The Landslides

So last week I went back to my original host training community/family for Training II. After having been in our sites for two months, the whole group of volunteers I was sworn in with goes back to San Vicente for another few weeks of technical training. So we all got there and were super excited to be all back together again and to see our host families. So training started with a couple days of spanish classes. The first weekend we all planned a trip to the beach because we all wanted to be together and share stories about our sites, relax, etc. We had our bags packed for a one night trip to the beach, however the trip was cancelled because of a tropical depression that was causing a lot of rain in the country, so because of security reasons we weren't allowed to go . So we were all ready for a trip and we wanted to go somewhere, so most of us just came into San Salvador for the night to hang out and stay at a hotel. Some stayed behind in the host communities around San Vicente. That was Saturday night.
Sunday morning we found out that during the night rains had caused mudslides, landslides, and flooding throughout the country, the worst of which was a huge landslide of the side of the Chinchontipec Volcano that came down on the town of VeraPaz, basically right where my host community is. VeraPaz is right down the road, like a 10-15 min walk from Molineros, my host community. We used to go running there in the mornings during training, and thats where people in my community go to Mass. Now its completely covered in giant boudlers rocks and mud. There were a lot of deaths and a lot of people lost their homes. The death count in the country is over 130 and there are over 13,000 people without homes. The friends of mine that stayed behind had really intense experiences, and saw a lot of awful things that day. Even though it would have been good to be there with them to help, I'm really lucky we happened to be in San Sal for the night. They were all able to get out and eventually make it to San Salvador with us.
Peace Corps put us all on Standfast mode which means we cant leave where we are if were in a safe place. We couldnt go back to San Vicente because the rain hadn't stopped so the possibility of further destruction was to high, and with so much craziness going on and all... some bridges were down, so we couldnt get in to San V anyways. I talked to my host family and they are doing fine... but they said Molineros is covered in mud, and theres no water or anything. There are relief groups coming to help out with everything, and we all really want to be allowed to go back to San Vicente and help, but since its not safe we can't go yet. We will be notified when we can be a part of any relief effort. Training has been postposed until next sunday, were still in San Salvador, but tomorrow those of us who live in places that are doing alright are going back to our sites. The Sustainable Agriculture/Environmental Education group is going to have our training now in Santa Ana instead of San Vicente. Im sad that Im not going to get to stay with my host family in Molineros because I was looking forward to spending time with them, and I feel like I need to be with them right now. As soon as Im allowed to go back, Im going back. My stuff is still all there , too but someone from Peace Corps is going in to get all our bags and stuff from San Vicente and bring them to us.... but we've all been wearing the same clothes for a couple days. We cant complain though when all these people have lost homes and family members and we get to stay in a hotel in the city. Peace Corps sent in a Psycologist to the San Salvador office to speak to our group and some other volunteers whose sites were affected about disasters and dealing with the experience emotionally. Again, Im really lucky I wasnt there when it happened.
So the past few days have been sort of a whirlwind of not knowing whats going to happen next.
Unless things change and I'm allowed to go back to Molineros Im going to Milingo (my site) tomorrow and then going to Santa Ana, Sunday for two weeks.
I'll try and keep you guys updated on the situation in San Vicente.

Birthdays, Swimming pools, and watermelon jack-o-lanterns

So not long after my last post, I recieved the new that my grandfather passed away in the states. So I was able to forward vacation days and fly to New Orleans to be with my family for 6 days. Although it was under sad circumstances, it was still really nice to see everyone and be in a comfort zone with them for a little while. Its shocking how different things are in the United States in comparison to El Salvador. I can´t begin to explain it.
After being home with my family, coming back was tough, I´ll admit. It was a good week though in my community because we had just started to use the new basketball court. I play basketball much better that I do softball, or soccer, the sports most often played here, so I was pretty excited about the popularity of the basketball court. Plus, its a smaller social space than the soccer field so its a really great place to go just to talk to people, meet people, and hang out.
I went to a rodeo that week, too. It was quite an interesting day. I didn´t know the word for rodeo in spanish and it wasnt in the dictionary so I didn´t even know what I was going to see... and I wasn´t able to meet up with the person I went to meet up with... and my phone was dead... so I saw a rodeo by myself, haha. Some of you whom I´ve talked to know some more interesting details of that story!
I met several times with a lot of women who are interested in learning a trade and forming a cooperative. We have talked about a lot of ideas and I think we will end up forming a few smaller groups so they can do what they are interested in.... for example, some want to embroider and make bags, tablecloths, etc. others want to start a bakery, and others want to make jewelry and artesania. This will be a continuous project for me so we´ll see what happens. I also went with a group of women from the communitu to San Salvador for a women´s march for the international day of the woman. We left really early in the morning, but our bus got a flat tire.... then we walked up a huge hill, and eventually we made it to San Salvador and marched in the march. It was really cool that so many women went and wanted to celebrate and stand up for their rights. The organization that paid for the bus also gave each women money for lunch, so thankfully a lot of women were able to go because of that.
So my birthday is in October, so several of my friends and I net up in San Salvador for one night and had cake and champagne and celebrated my birthday as well as some other october birthdays. It was super fun and great to see the other volunteers. For my actual birthday I was in my site, but one of my volunteer friends came to visit me for a few days. It was nice to be able to show where I live to someone! I was so surprised and excited because a few of my girlfriends that live in my community threw me a birthday party! It was a surprise and they blindfolded me and we had a cake and they made sandwiches for everyone, we danced, etc. Parties are expensive, so I was so grateful and it made me feel really loved! The next day I went to the birthday party for a little boy, and that night a friend of mine invited me over to have cake at her house for her birthday.... so I had a lot of birthday cake in the span of a few days....
The next week I had a general assembly in my community, with the help of someone from the Peace Corps office, to explain to the community who I am, what is Peace Corps, the environmental education program, what I can and can´t do for the community, etc. I was nervous to speak so much in front of a lot of people in spanish, but I think I did a good job and it was a success.
The next weekend I went to Molineros, my old host community during training, to celebrate the birthdays of the grandmother and the little girl in that family.... more birthdays! So we went on a trip to some swimming pools and it was lovely! The little girl , Sindy, got quite a lot of use out of the mermaid doll I gave her for her birthday at the swimming pools. They swim in shorts and tshirts, so I´ve got a rockin shirt-shorts tan. That night we had more birthday cake! It was SO nice to visit my other host community and spend time with them.
The NEXT week, this week, actually yesterday.... I went with Catherine, the other volunteer who is still finishing up her time at my site, and a group of kids, on an excursion to some swimming pools in Suchitoto. They are right next to the lake, so its a really pretty place. We spent the entire day there and we all had an awesome time. However, I got bit several times by some bug called a Conga, and the welts are huge and they itch like crazy..... I guess bug bites are old news....
SO yesterday was halloween, and even though they don´t celebrate halloween here, Catherine had a little halloween party at her house with the family she lives with. We did bobbing for apples, pin the nose on the witch, and we carved jack -o- lanterns out of watermelons. We also did face painting so the kids all looked like monsters, skeletons, animals, etc. It was hilarious.
So TODAY at five o clock in the morning my host sister woke me up and asked me if I wanted to see them kill a pig. So they got the pig and tied it up so it was hanging with its back legs in the air. Then they cut a hole in its neck where the artery is I guess and let it bleed out.... they kept the blood... they said were going to eat it.... hmmmm...... Im not sure about that. Ok so then I went to the pasture to bring the cows with my host sister, but when I got back the pig was relatively hairless. They were throwing boiling water on it and shaving off the hair. When it was completely shaved they cut off strips of skin and fat off the outside. The whole process took a really long time so I missed the rest of the chopping up of the meat while I was bathing. Too bad... I guess we´re having pork for lunch!

Some more details that maybe I´ve forgotten..
So to get here I take a bus from San Salvador or about an hour and a half and get off at the entrance to the community. Theres about 200 homes in the community I think.. actually i still havent figured it out bc when I ask people they tell me numbers anywhere betwee 100 and 300.. there are 270 students that attend the school, half in the morning and half in the afternoon... but most homes have more than one child. Anywhere from two to four generations of a family usually live together in a house or houses next to each other. Its also very common for teenage girls to have children of ther own.
From the bus stop I walk about 5 to 10 mins down a cobblestone-mud street to my house. Milingo is realy green. That was one of the first things I noticed... there are a lot of trees and plants in general which is really nice and makes it pretty. Its he rainy season now. There are 2 seasons, rainy and dry.. so it either rains every day or it doesnt rain at all. In November the dry season wil lstart and it will be less green and hotter, but then i will be able to go running since the ground won´t be so muddy.
Girls in the community like to do their nails a lot and they like to do mine, too. Ive had my nails pained like 7 times already and they paint them with diferent colors and designs, like flowers, dots, etc.
I boil my water and keep it in a big jug' I haven´t gotten sick so far.... I shouldn´t have said that though.... most of my peace corps friends have had some stomach issues so Im extremely lucky!
My family has cows, like 25 chickens, roosters that crow a LOT, 2 big pigs, two baby pigs, goats, and we ha a rabbit but it died, three dogs, and a cat. I think thats all the animals...besides the mice haha
I go to mass every sunday in Suchitoto with Karla, my host sister. The church is beautiful. Suchitoto is super close, quaint, small, and easy to get to and easy to navigate. Theres the post office, church , park, stores, market, internet cafe, etc. all right there in a span of a couple of blocks.
I bought a hammock the other day so after lunch when its hot and we´re all sittin around resting, I won´t be hogging one of the family´s hammocks...
The other day after like 2 hours of washing all my laundry and hangin it on the line, the line fell down and everything fell into the dirt! I think I almost cried, haha, but we just let it all dry and knocked off the dirt later.
The grandmother of the family died last week. When someone dies, all the family comes together and they stay up ALL night praying and singing and drinking coffee and eating pan dulce. Not everybody stays up all night but a lot of people do... they they have the funeral in the church the next day and then do the burial in the cemetery. Then for the next nine days they do a prayer service each night and serve coffee... then on the ninth day they stay up all night again. Then each year on the anniversary o the death they do the same prayer services for 9 days... and they do that every year for 9 years. Pretty intense but a tradition that I really like. I didnt make it all night...I went to sleep at about 1 or 2 oclock. but bedtime here is between 7 and 9 so that was late. People also wake up between 4 and 7 am.
Last night was one of the prayer sevices and the uncle of the family was teaching me to play songs on the guitar and he played and sang too. We had walked there in the rain so i was all wrapped up in a towel... and a little girl had put my hair in a million braids. We also had cake for my host fathers birthday. It was a fun night. Walking back in the dark-rain-mud was fun too...
I also forgot to mention that September 15th was independence day and there were a lot of parades and a big dance- a lot of fun. I got to see a lot of folklore dancing too... they girls wear really pretty colorful dresses!
I´ve been making a lot of new friends in my community, especially young women near my age, or anywhere between 18 and 35 ish which I count a near my age. Most of them have families and children, but they invite me to come over, to go places with them, etc. which makes me feel really welcome and like I have friends. Also several women have come to me with interest in starting a women´s group to sell things like artesania, jewelry, bags, embroidered cloths, anything we can make.... So I´m really excited about forming a women´s co-operative. I am also getting a friend to teach me to make these cool bags out of woven strips of plastic chip bags... chip bags make up a lot of the litter around here...they´re everywhere. So it would be awesome if we could all start collecting the bags and turning trash into money. I can´t wait to learn how to make them and show all my girlfriends-We´re having a meeting tomorrow about it. I only wonder if people would buy them... maybe in Suchitoto since turists come there. The great thing is that the women have lots of ideas and are really enthusiastic about it because a lot of them are mothers and a lot of them are single mothers and they don´t have jobs. Plus they enjoy having a reason to leave the house and spend time with other women. Helping women and helping the environment are two things I really am passionate about, so this idea gets me really excited! I really like these women, too, so it ill be fun to work with them.
Yesterday was a big community meeting to elect new leaders for the development association. It was supposed to start at 1 oclock and I got there a half hour late and of course I was the first person there... I enjoy the slow pace of life here and that everybody is chill about time. It can be confusing though.... I never know if I should show up on time or an hour later... its hard to know. Im the type of person who stresses out about being late though so its nice I don´t have to ever feel that way here.
The school director has spoke with me about ideas she has for me to work on at the school.. they include starting a school garden for the students to manage, and a plastic bottle collection program to sell them to recycling plants. Also she wants me to teach dance classes and help with the english classes. I will also be regularly doing environmental teaching activities in the school.
I´m also planning on working with another group of young women who are on the health commitee, because they want to go projects involving the issue of trash and trash burning and litter, etc. because all those things affect health, too. The goal is to get people to not burn or bury their trash, but to collect it and separate recyclables and for the garbage truck to come pick it up regularly.
So for those of you who have been askng me what I´m actually doing work-wise maybe that gives you a better picture...but right now I´m mostly just adjusting to the community and learning about life here and how things work in the community, and getting to know people... and working on my spanish.
If anyone actually read all of that I´m really impressed...... Everything is just so new and there´s so much to say!
!Salud! Adios!

Three weeks in Milingo

So today I've been in my site for three whole weeks... I'm at an internet cafe in Suchitoto right now and a friend of mine named Carmen is going to come get me any minute now so I'll get in some random details about my life here until she arrives. I've got a cute little room of my in the house with a family. Its the grandfather Don Miguel, the mother and father Eva and Salomon, and the two daughters Leidi (Like Lady) and Karla, who are both 19, and Leidi's 2 year old son..... I just realized i might have already said that in the other post... oh well I dont remember and dont feel like looking. Well they cook for me and I do my own laundry by hand on the stone lavadera which can actually be a nice arm exercise, haha. I help make tortillas almost every day, which I'm getting better at, and I go with them a lot to the pasture to get the cows and walk them back to the house, ot to give water to the horse. I go to the school a lot just to hang out with the kids and I help out in the english classes. I go to the soccer field and hang out there and talk with people. I've been making a lot of new friends and now I feel like I have a lot of people I can just walk around and visit. I'm doing some house visits, where I just go to a house and ask if I can meet them and they happily invite me to come sit with them and chat- somewhere in there I figure out what their interests are in improving their community or anything to do with the environment, such as trash, litter, latrines, efficient wood burning stoves that use less wood, community groups they may be a part of, anything to do with water, etc. Right now the community gets water every three days... which means on the third day they open the faucet and let their big stone basins called pilas fill up and anything else they have to fill up... they they use that water until water comes again in 3 days. They re working on a new water project to get water to come everyday which should be happening soon. The roads need a lot of help too because it rains a lot and the roads are mostly mud and its hard to walk on them let alone a car pass... so that causes difficulty if they want to get a garbage truck to come... The garbage truck came to my community the other day for the first time I think- The people all carried big bags of separated trash to the community building and all the 8th grade boys helped load it all into the big garbage truck for thei "social hour" they have to do for school. They think the garbage truck is going to start coming once a month, which is really great... and if the roads could be improved it could maybe even come more often and go by the houses instead of everyone having to carry it. My community is actually really organized, because it was formed after the civil war from people who had to leave their villages and homes to go live in camps in the "monte"... Everyone had war stories and many family members who were killed during the war... they have stories of hiding for long periods of time..... people who went missing.. even mothers who had to smother their babies to keep them quiet to save the rest of a hiding group..... So thats a little intense I realize but this stuff is very real to them. You should watch the movie Innocent voices.. its fiction but its based on the war and a lot of the details in the movie show you tid bits about Salvadoran life back then and now. Well theres a lot more to tell but Carmen just got here so I'm going to go back to Milingo with her and later the community is having a general meeting to elect a leaders for the development association so Im going to attend. Love and miss you all!!

Site Assignment!

Last week I got my site assignment. I will be going to a small town/village (canton) called Milingo Abajo which is about 5 mins away from a town called Suchitoto. I've heard that Suchitoto is a really nice, colonial, tourist town with a lot of history and culture. I'll be in the department of Cuscatlan, which is near the center of the country near the capital San Salvador. So I'll be about an hour and a half away from the capital which is pretty close. I might be one of the closest to the capital, which will make for easy travelling in general and visiting other volunteers. I will be replacing the current volunteer in Milingo, and she will be leaving in October or November. Her name is Katherine...... which will be a little confusing... I have heard of some other volunteers who were called the previous volunteers name throughout their whole 2 years of service... but at least when they call me by her name I won't realize it. :)
---So this is the last week of training and we have out final exit Spanish interviews..... I tested in at a high enough level to pass so as long as my spanish didn't get any worse, I'll be good to go. Tonight I'll be packing up all my luggage and tomorrow it will be picked up and sent to the capital... Thursday we will meet out community counterparts. I have two counterparts in the community, one is the Director of the school and the other is a community member. I will be working with both of them for the next two years so it will be exciting to meet them! Then we will be sworn in at the Ambassadors house and the Vice President of El Salvador might be there...pretty important stuff. Thursday and Friday night we will be celebrating our last nights together as a training group before we all go off on our own! Saturday is off to Cuscatlan! Then for two months I'll be doing community contacts and diagnostics basically before we come back for two weeks of technical training.
---Other then that..... I'm starting to crave pupusas (the national food of tortillas stuffed with beans and cheese or other stuff) ......what else, my clothes are starting to all get stretched out from hand washing and line drying them... but I got a pair of pants altered for 50 cents by the neighbor and she did it in about 5 minutes- perfect fit!.... There was a tarantula in my house yesterday. I have an ear infection....
---Two weekends ago we all went as a group to the beach for our weekend off... the beach was called El Tunco. It was BEAUTIFUL! it was awesome to relax and have fun after being a little stressed and busy from training.... we had a really great time. the waves were HUGE. AND we ate at a mexican restaurant and I had a burrito. I thought that was pretty big news and I should share it with you all.
---We finished the project with the youth group we formed in Molineros- we did a big garbage pick up in the community and collected plastic bottles and made planters with them, decorated them and planted trees in them. It was all facilitated service learning so the kids came up with and voted on all the ideas, sort of like the projects I did with Earth Force in Charleston- so it was great I had that experience to work on. Thanks Earth Force!
---I've been doing the rosary every night for about 2-3 weeks with my host family. I think it means a lot to them that I do it with them and I've made a lot of progress on being able to say the prayers in Spanish . I've got the hail Mary DOWN on superspeed. They gave me a rosary ring and a prayer book as a gift, which I though was very sweet.
--- ok so I know I have a million more things to say, but of course I can't think of them all right now and I'm about to go have my interview! There have been some photos tagged of me on facebook so check those out until I'm able to post some on here... I'm just always strapped for time. MISS YOU ALL!! Adios!

Training continued...

A few of us came to Vera Paz, the closest pueblo, for some business and now I´m at the internet cafe. Theres so much to say! I´m still enjoying my host family and getting really close with them. They asked me if Peace Corps would let me stay with them for the whole two years! I wish I could, but I will be leaving in about a month to go to my site on my own. Training is about halfway over. I´ve been in-country for more than a month now. Communication is a little harder than I expected, but I do have my cell phone and have been able to make a few calls now and then, I´m just vert busy. Most of the time I´m doing things with the host family, or I have spanish class in my community, or I have to go into the office in San Vicente for other training ( safety and security, medical, technical...) I´ve been all immunized and I´m fully aware of all the weird illnesses I´m susceptible to! Haha we learned about Chagas the other day, which you can get from a bug called an chinche that searches for you while your sleeping and bites you near your mouth, defacates, and and a parasite is passed along that can kill you slowly in a few years or decades!!! Exciting! Luckily I have a mosquito net and I will be very carefully keeping it nice and tucked in! No worries everyone, I don´t think its very common. On a lighter note, I went to a quinceanera fiests yesterday. It was a pretty big celebration which started with a mass and then ended with food, music, and dancing. I remember sitting there with my family eating chicken, rice, and tortillas and as I looked around at the surrounding corn fields and the sugar cane and the volcano hovering over the fiesta, and then I heard Lady Gaga´s Poker Face come blasting out of the giant super-speakers (they like their music loud). It reminded me that I wasn´t THAT far away from home, haha. Then it proceeded to rain harder that you could ever imagine, the tent fell down, and everybody tried to fit under the awning of the house. Then when the rain let up we waded home. Always an adventure!
I also went to visit another Volunteer in Usulutan, one of the hottest departments, to see what life was like there as part of what the Peace Corps calls immersion days. This was our first time traveling alone and visiting an even more rural area. I unsuccessfully tried to kill a chicken that weekend, swam in a river, and bathed the traditional Salvadoran way, in my clothes. I´d say the chicken experience was upsetting but it really didn´t compare to hearing three pigs be castrated. It sounded like you´d think it would sound.
Oh yeah and I walked in a 7 mile religious pilgrimage from my community to Santo Domingo, which was really hot and also a wonderful experience- about 90 of us rode back that night in the back of a giant truck- it was a little scary but a beautiful ride.
Other that those random adventures, I´m still enjoying my freshly squeezed OJ, my watermelon, and my hammock time, waking up with the sun, and bucket bathing with fresh cool water during the heat of the day, loving the nightly storms and the cooler nights, leading yoga in the early mornings for my trainee friends, and hanging out with my new Salvadoran family, taking the daily cat calls as compliments ( I´m the hottest I´ve ever been...in all senses of the word), workin on my spanish and my slang.. PUCHICA! My new favorite word. It means damn. the good and the bad... but its not a bad word so you can pretty much use it all day long. Puchica Ive been here a long time so Í´m gonna go back to Molineros and maybe watch the pirated version of the new Harry Potter movie in spanish. Adios!

Ok lets see how long I get to actually use the computer. Im in San Vicente right now doing training sessions, so I have just a minute..... I don't get a lot of time to use the computer because other people are using it or I have to leave to get the bus because my training host community is a little farther away than most. The community is called Molineros and I'm glad its farther away because it is up by a volcano, so its actually "cooler" there. Thats definitely a relative term. Lets just say I've been pretty sweaty! Big surprise? Well I LOVE Molineros and my host family. I live with a young woman named Mela and her two daughters Sindy (age 5) and Dayana (age 10). They are all beautiful and wonderful. Mela's mother, father, grandmother, sisters, cousins, etc. also live in the community and I see them all on a regular basis. Its a really small community, about 300 families, and its really beautiful. There are lots of fruit trees (MANGOS!!) and tomatoes, cucumbers, and corn corn corn! I get to eat a lot of watermelon, too, which in my opinion is awesome. Lots of hammock time, too. I love hammocks. I spend a lot of time talking with my family and playing with the kids, etc. My spanish has been improving a lot and I'm starting to get used to the accent and caliche (slang here) Theres so much more to say but, as I expected, my time is up!

I haven't even left yet

I'm about to leave in exactly one one week. Trying to get all my packing stuff done. This is actually one of the tasks I'm about to check off on my to-do list.  I will be out of touch for a few days after the 7th, and then I may be able to get online or call my mom or something.   My mailing address for the first 2 months (remember there is a 14-21 day delay on me recieving it): 

PCT Katheryn Koenemann

Cuerpo de Paz- El Salvador

Correo National

Centro de Gobierno

Apartado Postal #1947

San Salvador, El Salvador, Centro America