Why I Wish I Hated Sports

America is great for a lot of reasons. There is religious freedom, universal education, an economy where everyone has a chance to make it big, and universal health care (well…maybe not that great).

There is also ESPN. And ESPN 2 and ESPN News. And a host of other regional sports media outlets just waiting to quench the appetite of the millions of sports fanatics that make up the American population. There is no better place in the world to be a sports fan than America—from sports bars, to the university sports system, to a host of world-class professional sports leagues—as a sports fan in the US of A, you aren’t often left wanting.

But growing up in the comfort of 24/7 sports tickers shouting scores to you from the bottom of your television has its downsides too—life just isn’t that good all over the world.

Me with the rest of the Selecta team from my town, San Francisco Gotera, and the Selecta from nearby San Miguel, after playing them in the final of a recent tournament to celebrate the inauguration of the new Municipal Sports Complex in San Francisco Gotera.

When I left the States two years ago to begin serving as a Sustainable Agriculture Volunteer with the Peace Corps in El Salvador, despite the myriad warnings I had received about how difficult life would be without A/C, electricity, and warm showers, much less with the ever-present risk of malaria and Dengue fever, everyone failed to mention what it was I would end up missing most—the comfort of ESPN, particularly laying on a couch and watching Sportscenter on a lazy Saturday or Sunday morning.

Trying to watch sports in the States is the epitome of ease—with any decent cable package, just about any important game is available on TV, and if not, it can be seamlessly streamed from your quick internet connection. And if that fails, I don’t know many sports fans that would be too disappointed that they had to make a visit to their local sports bar to catch a game.

However, trying to catch your home town team while abroad is no easy feat. A recent three-week vacation of mine to Peru happened to coincide with the San Antonio Spurs first-round playoff series against the Los Angeles Clippers. The Spurs have and always will be my favorite professional sports team. Going into the trip, I thought “Peru is a fair amount more developed than El Salvador—catching these playoff games should be no problem.” After all, basketball and the NBA are supposed to be global brands, now more than ever, and I did gleefully get to watch most of the 2011 NBA Finals while traveling through Guatemala in June of the past year. Turns out, my Spurs were tougher to lay eyes on than the Charlotte Bobcats’ title hopes. On the night of Game 1, I quickly found ESPN, but quickly sobered to the site of a horse polo match between Uruguay and Argentina. HORSE POLO! I didn’t even know that was actually a real sport. I ended up being able to watch game 3 of the series, but games 2 and 4 lost out, respectively, to a second-division Peruvian soccer match and a basketball game between the under-23 teams of Brazil and Argentina (clearly, the precedence that holds over a NBA Playoffs match-up should be clear?!).

Me with friends of mine from San Francisco Gotera and San Miguel after a long Saturday afternoon pick-up game.

Returning to El Salvador didn’t provide much comfort. Sometimes playoffs games would be televised, sometimes not. One night, I tuned into the channel that had shown Game 2 of the Boston-Miami series, fairly confident Game 3 would be a no-brainer, only to find 6 consecutive episodes of Two and a Half Men dubbed in Spanish. I never liked that show much to begin with...now I hate it.

And now, Olympic season has arrived, and once again, the sports fan inside of me is truly taking a devastating beating. I spend most of my days trying to forget distant, yet fond, memories of the excitement of the last Summer games in Beijing and the roughly 384 channels dedicated to bringing those games to every hungry sports fan in America.

Here in El Salvador there is Channel 4, and just Channel 4, and only when Channel 4 feels like broadcasting the Olympics. Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte aren’t fighting just to win golds…here, they are fighting the afternoon telenovelas to get some screen time.

In the end, one of my favorite parts of Peace Corps has been truly disconnecting from the world and learning to enjoy a simpler, day-to-day pattern of life that often is forgotten in the States. And I guess learning to swallow missing out on my favorite sports teams is acceptable (at least I haven’t missed a Spurs, Longhorns, or Cowboys title) considering how much I’ve enjoyed living abroad the last two years, but still, the pain of missing the recent NBA Playoffs, and now the Olympics, sure do make me wish I hated sports.

The Last Month (In Photos)

As a part of my new position as Regional Leader, I try to organize "wilderness" excursions, usually combinations of hikes (to rivers, waterfalls, and great views) and camping, to places all over Eastern El Salvador that all Volunteers in the country are invited to.

A few weeks ago a group of 6 of us hiked to this amazing, two-tiered waterfall in north-eastern El Salvador near the small town of Joateca. The waterfall was just a 45-minutes hike from a riverside campground where we all spent the night.

 Earlier in July a delegation of doctors and medical students from Long Island came to Eastern El Salvador as a part of their coursework and to get data for an investigative research project on a tropical disease called Chagas Disease. I, along with a few other Volunteers, spent many days translating for them while they took blood samples and electrocardiogram heart scans from patients in three different community health clinics as well as accompanying them to a few rural schools where they would give trainings on the importance of oral health, exercise, and sexual education.

I particularly enjoyed being able to visit a community called El Volcan with the medical group. I had first been to El Volcan during the "Immersion Days" of my initial Peace Corps training and had later returned again as I had become close friends with the Volunteer posted there. With the medical brigade, we went to the community's school to give a series of lectures on general health care and I got a chance to catch up with a lot of the community's children I had previously met but hadn't seen in almost a year. The nearest town, Guatejiagua, was having it annual "Black Clay Festival" the following weekend, so many of the students were busy working on their art projects they would be displaying during the festival.

Above, me with two other Peace Corps Volunteers and the group of visiting doctors and medical students from Long Island outside the school in El Volcan.

Above, a mural devoted to the memory of El Mozote, the site of one of the most heart-wrenching and notorious massacres that took place during the Salvadoran Civil War. Below, I'm crossing a rather-questionable bridge in a recreation of a guerrilla camp from the Salvadoran Civil War.

The above waterfall, El Chorreron, is located right on the Salvadoran-Honduran border, about an hour-and-a-half hike from the small town of San Fernando in northeastern El Salvador (literarlly, if you get out of the waterfall on one side you're in El Salvador and on the other side you're in Honduras). It was the final destination for another weekend excursion I organized and is certainly one of my favorite places in El Salvador--it wasn't the first, or will it be the last time, I visit El Chorreron.

Above and below are views of Lake Suchitlan from the touristy town of Suchitoto. It is generally recognized as the cultural capitol of El Salvador and was home to an HIV/AIDS awareness and education training I helped organize and run last week.

Below, the church and fountain in the central park of Suchitoto. Suchitoto is full of many small art galleries and charming restaurants and hotels. The first night we were there the city had even organized a movie screening in the central park.

A group of 20 community leaders (high school students, school faculty, and staff from the local health clinic, mayor's office, and Red Cross) from a town called El Rosario came to be trained on how to lead HIV/AIDS awareness and education sessions. This "training of trainers" activity lasted 4 days, during which we demonstrated 10 to 15 different potential educational and interactive activities oriented to teach youth about HIV/AIDS, then trained the community leaders to run the sessions themselves, and to conclude the week, returned with them to their community to oversee them as they gave the training sessions to all the students in the local high school.

Above, a group shot of me and the other Peace Corps Volunteer and staff members who ran the training with all the participants. The training took place in a conference center/art museum/community training center run by an American nun. Below, two photos of the participants of the training actually running their first HIV/AIDS education sessions in the high school of their hometown, El Rosario.

Below, a photo taken with undoubtedly the best dressed Salvadoran at last week's midnight Batman premiere in San Salvador, which I was lucky enough to get the chance to go to. If you haven't seen it yet, it comes highly recommended!

My New Pad

I know it has been awhile since my last post, and although I've been too busy to sit down and write anything real long-winded about all that has been keeping me busy, I figured I'd at least churn out a new post to give an idea of what my new house is like. Hopefully in the next week or two I'll be able to follow this up with another post about everything else going on as a part of my new job assignment within Peace Corps and my new life in San Francisco Gotera.

But for starters, below is a picture of my living room, where I don't spend too much time, but is a nice place to watch TV. Although, in El Salvador, generally the majority of the programming is in Spanish, which requires me to think a little more than I prefer to when watching TV, I have been able to catch all of the NBA Finals, Wimbledon, the French Open, some golf, and a ton of soccer. Also, I found one channel that shows "Law & Order" in English almost every day, so....what more could I really ask for?

Above is the garden, which is more the domain of the older lady who lives downstairs and rents the upstairs out to me, but it is a perfectly serviceable place to hang your clothes to dry.

This is the kitchen, which I basically have the run of, since I've been living here for almost a month and still have yet to see the older lady who lives downstairs eat. It is basically an American-style kitchen, which has been one of my favorite parts of living here, since I can finally cook my own food again. Hello spaghetti & tomato sauce, mac and cheese, and peanut butter & jelly, bye bye tortillas!

These are my new pets, the two birds that live down in the garden. They can even talk a little bit, but I am still working on teaching them English.

This is a view from the outside. Although I only use one bedroom, one bathroom, and the living room, I do technically have the entire upstairs, which contains four bedrooms, two bathrooms, the living room, and the entire wrap-around patio. It has come in handy already though, since other Peace Corps Volunteers can definitely always spend the night at my house. And San Francisco Gotera's first Halloween Party is already in the planning phase, so don't say you weren't invited!

Above are two shots of my new room. Although not huge, it definitely fits everything I need and allows me to sleep in my bed or in my hammock (on those especially hot nights). I've also got a nice, shaded view right into the pool fn the military base located directly across the street.

This is the bathroom, which may remind some of a Motel 6 bathroom shrunk even smaller, but to me is a god-send. After two years in San Luis, my old community, with just a latrine and the neighbor's house where I went to bucket-bathe, for me, this is practically the Ritz-Carlton.