV buildings - note the iron

lunch - roasted chicken, pineapple/apple salad, rice, and corn tortillas with some sort of grapefruit flavored juice

slightly out of focus group pic

PUPUSAS

local women making us pupusas

"A pupusa (from pipil word pupusawa) is a tortilla made of corn filled with one or more of the following ingredients: cheese or quesillo (special salvadoran cheese), pork rinds, beans, squash, etc."
Below the root of the word pupusa from the nahual language is given

"Salsa: tomatoes, onions, green chiles, peppers, cilantro. Types of pupusa: cheese, some other sort of cheese, squash, squash with cheese, beans with cheese, beans, pork rinds, revueltas (beans, cheese, and pork rinds)."

A spanish maestra teaching us about how pupusas are made

pupusa line

the finished product: 2 pupusas, pickled veggies (carrots and cauliflower stuff), red salsa, and curtido (cole slaw type thing that accompanies all pupusas)

El Sal at last

Finally in El Salvador!

Travel started very early this morning at 2:30 am. We were at the airport 4 hours before our flight, but it turned out to be a good thing because the line behind us to check in was hugeee and there is no way we all would have gotten through if we weren't first. We were laid over in Miami for what was supposed to be 2 hours but ended up being about 4 due to an accident with our first plane. Once we had boarded the plane we were informed that a windblown luggage dolly had left a deep scratch in the tail of the plane and they weren't sure whether or not the plane was safe to fly. After assessing the damage for approx. 30 mins, we were unloaded from the plane, forced to wait,a nd then reloaded onto another plane, which we sat in for 1.5 hours before takeoff.  However, once in the air, the flight to El Sal was short and sweet (only 2 hours 20 minutes). The descent into the airport was incredible - it's all rolling hills and farmland around the airport - no buildings or infrastructure of any sort!

At the airport we unloaded ALL our luggage

a fraction of our luggage...

After collecting our luggage, we went through customs which was actually very smooth and easy. We were immediately met by a group of Peace Corps staff who shuttled us along.  The minute we stepped outside we were hit by a wall of heat. Oh the humidity! The temperature is about the same as what it's been back home these past few days, but humidity probably hovers around 100% at all times during the rainy season. After sweating profusely by the side of the road for a while we were loaded onto a gorgeously decorated school bus for our 45 minute ride to San Vicente (a town outside of San Salvador where the PC training center is)

In San Vicente we were led straight into the training center where all our stuff was put in storage except for small overnight bags.Until Friday we are all staying in a hotel near the training center. This is nice because the hotel rooms have AC, cable television, electricity, WIFI and showers! I imagine the move to our host homes will be quite the shock after this, but that's okay with me! Our meetings today were abbreviated since we were 3 hours late, so we were quickly led to a local restaurant for a delicious dinner. We were served fresh pico de gallo (chopped tomatoes, onions, and chiles), a quarter of an avocado, and a rice and beans mixture with a little pork. The rice is cooked in the liquid from boiling the beans, and it was really really delicious. Alongside our meal was a orange juicy type of drink and some delicious local hot sauce. After dinner we were served mini containers of fresh watermelon for dessert. YUM

One thing interesting here is how early it gets dark. We are way closer to the equator here so sunset is much earlier. Although we missed it tonight, by the time we got out of dinner (730) it was pitch black. This is conducive to all of us going to bed ASAP since we have been up since 2 am (or midnight El Sal time) and have to get up for training by 7 tomorrow morning.

[Sidenote... it appears that the insiders in El Sal actually call it Salvador, not El Sal. We'll see if I make that switch, I'm very used to saying El Sal at the moment.] 

some roadside shops 

candid photo of the back of the bus 

graffiti in the bus 

roadside scenery
 

first sight of a volcano

local restaurant

dinner! 

dessert - fresh watermelon

DC

So I am in DC for orientation! Left the house at 7:30 this morning for my 10 am flight to DC, and even though it took us an hour to get to the airport I had a good hour's worth of time to kill, so my parents and Erik ate breakfast in the airport with me. Then, I got through security (with minimal crying) and met up with the other girl from New England who was on the same flight as me! She's from Southern New Hampshire and very nice and cool. So we shared a cab to the hotel & etc. From the hotel I got to meet Lauren for lunch which was great because I hadn't had a chance to see her and say goodbye etc.

Then, we spent 5 hours in orientation activities. There are 15 (or 16?) of us going down to El Salvador tomorrow and everyone seems pretty cool. Most people are doing the same program as me, but there are a couple who are in the Peace Corps masters program (which involves 1 year of schooling then regular PC service during which time they are supposed to do research as well) so they are a little different.  Orientation was fairly boring - just reviews of Peace Corps' mission statements, core goals, etc etc. Trying to remind us why we signed up in the first place...

Aftere orientation we went to dinner as a group. I had my last burger and beer in America, which was great. The weather here is about 90 and humid, so I suppose that's a good preview for what's to come.

Tomorrow we leave the hotel at 2:30 am (?) for our 7:30 am flight to Miami... from Miami we fly direct to El Sal so I will be there at about 1:10 local time! I will try to update as much as possible these next coming weeks...it appears that I'll have internet access approximately once a week.

Adios!!

Final countdown

Well, tomorrow morning I leave for DC. I spend a day there doing orientation stuff, then on Wednesday we will leave the hotel at 2:30 AM and fly to El Salvador! Once in El Sal, the 15 other trainees and I will spend 2 months living and training in San Vicente, a small city east of San Salvador. I can't believe the time has come, and I am very sad to be leaving family and friends, but also so excited for what is to come next! My life is packed into 2 suitcases and a backpack, with all the excess stored up in NH (in case my parents move while I'm gone).

So wish me luck, and I will post as soon as I possibly can!!!!