So I just got done paining my nails dark purple…. I have to keep my nails painted dark colors because life around here keeps your nails pretty dirty. Like my dad always used to say, I could grow tomatoes under these fingernails on most days, haha. Well it’s the rainy season, so it rains almost everyday, keeping everything pretty muddy, but also cooled down a bit, which is a wonderful thing. I like to enjoy a rainy afternoon on my hammock reading a book or hanging out with some neighborhood kids. So I don’t know if I mentioned before, but I had a mouse problem in my house. They had actually made a nest inside of my boxspring! I could feel the little guys scratching around underneath me, and I’ll let you know something pretty repulsive and slightly embarrassing: They ate up all of my underwear out of my dirty laundry. GROSS. So I’ve gotten that situation taken care of and I also got my bat problem taken care of, so I no longer feel like batman living in a batcave. So I’ll stop complaining about my critter problems, but that’s the fun stuff so I figured I’d throw it in here first. Oh yeah, and a coral snake slithered past my back door tonight (If I need to go out to the latrine tonight, I think I’ll just hold it). I guess I’ll wait until my mom gets home from her visit next week to post this so she won’t cancel her plane ticket! I am PROUD to say that after my 4th up-close-and-personal run-in with snakes in El Salvador, I finally feel like my fears are subsiding.
So now I’ve been here for over a year and I’m feeling really good about the different projects I’ve got going on. The 12 kids in my hammock-making group have been working hard every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon twisting string, and they will soon have enough made to start weaving their hammocks. The youth group I’ve been working with has now made and sold two big batches of aloe vera shampoo, raising a lot of funds that they will use some of to put on a community celebration Children’s Day in October (By the way the Mothers Day and Fathers Day events put on by the youth group were both huge successes). Remember how on Mother’s Day and Father’s day we always used to ask why we didn’t get a kids’ day? I know, I know, EVERYDAY is kids day. Well that might not necessarily be the case in a developing country, so it will be nice to have a day for all the kids in the community to play some games, have some fun, break open some piñatas, and win some prizes. Also, on at the Children’s Day Fiesta my ballet class is going to perform and to show the community what they’ve been learning all year. They’ll be wearing really cute pink leotards and ballet skirts which they earned with good attendance, courtesy of our generous donor, the lovely Jeannie Koenemann. My idea now is to change it up and have their next performance be hiphop or some other style.
My eco-group girls have finished making their recycled bottle flowers and also made some cool recycled bracelets made from woven strips of chip bags. I learned how to make these AMAZING wallets/ change-purses/ any-kind-of-bag-you-want out of chip bags. You may have seen them before in fair trade stores made by co-ops in Mexico or such, and its really really cool because the materials are literally FREE and you end up with an awesome product. Plus, you are re-using trash that here would end up on the ground, littering the community. SO I’ve been perfecting the art so that I can teach it to people in my site. I tried first with kids, and it turns out it’s a little difficult, so I’m going to get together some adult women who want to learn. Right now we’re just collecting bags. I am supposed to teach the new group of volunteers who have arrived in the country how to make them, as well as the recycled flowers, during their training, so that they will be able to bring the knowledge to the communities where they will work. Upcoming eco-group activities include an excursion to the Cinquera forest, a hike with the youth group on Mount Guazapa, and a one night camping trip which might be this weekend or might be postponed because of rain.
So I learned from another volunteer how to give these classes on women’s self defense. I saw her give the class at that camp I told you about in another blog session…. The camp for the scholarship girls… well anyways I sort of felt like since I had taught dance that I could teach these self defense classes- does that make sense? Its all physical right? The volunteer who taught them was finishing her service and she wanted to pass on her skills… So she gave a few of us interested volunteers a training one weekend and now I’m giving the classes. So far I’ve given two classes in my site and one in another volunteer’s site. Peace Corps wants to incorporate the class in the training for new volunteers for their own personal security… I think its good for women in such a machista (macho/ male dominated) society to be able to defend themselves mentally… and if necessary, verbally…. And its nice just to know that if a situation ever arose, that you could defend yourself physically too (or at least break their nose… or their balls…)
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