My Salvadoran Mansion

At this point in the training process, all 30 trainees are spread around the San Vicente area among the surrounding communities. In the morning when I need to get to San Vicente, I simply catch a ride in the back of a pick-up for $.30.

One of the main goals of Peace Corps during this time is for trainees to get used to the local culture and gain experience living on the level of typical Salvadornas. This means rudimentary cinder block or sheet metal homes, tin roofs, latrines, very little electricity, and especially large families. For 29 of the 30 trainees, this is the case.

I, however, currently reside is what is a Salvadoran mansion with just a single old lady. I´m not really sure exactly how this happened. And I don´t think Peace Corps is either from the looks on their faces when the staff sees where I live. However, I pay the same rest as everyone else, which Peace Corps supplies, so I guess it works out just fine.

Since I live with only one other person in a compound with two cuildings, I basically have my own house, which has three bedrooms and a bathroom with a shower and flush toilet (two more things barely any other trainees have). A personal favorite aspect of my new temporary pad is the presence of multiple hammocks, which I definitely have spent a few nights in.

While I do have to go to other trainees´ houses to get practice speaking Spanish (since I don´t have tons of kids running around the house) and to learn other basics like how to do laundry the Salvadoran way (pretty sure my washing machine is the only one in town), I´m definitely not complaining. Me and my new best friend, the elderly lady I live with, eat three meals a day together, take day-trips to the markets on the weekends, and religiously watch her two favorite telenovelas nightly. While I´m not yet ready to admit I actually like them, they are great for practicing my Spanish comprehension and being able to measure my improvment by how much more of the riveting drama I understand night by night.

Among the other interesting facets of my new life are the pretty insane hallucinations, nightmares, and dreams that have become standard nighttime fare for me since I arrived and began taking my Malaria medication. Apparently it is a pretty standard side effect, but since I´ll be taking these pills for the next 27 months, I´ve decided to just try and enjoy the crazy rides. And what a ride...anyone else who has had to take malaria medicine for long periods of time probably knows exactly what I´m talking about.

Also, as I´ve continued to work in the fields with local farmers to carry on my learning about their agricultural practices, it has slowly but surely continued to sink in just how weird it will be to be the long gringo around for the next two years. While I was working pretty hard a few days ago, basically on my hands and knees with a large machete weeding in a corn field, I looked up to realize there were 4 or 5 Salvadoran men watching me intently while occassionally pionting, laughing, and generally have the times of their lives. The local Salvadoran farmers seem to think it is among the most entertaining things they´ve ever seen to watch a young gringo American kid sweating buckets while working in their fields for free. This means there are usually crowds that show up to watch whenever I head out to work in the fields. Other Sustainable Agriculture Volunteers have told me to just get used to this, it never ends...they even refer to it as Gringo TV, which seems to be a favorite of the locals.