Saturday, November 13, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010
More Soccer and Dia de los Muertos
While I had been organizing consistent practices and had entered tournaments with the girl’s soccer team that I started and am now coaching, last Saturday I took my new boy’s team to their first tournament.
The day started in typical Salvadoran fashion—despite the fact that 15 or 16 kids had told me they would be coming, only 7 showed up. It is an aspect of Salvadoran culture that Volunteers here just have to consistently remind themselves of—Salvadorans are very non-confrontational, especially with Volunteers who they definitely don’t want to disappoint—and will basically tell you whatever they think you want to hear, regardless of its truth. I had accounted for this by optimistically predicting I would end up with 11 or 12, conveniently just the right amount for a soccer team. Unfortunately, I clearly was going to have some work to do on the way to the tournament.
After our first bus ride, which got us a few miles, our second bus mysteriously never showed up, so we ended up walking about an hour to the community of another team entering the tournament. Once there, I retrieved the jerseys we would be borrowing, since I definitely haven’t had time to secure sources of grants or money for uniforms for my newly formed teams.
From San Sebastian, we walked another hour, where we discovered the next bus we were planning on riding had just passed, so we, with still unfettered confidence, took off for another hour and a half of walking. Finally, after about three and a half hours of walking (and two hours late for the beginning of the tournament), we had arrived.
However, I had not wasted those precious 10 or 11 miles we covered by foot—I had found enough soccer players along the way in various other communities so that we did arrive in Los Pozas (the site of the tournament—it is in Ahuachapan, another department—which basically means we walked to the equivalent of another state before our first game had even begun) with a complete squad.
We managed to gut together a pretty impressive first game, which started about 5 minutes after our arrival (since much of the tournament had, well, sort of been waiting on us). Although we ended up losing, it took a 5-4 loss in penalty kicks after 90 minutes of 1-1 soccer to deliver us the loss. Although I’ll be first to admit by soccer-coaching acumen still has a ways to go and my Spanish half-time pep talk skills are well beyond comical and most likely not remotely inspiring, I do still think we thoroughly outplayed the other team but just weren’t able to capitalize and struggled with some bad luck. I’m certainly looking to organize a rematch in the near future.
The second game wasn’t as pretty—at that point I think the first game and the virtual half-marathon, “Trail of Tears”-style hajj to the tournament had taken its toll and we never had a chance.
But that certainly wouldn’t be where the adventure would end. Thanks to the fact that a majority of the kids hadn’t brought the $1.50 I told them they would need and the fact that about half the team had bought cigarettes at half-time of each game (another Salvadoran tradition I’m still struggling to understand—hopefully, as my half-time pep talks improve, I might be able to curb this habit), mostly all of my Little Giants were now broke. That meant nothing but more walking.
While I did manage to bribe one bus driver with a few apples to get the kids a few miles in a bus, the team undoubtedly covered at least another 7 or 8 miles by foot in their return trip to San Luis.
Leaving early in the morning and returning around dusk, we had totaled about 6 hours of walking, 2 games, 2 losses, but undeniably had scored a big success in the words of my young soccer players, which left me pleased with the relative “success” of my first tournament with them.
After spending the weekend praying my legs would recover from all the walking while celebrating Halloween with a group of other Volunteers (its tough to celebrate Halloween with Salvadorans—they don’t exactly do Halloween down here), for one night in San Salvador then a second at a beach house in Costa del Sol, I returned to San Luis for Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead for the English-only crowd out there) on November 2nd. I really went into the day with no expectations (besides a few faint memories of “fiestas” in my high-school Spanish class featuring guacamole, chips, and queso—these could not have proven to be any farther than the truth) knowing virtually nothing about how it was celebrated. I rose early in the morning (a definite pattern that has emerged in my life) and hopped on the bus with essentially all the people of San Luis to Chalchuapa, the closest big city, and in turn, the closest cemetery. While Dia de los Muertos is a celebration of the dead, it is very unlike any holiday in the United States and is really an idea that I enjoyed. Basically, the cemetery, which is huge and serves a very large area, had been turned into a literal fairground overnight. There were carnival rides, food vendors, roving musicians and clowns, political-party spokespeople, and just about anything else you could dream up in the cemetery, packed-in along with the families of just about everyone buried there. As per tradition, I visited the graves of all the family members of my host family who had passed away, cleaned them off, and decorated them with all sorts of things, ranging from real flowers or fake flowers, to food, to candles, to fresh coats of paint, to basketballs and packs of cigarettes. Seemingly, nothing was out-of-bounds. It struck me as a great way to remember the dead. While a few people had tears while cleaning tombstones, in general, it is a very festive holiday and supplies an opportunity to return to the cemetery and remember all your family members, but while surrounded by all of your community and in a spirit of general joy, focusing on the good memories instead of the fact that your relatives are no longer living. Just walking to and from the cemetery is a true adventure as the streets are packed full of food and flower vendors starting ten or twelve blocks away. In fact, I think in all my four months in El Salvador, Dia de los Muertos has been the most pleasant surprise and definitely one of my many favorite differences between El Salvador and the United States.
The day started in typical Salvadoran fashion—despite the fact that 15 or 16 kids had told me they would be coming, only 7 showed up. It is an aspect of Salvadoran culture that Volunteers here just have to consistently remind themselves of—Salvadorans are very non-confrontational, especially with Volunteers who they definitely don’t want to disappoint—and will basically tell you whatever they think you want to hear, regardless of its truth. I had accounted for this by optimistically predicting I would end up with 11 or 12, conveniently just the right amount for a soccer team. Unfortunately, I clearly was going to have some work to do on the way to the tournament.
After our first bus ride, which got us a few miles, our second bus mysteriously never showed up, so we ended up walking about an hour to the community of another team entering the tournament. Once there, I retrieved the jerseys we would be borrowing, since I definitely haven’t had time to secure sources of grants or money for uniforms for my newly formed teams.
From San Sebastian, we walked another hour, where we discovered the next bus we were planning on riding had just passed, so we, with still unfettered confidence, took off for another hour and a half of walking. Finally, after about three and a half hours of walking (and two hours late for the beginning of the tournament), we had arrived.
However, I had not wasted those precious 10 or 11 miles we covered by foot—I had found enough soccer players along the way in various other communities so that we did arrive in Los Pozas (the site of the tournament—it is in Ahuachapan, another department—which basically means we walked to the equivalent of another state before our first game had even begun) with a complete squad.
We managed to gut together a pretty impressive first game, which started about 5 minutes after our arrival (since much of the tournament had, well, sort of been waiting on us). Although we ended up losing, it took a 5-4 loss in penalty kicks after 90 minutes of 1-1 soccer to deliver us the loss. Although I’ll be first to admit by soccer-coaching acumen still has a ways to go and my Spanish half-time pep talk skills are well beyond comical and most likely not remotely inspiring, I do still think we thoroughly outplayed the other team but just weren’t able to capitalize and struggled with some bad luck. I’m certainly looking to organize a rematch in the near future.
The second game wasn’t as pretty—at that point I think the first game and the virtual half-marathon, “Trail of Tears”-style hajj to the tournament had taken its toll and we never had a chance.
But that certainly wouldn’t be where the adventure would end. Thanks to the fact that a majority of the kids hadn’t brought the $1.50 I told them they would need and the fact that about half the team had bought cigarettes at half-time of each game (another Salvadoran tradition I’m still struggling to understand—hopefully, as my half-time pep talks improve, I might be able to curb this habit), mostly all of my Little Giants were now broke. That meant nothing but more walking.
While I did manage to bribe one bus driver with a few apples to get the kids a few miles in a bus, the team undoubtedly covered at least another 7 or 8 miles by foot in their return trip to San Luis.
Leaving early in the morning and returning around dusk, we had totaled about 6 hours of walking, 2 games, 2 losses, but undeniably had scored a big success in the words of my young soccer players, which left me pleased with the relative “success” of my first tournament with them.
After spending the weekend praying my legs would recover from all the walking while celebrating Halloween with a group of other Volunteers (its tough to celebrate Halloween with Salvadorans—they don’t exactly do Halloween down here), for one night in San Salvador then a second at a beach house in Costa del Sol, I returned to San Luis for Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead for the English-only crowd out there) on November 2nd. I really went into the day with no expectations (besides a few faint memories of “fiestas” in my high-school Spanish class featuring guacamole, chips, and queso—these could not have proven to be any farther than the truth) knowing virtually nothing about how it was celebrated. I rose early in the morning (a definite pattern that has emerged in my life) and hopped on the bus with essentially all the people of San Luis to Chalchuapa, the closest big city, and in turn, the closest cemetery. While Dia de los Muertos is a celebration of the dead, it is very unlike any holiday in the United States and is really an idea that I enjoyed. Basically, the cemetery, which is huge and serves a very large area, had been turned into a literal fairground overnight. There were carnival rides, food vendors, roving musicians and clowns, political-party spokespeople, and just about anything else you could dream up in the cemetery, packed-in along with the families of just about everyone buried there. As per tradition, I visited the graves of all the family members of my host family who had passed away, cleaned them off, and decorated them with all sorts of things, ranging from real flowers or fake flowers, to food, to candles, to fresh coats of paint, to basketballs and packs of cigarettes. Seemingly, nothing was out-of-bounds. It struck me as a great way to remember the dead. While a few people had tears while cleaning tombstones, in general, it is a very festive holiday and supplies an opportunity to return to the cemetery and remember all your family members, but while surrounded by all of your community and in a spirit of general joy, focusing on the good memories instead of the fact that your relatives are no longer living. Just walking to and from the cemetery is a true adventure as the streets are packed full of food and flower vendors starting ten or twelve blocks away. In fact, I think in all my four months in El Salvador, Dia de los Muertos has been the most pleasant surprise and definitely one of my many favorite differences between El Salvador and the United States.
Monday, November 1, 2010
My First Soccer Game
Last Sunday began like just about all my other days in San Luis—wake up at 5:30 to the roosters crowing right outside my door after about 9 hours of sleep, eat my daily breakfast of tortillas, beans, and eggs, then lay in a hammock with a cup of coffee for a little bit—however, I knew it would be different. It was game-day.
While the San Luis soccer teams have games every weekend year-round, they are always located in the neighboring communities against teams we have probably played hundreds of time. However, once every year or two we organize a game with a community near the beach as a chance to get out of daily farm-work, play someone new, and hit the waves. Probably more than half the community—all the members of the football team, their families, and quite a few other families that just wanted to go to the beach—loaded onto a bus at 6 am and off we went. Although I’d been practicing with the team every Tuesday and Thursday night for my first five weeks here, for the last few weekends I wasn’t able to make the games because of meetings or other commitments, so had I decided this would be my first appearance with the San Luis squad.
However, after a two-hour ride through the mountains and coffee country of El Salvador, which included two pit stops (one due to flames emerging from the underside of our bus—which ended up worrying me much more than anyone else—and another so the driver could drop off some tamales at his mother’s house) we made it to the beach, Puerte de Acajutla, by 8:30 am. San Luis has three teams, a first, second, and third team, and since I would be playing with the second and first teams, I would be leaving the beach at 12:30 with the rest of the second and first teams to start our games around 2 pm.
The beach itself provided quite the Salvadoran adventure. Although I had visited the beach before in El Salvador, it was my first time at a Salvadoran beach with actual Salvadorans…and it is quite a different experience. First of all, the fact that is wasn’t even 9 am or that we had a soccer game in 4 hours certainly wasn’t going to put a damper on the first vacation in a year or two for my teammates—they proceeded to suck down packs of cigarettes, chug beers, and spike their coconuts with rum. Additionally, I discovered Salvadorans generally don’t know how to swim and are deathly afraid of waves, which is surprising because the farthest you can get from the beach in this country is 3 hours. While I’ll give them the fact that there is definitely a very strong under-toe in all of El Salvador, it was border-line hilarious to see both my whole community sprinting towards their towels and beers whenever a wave came in and the looks of pure shock and disbelief when I ventured in deeper than my knees.
Next, after the adventure at the beach, we departed for the soccer field where we were to play in front of quite a big crowd—not only was half of San Luis there but a large home crowd had turned out to see the strangers from some village out west in the mountains. While our third team had won—setting the bar pretty high—I tried to take it with a grain of salt, since they definitely had quite-a-bit less time to drink before the game.
Within the first 20 minutes of the opening whistle of my game with the second team we were down 3-0 and it was looking pretty ugly. I’m not gonna lie…I was already just praying for the end of the game. Looking back at our goalie, who was continuing to drink whenever the ball wasn’t in his half of the field, just wasn’t giving me the most comforting feeling.
However, in a quick play off a corner quick in a stroke of genius I still don’t really understand or remember, I scored our first goal. Not only did all my teammates—not only drunk but deliriously excited that the gringo had scored—scramble into a dog-pile on top of me, but the crowd went nuts. The home fans were threatening to riot, screaming all sorts of horrible taunts at their own community for not only giving up a goal, but giving up a goal to the white kid who clearly had only been playing soccer for a few weeks, and the San Luis fans were screaming just as loudly because, quite frankly, they were equally shocked and I don’t think they really knew what else to do.
While the “gringo” chants were pretty exciting, the excitement only continued to grow. Over the course of the rest of the first half and the first 30 minutes of the second half, we came all the way back and ended up in a tied game, 4-4, with 10 minutes left. While we ended up losing 5-4 in a very questionable call by the very questionable home town ref who would make Pete Rose or Tim Donaghy look like a saint, my first soccer game proved to be quite the experience. Additionally, while before the game I was undoubtedly the biggest, and probably only, celebrity in San Luis, I’m now fairly sure I’ve shot from B-List to A-List star. More than 5 times, this week alone, I’ve run into people from neighboring communities who come up to me to congratulate me on my first goal; I knew news spreads fast around here about a white person, but I had no idea how fast it spreads about a white person who scores goals.
However, back to the games, after our near-comeback, the first team took the field. I was slated to start the game for the first team and play the first 15 or 20 minutes. That ended up being more than enough. Due to the fact that our first team, which in more sober situations is usually very good, had had another 2 hours to drink while watching the second-team game, and was undoubtedly pushed to drink even more by my goal then our comeback, we ended up losing 7-0. And, if imaginable, it’s actually worse than it sounds. The game was called 20 minutes early when a fight broke out in the stands and half the home team rushed into the crowd to join the melee. Welcome to El Salvadoran weekend soccer games…
In other news from the past week, I planted sugar cane and harvested coffee, both for the first time. I previously had no idea had labor-intensive planting sugar cane was—it involved over 120 other workers, a huge tractor, a 16-wheeler, about 8 carts pulled by teams of 2 oxen, and a pick-up truck for 7 just to plant 3.5 manzanas (1 manzana = 16 tareas, 1 tarea = 435.2 m2; you can do the math if you want, I have no idea how to explain how much a manzana is, but its basically the Salvadoran version of an acre; tareas are another measurement of farm-land they use here). I also had no idea how sweet and tasty coffee beans are when picked fresh off the tree, before being dried, processed, ground, smoked, or whatever it is they do to coffee beans.
In a final note, Happy Halloween! Also, for those of you looking to get a little deeper into Salvadoran culture, today is Dia de Los Muertos. While I think it’s a little inappropriate to wish you a “happy” Dia de Los Muertos, feel free to visit your local cemetery with flowers, candies, and prayers if you so please.
While the San Luis soccer teams have games every weekend year-round, they are always located in the neighboring communities against teams we have probably played hundreds of time. However, once every year or two we organize a game with a community near the beach as a chance to get out of daily farm-work, play someone new, and hit the waves. Probably more than half the community—all the members of the football team, their families, and quite a few other families that just wanted to go to the beach—loaded onto a bus at 6 am and off we went. Although I’d been practicing with the team every Tuesday and Thursday night for my first five weeks here, for the last few weekends I wasn’t able to make the games because of meetings or other commitments, so had I decided this would be my first appearance with the San Luis squad.
However, after a two-hour ride through the mountains and coffee country of El Salvador, which included two pit stops (one due to flames emerging from the underside of our bus—which ended up worrying me much more than anyone else—and another so the driver could drop off some tamales at his mother’s house) we made it to the beach, Puerte de Acajutla, by 8:30 am. San Luis has three teams, a first, second, and third team, and since I would be playing with the second and first teams, I would be leaving the beach at 12:30 with the rest of the second and first teams to start our games around 2 pm.
The beach itself provided quite the Salvadoran adventure. Although I had visited the beach before in El Salvador, it was my first time at a Salvadoran beach with actual Salvadorans…and it is quite a different experience. First of all, the fact that is wasn’t even 9 am or that we had a soccer game in 4 hours certainly wasn’t going to put a damper on the first vacation in a year or two for my teammates—they proceeded to suck down packs of cigarettes, chug beers, and spike their coconuts with rum. Additionally, I discovered Salvadorans generally don’t know how to swim and are deathly afraid of waves, which is surprising because the farthest you can get from the beach in this country is 3 hours. While I’ll give them the fact that there is definitely a very strong under-toe in all of El Salvador, it was border-line hilarious to see both my whole community sprinting towards their towels and beers whenever a wave came in and the looks of pure shock and disbelief when I ventured in deeper than my knees.
Next, after the adventure at the beach, we departed for the soccer field where we were to play in front of quite a big crowd—not only was half of San Luis there but a large home crowd had turned out to see the strangers from some village out west in the mountains. While our third team had won—setting the bar pretty high—I tried to take it with a grain of salt, since they definitely had quite-a-bit less time to drink before the game.
Within the first 20 minutes of the opening whistle of my game with the second team we were down 3-0 and it was looking pretty ugly. I’m not gonna lie…I was already just praying for the end of the game. Looking back at our goalie, who was continuing to drink whenever the ball wasn’t in his half of the field, just wasn’t giving me the most comforting feeling.
However, in a quick play off a corner quick in a stroke of genius I still don’t really understand or remember, I scored our first goal. Not only did all my teammates—not only drunk but deliriously excited that the gringo had scored—scramble into a dog-pile on top of me, but the crowd went nuts. The home fans were threatening to riot, screaming all sorts of horrible taunts at their own community for not only giving up a goal, but giving up a goal to the white kid who clearly had only been playing soccer for a few weeks, and the San Luis fans were screaming just as loudly because, quite frankly, they were equally shocked and I don’t think they really knew what else to do.
While the “gringo” chants were pretty exciting, the excitement only continued to grow. Over the course of the rest of the first half and the first 30 minutes of the second half, we came all the way back and ended up in a tied game, 4-4, with 10 minutes left. While we ended up losing 5-4 in a very questionable call by the very questionable home town ref who would make Pete Rose or Tim Donaghy look like a saint, my first soccer game proved to be quite the experience. Additionally, while before the game I was undoubtedly the biggest, and probably only, celebrity in San Luis, I’m now fairly sure I’ve shot from B-List to A-List star. More than 5 times, this week alone, I’ve run into people from neighboring communities who come up to me to congratulate me on my first goal; I knew news spreads fast around here about a white person, but I had no idea how fast it spreads about a white person who scores goals.
However, back to the games, after our near-comeback, the first team took the field. I was slated to start the game for the first team and play the first 15 or 20 minutes. That ended up being more than enough. Due to the fact that our first team, which in more sober situations is usually very good, had had another 2 hours to drink while watching the second-team game, and was undoubtedly pushed to drink even more by my goal then our comeback, we ended up losing 7-0. And, if imaginable, it’s actually worse than it sounds. The game was called 20 minutes early when a fight broke out in the stands and half the home team rushed into the crowd to join the melee. Welcome to El Salvadoran weekend soccer games…
In other news from the past week, I planted sugar cane and harvested coffee, both for the first time. I previously had no idea had labor-intensive planting sugar cane was—it involved over 120 other workers, a huge tractor, a 16-wheeler, about 8 carts pulled by teams of 2 oxen, and a pick-up truck for 7 just to plant 3.5 manzanas (1 manzana = 16 tareas, 1 tarea = 435.2 m2; you can do the math if you want, I have no idea how to explain how much a manzana is, but its basically the Salvadoran version of an acre; tareas are another measurement of farm-land they use here). I also had no idea how sweet and tasty coffee beans are when picked fresh off the tree, before being dried, processed, ground, smoked, or whatever it is they do to coffee beans.
In a final note, Happy Halloween! Also, for those of you looking to get a little deeper into Salvadoran culture, today is Dia de Los Muertos. While I think it’s a little inappropriate to wish you a “happy” Dia de Los Muertos, feel free to visit your local cemetery with flowers, candies, and prayers if you so please.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Public Speaking...in Spanish...
Standard in
My Asamblea General was yesterday and had about 85 or 90 attendees. This included 65 men (who are the only people whose presence is actually formally recorded), many women as well, countless children, and a few dogs and chickens to top it all off. Additionally, two or three officials from the closest offices of CENTA (a branch of the Ministry of Agriculture) dropped by. It ended up turning into quite the social event, as during the talks, which took place inside a classroom at the local school, soccer games for the children broke out in the school yard and numerous vendors made brisk business selling everything from oranges to mattresses (the mattresses confused me too, I’m fairly positive no one bought one, and the guy selling them definitely didn’t live here).
The Asamblea General also served to once again remind me of some other large cultural differences between
Additionally, it served as quite the test of my Spanish. I ended up speaking about my time here so far, all that I have learned, and all that I intend to do in my two years for about 15 or 20 minutes. Not only was it, by far, the largest crowd of people I have ever spoken in front of, but it was also completely in Spanish. Making it even more interesting, I’m pretty sure the reason many of the people attended was out of pure curiosity—it still shocks most members of the community that a gringo can not only speak Spanish but can live in their community for more than a few days without fleeing back to the comfort of the States. I didn’t really prepare any remarks because I knew if I had anything written down I would end up getting nervous and just directly reading it off the paper, but all ended up going well—I didn’t even get any outbursts of giggles, the tell-tale sign of Spanish mistakes.
The projects I described range from short-term to long-term, complete necessity to simple quality-of-life projects, agriculture work to rural health work to youth development and environmental education work. This is fairly typical—although my program is specifically geared towards agriculture and farmers, all Volunteers end up having projects across basically every sphere of development work. I will begin my work in November with the construction of latrines. About 40% of the families here have no latrines or broken ones, which is absolutely awful for water quality, soil quality, health, and really basically anything else you can name. Especially since the whole town is on a slope, everything eventually runs downhill and into the river…so if you don’t have a latrine…well, you can figure out what happens. I’m also going to begin with organizing a new environmental youth group for the coming school year and creating a complete, in-depth map of the community, which currently does not exist. The timing of the beginning of when I will begin my work is difficult, because it falls right at the beginning of the corn and bean harvest and the end of the school year, so a lot of my work, especially with farmers and the school, will be pushed back until February. In time, I also plan to organize farmers into groups which can then purchase larger amounts of agricultural products at lower prices, increase the presence of new, more sustainable crops (such as tomatoes, okra, yucca, chiles, radishes, and cucumbers), and work to bring solar-powered lights to the one road that runs through the middle of the community and to the houses without electricity. Additionally, I have already begun a girl’s soccer team and bi-weekly events to teach farmers how to make organic fertilizers and pesticides. While these are just the main projects I have decided to focus on for now, this plan will undoubtedly change quite a few times and I will also constantly be aiding in organization with a few local organizations and institutions and whatever other issues or problems inevitably arise in San Luis on a weekly basis.
However, now that I have finally completed my Asamblea General, the first milestone and goal of any new Volunteer, the work isn’t set to slow down. I will be attending a two-day training event today and tomorrow with the Ministry of Health (I accepted the invitation but forgot to ask what type of training it was—I’m really hoping its not anything too medical, I definitely don’t want to be playing with needles and stuff), my first tournament with my girl’s soccer team on Saturday (promises to be interesting—the girls are quite the motley crew, ranging in age from 10 to 27 and including two mother-daughter duos), and a trip across the country to a beach community on Sunday with the men’s soccer team for another tournament (this one I’ll be playing in, not coaching, thankfully).
PICTURES!!!
Above are a few shots from my Asemblea General.Below are a few picturess from a workshop I had where I taught a few farmers in the community to make an organic pesticide from only ash, soap, water, and a few other cheap and easy ingredients.
Below are a few pictures from when we cleared a corn field after a harvest. Next week we´ll be planting sugar cane in the same field.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Earthquakes and Hurricanes
A few notes and stories from my past few weeks:
1. Last week we were hit by two earthquakes and two hurricanes. It literally didn’t stop raining for a week and at points it felt like the earth was never going to stop shaking either. For someone who’d never felt an earthquake, it was all pretty exciting, but all the rain definitely had all the farmers (that means everyone) worried about their plants rotting due to the massive amounts of standing water.
1b. Fast-forward a week. It hasn’t rained and I haven’t even seen a cloud in 4 or 5 days. They are now talking about it being the “drought” of the century. The bean plants can only make it a few more days without rain before they lose them all. Thanks change pretty quickly around here.
2. For the most part, the people here only bathe once every week or two and definitely wear the same thing for at least three or four days…minimum. This has quickly become one of my favorite aspects of life here.
3. I expect to easily shatter Cal Ripken’s Iron Man record within my two years here. I have now had beans, tortillas, and eggs 28 meals in a row…and counting. In the morning the beans are mashed, lunch features hot bean soup, and dinner is consistently accompanied by cold bean soup. The eggs are always scrambled…every once in awhile with tomatoes or peppers. The tortillas are, well, always tortillas. Also, once every few days I get a hot dog. For some reason though, I’m not really tired of it. It is kind of refreshing to know exactly what you are always going to eat, and honestly, it is all so fresh that it never gets old…at least not yet.
4. Before El Salvador, I definitely thought the last thing I would ever become was a coffee-drinker. I never liked the taste and I never wanted to be one of those people that has to have coffee every morning. That has certainly all gone out the window. They seem to be incredibly insistent on serving me a cup of coffee with every meal, no matter how many times in the first week I tried to politely tell them I wasn’t really a coffee drinker, but now I have just kind of given in. I still don’t really like coffee with dinner, but lunch I can tolerate, and I’m actually starting to kind of like it with breakfast.
5. My days have basically all been taken up with conducting house visits. I have now visited about 60 families (have about 25 or 30 more to go) and have truly enjoyed getting to know all that the people of San Luis La Magdalena have to offer. I have been tricked into eating a chile pepper that had tears pouring from my eyes for well over 10 minutes (everyone in town heard about that story in a matter of hours…I now have to re-live it at every new house I visit), been forced to take my jeans off so that the grandmother could patch them while I continued the conversation in my boxers, been fed both breakfast and lunch in the span of one two-hour house visit, faked understanding more stories than I can count, eaten some of the strangest fruits Central America has to offer, looked at pictures of easily over 200 weddings, births, and birthdays, taught one man how to calculate the total area of his parcel of beans and corn (his family had apparently been staring at a piece of paper with the measurements of all the different sides and angles for two days, not knowing what to do next), and been asked how soon I want to find a Salvadoran girlfriend an average of twice per visit. In addition to all the memorable experiences, memories, and fun my house visits have proven to be, they are also invaluable for me in starting my service here as I can now much better identify areas the community needs help with, identify who I should include in certain types of projects, and can now count on having the trust and friendship of the majority of the people who live here.
6. Although the vast majority of the corn is harvested here in November and December, I have helped out with early harvests twice this past week. It is pretty fun, a great way to spend a morning outdoors, and returning to the house by noon having already put in at least 7 hours of work is a great excuse for simply relaxing in a hammock the rest of the day. However, much like my house visits, it has been one place I have done a lot of cultural learning the awkward way. When harvesting corn, Salvadorans clear patches in random spots of the field with machetes, then while harvesting corn from all over the field, toss each ear into the cleared areas. Obviously, with fields full of men, this is bound to turn into some sort of hooliganism. Here, it usually evolves into never-ending games of dodge-ball played with ears of corn. Due to the fact that Salvadorans all really only play soccer and therefore never really get much practice throwing things, corn ends up flying everywhere. These games of dodge-ball also have quite a few unspoken rules that were definitely never communicated to me, most of which I have already learned the hard way…like after I hit the preacher of the church, who I now know is completely off-limits, with an abnormally large ear of corn straight to the gut.
1. Last week we were hit by two earthquakes and two hurricanes. It literally didn’t stop raining for a week and at points it felt like the earth was never going to stop shaking either. For someone who’d never felt an earthquake, it was all pretty exciting, but all the rain definitely had all the farmers (that means everyone) worried about their plants rotting due to the massive amounts of standing water.
1b. Fast-forward a week. It hasn’t rained and I haven’t even seen a cloud in 4 or 5 days. They are now talking about it being the “drought” of the century. The bean plants can only make it a few more days without rain before they lose them all. Thanks change pretty quickly around here.
2. For the most part, the people here only bathe once every week or two and definitely wear the same thing for at least three or four days…minimum. This has quickly become one of my favorite aspects of life here.
3. I expect to easily shatter Cal Ripken’s Iron Man record within my two years here. I have now had beans, tortillas, and eggs 28 meals in a row…and counting. In the morning the beans are mashed, lunch features hot bean soup, and dinner is consistently accompanied by cold bean soup. The eggs are always scrambled…every once in awhile with tomatoes or peppers. The tortillas are, well, always tortillas. Also, once every few days I get a hot dog. For some reason though, I’m not really tired of it. It is kind of refreshing to know exactly what you are always going to eat, and honestly, it is all so fresh that it never gets old…at least not yet.
4. Before El Salvador, I definitely thought the last thing I would ever become was a coffee-drinker. I never liked the taste and I never wanted to be one of those people that has to have coffee every morning. That has certainly all gone out the window. They seem to be incredibly insistent on serving me a cup of coffee with every meal, no matter how many times in the first week I tried to politely tell them I wasn’t really a coffee drinker, but now I have just kind of given in. I still don’t really like coffee with dinner, but lunch I can tolerate, and I’m actually starting to kind of like it with breakfast.
5. My days have basically all been taken up with conducting house visits. I have now visited about 60 families (have about 25 or 30 more to go) and have truly enjoyed getting to know all that the people of San Luis La Magdalena have to offer. I have been tricked into eating a chile pepper that had tears pouring from my eyes for well over 10 minutes (everyone in town heard about that story in a matter of hours…I now have to re-live it at every new house I visit), been forced to take my jeans off so that the grandmother could patch them while I continued the conversation in my boxers, been fed both breakfast and lunch in the span of one two-hour house visit, faked understanding more stories than I can count, eaten some of the strangest fruits Central America has to offer, looked at pictures of easily over 200 weddings, births, and birthdays, taught one man how to calculate the total area of his parcel of beans and corn (his family had apparently been staring at a piece of paper with the measurements of all the different sides and angles for two days, not knowing what to do next), and been asked how soon I want to find a Salvadoran girlfriend an average of twice per visit. In addition to all the memorable experiences, memories, and fun my house visits have proven to be, they are also invaluable for me in starting my service here as I can now much better identify areas the community needs help with, identify who I should include in certain types of projects, and can now count on having the trust and friendship of the majority of the people who live here.
6. Although the vast majority of the corn is harvested here in November and December, I have helped out with early harvests twice this past week. It is pretty fun, a great way to spend a morning outdoors, and returning to the house by noon having already put in at least 7 hours of work is a great excuse for simply relaxing in a hammock the rest of the day. However, much like my house visits, it has been one place I have done a lot of cultural learning the awkward way. When harvesting corn, Salvadorans clear patches in random spots of the field with machetes, then while harvesting corn from all over the field, toss each ear into the cleared areas. Obviously, with fields full of men, this is bound to turn into some sort of hooliganism. Here, it usually evolves into never-ending games of dodge-ball played with ears of corn. Due to the fact that Salvadorans all really only play soccer and therefore never really get much practice throwing things, corn ends up flying everywhere. These games of dodge-ball also have quite a few unspoken rules that were definitely never communicated to me, most of which I have already learned the hard way…like after I hit the preacher of the church, who I now know is completely off-limits, with an abnormally large ear of corn straight to the gut.
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