Thursday, November 1, 2007

You know youre in El Salvador when...

1.) the place where you bathe is not fully enclosed...
2.) your soccer game gets interuppted by not one, not two, but three different types of farm animals...
3.) the place where you bathe is in no way connected to the place where you sleep...
4.) hot showers are only a distant memory...
5.) you have forgotten what peanut butter and jelly tastes like...
6.) you have competitions to see who has the most musquito bites...
7.) going to work every day isnt a commute, its an adventure...
8.) you wake up in the morning and the first thing you see is a volcano...
9.) you are on a public bus and here 70s rock music, reggaeton, or salsa blasting out of 12" subwoofers...
10.) Every person you see in the street smiles and at you and says either, good morning, good afternoon or good night. Even the Bolos (drunks)...

*This is meant only in the most light hearted of ways, and is in no way meant to reflect negatively on the wonderful people or country of El Salvador.

Alright then, I hope you enjoyed my little farce their. I thought itd be nice to start this blog out a little bit differently. Anyway, as always there has been a ton of stuff going on lately. This includes my FBT aka Field Based Training and I must say it was awesome. I did my training on the western tip of the country in Metapan. It took us a good 3 and half hours to drive there, but we got what some might call "lost", but I prefer to call it "creative navigation". So it started off interesting, only minutes after arriving, we walked around the pueblo to meet our weekend host families. My host father was the El Director of the Casa de la Cultura and his name was Don Jaime. I didnt realize it at the time, but he turned out to be awesome, Ill get to that later. Anyway, my host home was what one might call upscale, I had satellite TV which was awesome because I actually got to see game 2 and game 3 of the world series. But I digress, so I was accompanied by 3 other volunteers Lil, Mike, and Pepe, as well as by our trainer "B". Alright, so hours after arriving we had to give a Charla to a group of about 34 4th graders about childrens rights. So that went over fairly well, which means we were able to keep at least half of their attention while we stumbled through the lesson, what do we know about childrens rights? And how much could we really pretend to know with only an hour to prepare? Anyway, after that we kind of wandered around the city for the day and that was that. Until 3:30 am ofcourse when we all met up to join the town in celebrating their patron saint. This celebration consists of a young man carrying across down the street with 3 guitar players singing worship songs, while a good chunk of the town trails behind singing along, accompanied ofcourse by 4 Peace Corps Trainees. Oh ya and there was an old man with homemade cuetes, which are basically rockets. It was hilarious, because everytime this guy would launch a rocket, the bamboo pole that it was connected to would fall down in some random place, on top of a house or a person or something like that. Anyway, one of our trainees "Pepe" decided that he wanted to launch one of these things so the old man obliged. So there I stood at 4:00 in the morning watching Pepe launch a rocket. So heres how it went, the old man hands the rocket to Pepe, the old man then lights the rocket and back away several feet. Pepe holds the lit rocket, and holds the lit rocket and holds the lit rocket, at this point I know something is up. I then turn to B and say, " why isnt he letting go?" And sure enough, sparks start shooting out of the bottom of the thing and he keeps holding on, then finally "BOOM"! The damn thing goes off in his hand! Sparks fly all over the place and there is smoke everywhere! All I can see of Pepe are from the knees down, at this point Im thinking, "wow Ive never seen anyone blow up before..." Then slowly the smoke clears and there is Pepe walking back in forth clearly disoriented, he then makes his way back towards us and after checking to make sure his body was intact and free of any serious burns we busted out laughing. And we laughed and laughed and you get the point. So that was fun... Later that day we had to give an HIV\AIDS charla to a group of 7th, 8th and 9th grade kids. Our host volunteer told us that it would be no more than 35 kids, ya try about 90. It went from talking to a classroom to putting on a full fledged assembly. Oh by the way did I mention that we got a surprise visit from the Peace Corps Director of El Salvador, and a special Embassy guest, the Peace Corps Director of all of Latina America. So that was interesting trying to conduct activities meant for 30 kids to a group of 90. The first one went a little rough, but we got across what we wanted to and the kids didnt riot so Id say it was successful. For our second charla, which our guests would also accompany us to, we made some changes to account for crowd size and it went aweseome. Alright, as for the rest of a trip in a nut shell, here it goes, community movie night at the school with a trashbag full of popcorn, Hiked to and camped at awesome waterfalls with awesome Don Jaime, painted every poll and tree in town white to provide foundation for flowers that are to be painted on later, milke cows again at 4:00am where B proceeded to get stuck in a two foot mound of cow crap, hilarious. And that was about it for FBT, mas o menos... After returning to San V, a couple of us decided to play with the Peace Corps Soccer team for a game up in some mountain town 3 hours away. The game went well, apparently its the first time the Peace Corps team has won in two years. I almost had a goal but instead of going through the goal like it should have done, the ball hits a rock right in front and bounces up and over, it was one of the craziest things I have ever seen. So we had a few interruptions during the game, the first appearance was made by a local goat who wanted to graze on the field, he was removed by the referee who was dying laughing the whole time. Next a local cow wandered onto the field, did I mention the field was half grass half cow pies? He was then quickly chased off by the players. Then finally for the grand finale, a man riding a horse decided to put on an exhibition right in the middle of our game, good times in El Salvador. After partying that night with the other volunteers, we were on a strict schedule the next morning as we had to make it back to San V, about a 5 hour trip all around, by 8:00am. So we had to wake up at 3:30 in the morning and hike an hour up and down this remote mountain road to meet up with an old man with a pick up truck who we paid 10 dollars to drive us to the train station. We then take a bus for 2 and a half hours to San Salvador, where we need to take a taxi to get from the Eastern terminal to the Western Terminal. After arriving we take the first bus to San V, which just happens to be the slowest bus on the whole line. So after leaving from the small mountain town at 3:30 am we arrived in Sav V at 10:30 in the morning a 7 hour trip. So goes the life of a volunteer, good time in El Salvador...