EL SAlvador: Life update

Today is a 2 post kind of day...

I’ve realized that my last blog post (before the trip home) was kind of negative about progress in site, so I would like to give a general update on what’s going on here in Sunsulaca.

First of all, we got the wall repaired (very quickly and for free!!) and have started painting all over it. My idea originally was to have the wall broken up into 3 sections and to paint a map in each section: the world, El Salvador, and Morazan. The owner of the wall (it belongs to the tienda next to the school) is also the one who repaired it for us. Mid-repair, he decided he would like to add a window to his store, effectively poking a hole in the middle of my theoretical Morazan map. Never fear, we re-planned and things are moving smoothly. The kids have gotten a little paint-happy and have added all sorts of adornments to our map project. I maintain power over the world map, which I have a Peace Corps guide for and is a little tricky, but other than that the kids have free reign. It should be an interesting finished product, but they are enjoying themselves immensely and are very proud of the work they’re doing. One thing I will say…they traced the map of the world while I was home in the US, and when I got back I noticed that they had forgotten El Salvador…Honduras was just extra fat. Sad day.

This past Saturday was graduation for the English class that I’ve been giving to English teachers in Gotera. All in all, I did not like teaching English. I don’t think I’m a very good teacher (lacking a general sense of patience and compassion for people who don’t understand things after hearing them once), and so to teach my native language was especially challenging. However, we graduated 21 students on Saturday and all of them improved their level of English to some degree…so I was happy. They also were very appreciative of all that I did for the course and presented me with a sweet gift ( a giant beach towel with a map of El Sal on it) and took us (myself, my co-teacher, and my PCV friends who came to the graduation for moral support) all out to a free lunch! Woo hoo.

Other than English and map painting, my time has been divided between environmental education classes for the 5^th and 6^th graders at the school and working with the water committee in my town to try to get a new water tank (see post below for more details about both of those projects).

All in all, things are going pretty well here. I’m still finding time to do fun and cool things, too. Sunday I went up to Corinto, which is Tricia’s pueblo, for a Festival de Maiz (Corn Festival). Every municipality has a corn festival during the harvest, so I wanted to see one before my time here ended. All in all, it wasn’t really that cool. Basically tons of stands selling pupusas and other corn food items. However, in typical Salvadoran fiesta tradition, they elected a “reina” (queen) of the festival. Since this festival was corn based, all the candidates made dresses and accessories purely of corn…it was pretty cool, and maybe Hallowen costume inspiration…stay tuned.