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!