Teacher Taller

The past two weeks three other volunteers and I did a teacher workshop in and around San Miguel. We taught them these lessons called APA- Actividades Participativas Ambientales or basically Participatory Environment Activities. They are a series of Science lessons that gets kids active, thinking, experimenting and then reflecting on the activity. We gave and taught 21 teachers some of these activies and brought them on field trips to show how you can teach outside the classroom. It was awesome and I think the teachers really appreciated it and learned a lot. Here, most teachers just teach by dictating to studies or having them copy down information. Hnads on, analysis and reflection aren't incorporated that much, but hopefully some of these teachers will now start to include these techniques.... Actually 2 of my teachers that went last week asked me yesterday if we can go on a mini field trip to a river and do one of the activities that we taught them in the workshop!

3 de marzo

The other day I step out of my house and my vecina, the landlord, la senora (lots of names for her) anyways she is outside my house and we start talking. She tells me how good it was that I had visitors and that I must feel lonely now...yeah thanks for the reminder. Anyways, she has 2 daughters in the US that see misses a lot, and one is a citizen/has papers. So anyways we start talking about why she and her husband don´t want to go to the US. The Conversation goes something like:

La senora: Here, I can be outside all the time. The doors are open. I can feel the breeze and fresh air, but there you are closed in all the time. It´s cold. Theres snow and hail. I´d die.

Me: Ah, yeah it is cold there. ANd it is nice here. I like that its warm all year round and I can be outside a lot.

La senora: yes, yes exactly. My husband was going to go to the US too, but you know what?

Me: What?

La senora: People live in small apartments in Washington (aka DC). You can´t hang a hammack. And its cold so you can´t sleep in a hammack either.

Me: Yeah, apartments are small and hammacks aren´t that common there but you could hang one up.

La senora: Oh no. My husband he told me he could never leave here. He can´t sleep anywhere but his hammack. He said he would rather be here swinging in his hammack all afternoon then be in el norte (US).

......moral of the story is that well hammacks are pretty great. I can´t lie, but to sleep in everynight, nah. haha i thought it was funny that the reason why her husband didn´t want to go to the US was his love for his hammack!

Love and miss you all!

Christmas in El Salvador

Christmas in El Salvador was an experience that wasn't as bad or dismal as I had heard it was. Here, they celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. Basically, the christmas celebration includes first making "special food." Special food included tamales (corn batter cooked with chicken, duck, pork, and sometimes beans wrapped in banana leaves then cooked in a giant black pot for a few hours), panes/sandwiches (gross white bread sandwiches with mayo and meat..no me gustan)and pan dulces (pastries/ sweet bread). I luckily avoided the sandwiches!

On the morning of Christmas eve, I woke up early to go to my friend Mari's house. She owns the "chalet" or little restaurant in my town, and has received some training in baking. She was fortunate enough to save up with help from people to the states to buy an oven. Anyways, so she was en cargado (in charge) of making a pineapple bread/cake called volteado. It is like a layer of caramel, pineapple on top of a bread that tastes sweet kind of like a muffin mix. Anyways, so we spent all morning cooking, cutting fruit and mixing matter. She was in charge of making about 20 of these cakes and mixing the batter so it was smooth was ridiculously hard and tiring. Imagine a bowl that was as big as me making a circle with my arms full of matter that you had to beat with your hands until there were no grains of sugar or lumps of flour. But all the hard work was worth it cause it was delicious.
After cooking all morning, I stopped by the house of the lawyer, Matias in town. He's like 27ish and is great to just have a higher intellectual conversation with. Also, his sister is super sweet and has 3 girls ages 12,7 and 3 that are really cute. So I went there and we talked about our christmas rituals, differences in schooling in El Salvador and the United States, differences between life in the campo and San Salvador, what I possibly want to do in the future and what he wants to do with his practice, and mas. It was good talking to him after cooking all morning and talking about housework and the weather. Well I was there for a good few hours because you just get sucked into staying places and its hard to leave.
When I could break away, I went to my best friend in my site Ana's house. She was still sweeping so we listened to music, danced, sung and did the housework. She made me dinner of scrambled eggs with tomates, beans, cheese and tortillas. Afterwards, we waited for the posada to pass by. The Posada is a statue of Mary and Joseph they carry on wooden beams on the shoulders of 4 boys (think of like how they carried pharoahs on those bed things. They bring the statue into the houses and then a chorus comes in to sing to you. It's kinda like christmas caroling except they are singing about baby jesus and the 3 kings and stuff. After they sing 2 songs they move onto the next house. When they finish going to all the houses, they enter the church and mass starts. I went to mass with Ana and her family. It was nice and I got to see a lot of people and at the end you shake everyone's hand and say feliz navidad y paz (merry Christmas and peace). After the mass, a guy in the band was hanging around with his guitar singing. We went to join him, and we sung christmas carols...feliz navidad and rudolph the rednose raindeer. They sung in Spanish and I in English. We sung feliz navidad a bizlion times because they wanted to learn the English part and also because it was my FIRST song on the guitar that I could play!!! I was happy to try to play, teach them some english and sing with friends.
After our session of christmas carols, the jovenes (youth) in the church had made food baskets for the poorest families in town, and so we went throughout the town giving them out. It was around 11:00pm, which is super late for people to be out, but for Christmas eve everyone tries to stay up until 12pm. When we finished giving out the baskets, I went back to Ana's for a bit and then came home.

CHRISTMAS DAY

Christmas Day arrived! I woke up to go paint my friend, Ruth's wrought-iron doors. Ana Ruth is 17 and is super sweet, loves the environment, animals and is a vegetarian! A salvo vegetarian is really rare. She's awesome and super sweet, but doesn't like painting that much so I helped her. Then we had breakfast of beans, tortillas and a carrot smoothie. Carrot smoothie or liquado doesnt sound that good but trust me they're delicious. After breakfast, I showered and then left to go meet Nicole, the volunteer near me. We walked to meet each other, and then went to another little town called El Pastor to give the Christmas cookies we made a few days before to our friend Chevy who is super helpful and generous. He lived in the states for like 20 years and is a US citizen and very grateful for the opportunities and money he made in the states. While he has an America house...I walked in and was like, "oh hello America!" he is very humble and giving to his community. After our visit, Nicole came up to the pueblo with me to spend Christmas.
We had our little Christmas with christmas music, banana bread that we made, guacamole, hot chocolate (thanks to beth!), some red wine, cuajada (type of cheese) and crackers. I also open up my gifts from Dad and Julie, Beth, and Nana Dee and Ed! Thank you guys! It made my Christmas! Nicole and I both talked with family and friends and just hung out. I definitely missed everyone when I talked to them, and I wish I could have been there celebrating! Hopefully, everyone had a good christmas!

Overall, I'm glad I got to see Christmas from the lives of others...it was less stressful then in the US and kind of like an ordinary day here with some different food. But lacked friends and family from home!

Middle Ages Meet Cowboys and El Salvador

The other day my friend Claudia invited me to go to the Carrera de Cinta in the canton above where I live. I was told its this horse race sort of thing. I agree to go and am kinda excited to see what this is all about. When Claudia and I get to her house there are all this high school girls from my town all dressed up and done up. Like lots of eyeshadow and by dress up I mean like 7-8th grade kinda cheesy/little bit trashy, usually a little too tight, sparkly/bling bling clothes. Claudia and Rosanna go and get all done up to and after about an hour of prepping, hair-doing, make up and all that we are finally ready to go. We walk to the field and when we get there there are people sitting around talking, ranchera music playing (spanish country music), a guy selling burgers, beer and soda, and then this row of chairs with 50 girls sitting there all prim and proper with gifts.

Then these men ranging from 18 years old to 75 come riding in on horses. I'm talking good looking horses with nice leather saddles, decorated face things for the horses, and I say good looking horses because some of the horses here are so frail, boney and just unhealthy looking and even worse when someone is riding them. So the horsemen go to one side of the field, and in the middle there are these two big poles with a string between them. On the string there are these rings with numbers on them. The horsemen all have a little sick (miniture josting sorta thing) and they have to get the stick through the hole as they gallop through. It was a process of about an hour until they got all these rings. Some guys were great at it others missed it almost everytime. But it was such a weird setting to have this like medieval sorta horse game in front of me and then behind me people cooking like greasy, giant burgers. Then, at the end, each guy reads all the numbers of the rings he has. Each number corresponds to a girl. When their number is called the girls usually shyly walk up to the guy present their gift to him and give him a hug. But there were some guys and some girls who were bold and went in for the kiss on the cheek! After all the girls had been called, the event was over until the dance.

The dance was like a 7-8th grade dance except with bollos (drunks). All the girls against one wall of the plaza sitting, the guys on the other side and the bollos on another side. The guys were creep over to the girls and ask them to dance, and the girls would either say yes or lie and say their feet hurt. It was all like partner dancing which was kinda awkward. I danced with a few guys because I wanted to dance and it was fun. You dance like arms length apart and some of the guys could not dance and then other times they'd ask me a question and loose the rhythm so we'd end up stepping on each others feet or something. Also, there were the creepers who asked me to dance and I got all flustered to think up an excuse. So instead of saying my feet hurt I accidently said my bones hurt..oops. It was kinda funny and after i said it all the middle age women who were just watching died laughing.


So I've been only telling my fun stories and non of what I'm working on and stuff. Right now I'm trying to form a town council, but its been and is going to continue to be a battle due to the politics here and each side thinking the other side is out to get them and the inability of both to come together. I mean to me I think its kinda silly because they are all poor and all want the same thing but refuse to kinda unite. Hopefully I can get more people to come...righ now we have like 30 solid people and another 50 who come to the meetings occasionally. I did successfully teach them how to make shampoo, and sold most of it! We will see though what kinda profit we have from it.

Thanksgiving and Carnival

When I think of thanksgiving I think of well obviously lots of delicious food, family, seeing friends I haven't since the summer, lounging around watching tv, and coldness.

Other than the good food thing, thanksgiving in El Salvador was very different, but fun! First, Rebecca, Catie (2 volunteers in my group) and I stayed with this wonderful embassy family in San Salvador. Thanksgiving morning we went to the beach! We went to this beach called El Tunco. It is pebble beach made from volcanic rocks that have been smoothed out over the years, and has these two giant boulders with tide pools around it. On one side of the beach there are the good surfers and on the other side there are the beginners. There are surfers and travelers from all over the world! We met a lot of Canadians. The downtown area has coffee shops with paintings and Polaroids all over the walls, open air restaurants and bars that overlook the beach. Basically, it was my type of scene and I'm going back there for new years eve. Hopefully to see the bonfires and fame throwers they have at night and maybe learn to surf?

When we came back from the beach, we went to the embassy to swim, hang out,and watch the peace corps guys play flag football against the embassy guys. Then after this day in the sun we came back to Kathy and Ron's house to have Thanksgiving dinner all ready for us...we were so spoiled. We ate all the normal thanksgiving food and enjoyed all of it!

The next day we had a field day with all the peace corps volunteer after our embassy family brought us to get Starbucks..I have such a love/hate relationship with Starbucks but it was wonderful to have actually good coffee and not gross instant coffee that you have to put sugar in to be able to drink it ehh. Afterwards, I attempted to play soccer and basketball, but neither one are really my forte but hey! That night we had our swearing in party at this club Four...lots of dancing, more dancing.

The next day was a little tough after coming home at like 4am...oohhh I forgot to mention my friend Carrie who is in the Peace Corps in Guatemala was in El Salvador and we got to hang out and dance! It was so cool to see her and hang out with her here. Anyways, the morning was awful because I had to go to centro to get supplies to make shampoo. Centro is crowded, dirty, weird funky smells, lots of piropos (cat calls) and not so safe. Also, on the bus ride there this fucking weirdo was begging us for money and ended up being a sketch ball and cut my friend on the arm with a paperclip and hit my legs as I was getting off the bus. It was a miserable few hours running around in the hot sun, and I wasn't looking forward to getting on the 3 hour bus ride to San Miguel. But I made it and got to San M to go to Carnaval!

So Carnaval...the first event of the night a parade with floats of everything from ronald mcDonald to girls in tiny shorts shaking their asses. Meanwhile they were setting up stages throughout the city for all the bands that were going to play. After the parade finished and the crowd kinda cleared we started walking, and dancing to the music. We kinda hopped around to the different stages, stopped and ate papas fritas and pupusas, and then went to the main stage that had some group from Mexico. (For better details of carnaval because it was pretty crazy asked me..I think you are probably getting bored reading this) Afterwards, we wondered more to this gas station and there were all these like 15 year old kids sooo drunk and getting sick. At that point we were so tired from the night before and called it quits and went back.

Beginning of Training

Following the beach weekend I was in my site for like a day before going to training. During that time I went with the promotores de salud (health promoters) and the doctor to this canton above mine called Centeno. Its like a 4 km beautiful walk through corn fields, yucca fields, rolling hills, cow pastures and lush vegetation. The promotores and the doctor weren’t too impressed by the view but were more tired and sweat from the walk up. Yeah, it was a bit strenuous, but it was a nice walk. Anyways, Centeno is a cute little canton on top of a hill that overlooks all the other parts of the municipality. It also is a lot richer, and all the houses are pretty big, and made out of cement. There are ton of rememsas to this community and one house was this huge mansion with balconies, 2 floors, and a two car garage. Other houses were empty or only had the wife or daughter living there until who was ever in the states would come back…..my question is are they actually coming back, why build a beautiful house where no one lives, but whatever there is this clinging hope and faith to those who have gone to the US.

The reason I went to Centeno was to “abatezar” the houses or give this tiny bags of pesticide that you throw in pilas or large open containers of water in order to prevent mosquitoes from laying eggs and hatching. It was cool because we got to see a ton of different houses and people, who like always were very friendly, loved to talk and then give us bananas, papaya or other treats. We spent all morning doing this and then had lunch at the promotora’s house from Centeno. She is so spunky and happy. I love it. She turned on reggaeton and started dancing and then started talking to me about her boyfriend (whos in Maryland). Her and her family are not only very friendly but educated and easy to talk to which is nice. Also, the doctor is cool as shit. He studied medicine in Cuba and has traveled to Paraguay, Argentina, Nicaragua, and various other places throughout the world. He wants to next go to the Congo and work with HIV/AIDS and general health there. We talked about development and basic problems. Also, we discussed doing a garden and showing people how to do organic farming and improve their basic health with food, water, and exercise.

Training

Training was interesting. It was two weeks of learning some stuff, hanging out with those from my training group..overall it was pretty good. I spent a week back with my first host family, and they seemed to like me mas this time. However I didn’t spend much time there and there were the fiestas patronales ( patron saint parties) which consisted of 2 nights of going to a disco. They bring a mobile disco and shut down the street and blast music, throw glow sticks, sell food, drink and be merry basically. The first dance consisted of me dancing with my two friends sam and duffy, a transvestite who was most likely a skinny 18 year old boy once who was very popular and had some crazyyyyyy moves and what seemed to be most likely a large old lesbian not wearing a bra. It was an experience and quiet funny. The second dance was a bit more tame. Nicole, Duffy, Broc, and I went to the second dance and kinda just danced with each other.

Also, one weekend we went to Santa Ana, and stayed at this chill hostel. We got a bit lost walking there and walked through the like red light district…I would not pay a cent for one of them except maybe to put some clothes on or something. But anyways Santa Ana is one of the few places that has an old beautiful cathedral that wasn’t destroyed by the war. It also has people our age! Mostly cool latino hippies, which are some of my favorite types who were hanging out in the park and were at this reggae bar we went to. This place was one of my favorite places we’ve been to. They had cool music, not so creepy people hitting on you, flame throwers and bombbb pizza.

Well other than the fun stuff, we did do and learn some cool stuff during training. For example, we went to this organic diversified farm that had every type of delicious fruit and it was all organic! Also, they were trying to be sustainable and only used water from a spring near by to bathe, eat and use only what they grew or what was on their land. It was awesome because they convereted their land from a coffee farm to try an organic fruit farm. And it was working and they were making a profit and wonderful food! We learned how to make bags, wallets from chip bags, flowers from 2L soda bottles, little change holders/ ash trays or lo que sea from aluminum soda cans. Hopefully, I can get a group of jovenes (youth) or mujeres (women) or any group for that matter that will want to do these projects!

Halloween

Halloween in El Salvador was a good time probably because a bunch of us volunteers rented the beach house en la costa del sol, dressed up and partied for 2 nights. The first night everyone dressed up there were lady gagas, power rangers, campesinos el sal style, broccoli, the three little pigs, a witch, a mermaid, the ciguanaba- who is this fugly ghost woman from an el Salvadorian legend with huge breasts that lives in rivers, trees, and other areas and taunts and tricks men (usually unfaithful men. Catie, Mariel and I were greek goddesses!

The second night consisted of hanging out in the pool, going into the ocean, and a lot of dancing. Also, at one point in the night all the boys sat around the kitchen table and picked up an object and started playing various beats. It was like stompish or something and it was awesome! We all were jammin and dancin to the beats of coolers, spoons, pots, pans, cheese graters, bottles, cups and more. There were like 10 of them who performed 2 songs. The music continued with latin music and us trying to dancing salsa, meringue, reggaeton and various other latin songs with our gringo akwardness haha. Later, some of the guys started to free style rap about el salvador and our lives here.

It was a great weekend and I got to know some of the older volunteers and hear their stories, ideas, and lives since being in El Salvador. I was a bit sad that by the time I got back to my site I had missed all the events here around the dia de los muertos. Theres next year!