Nine Months To Go

Sorry for the lack of pictures. I don't feel like waiting for them to upload.

I am nine months away from close of service! Nine months! Things have been busy the past few days and I have made endless phone calls which made me realize two things - 1. I actually am incredibly happy and excited about basically everything, and 2. I actually have things going on. I feel like I sometimes I either complain or get too excited to other PCVs, but the internet can just stop reading when it gets bored, instead of my poor fellow PCVs who have to strategically lose service to get me to stop talking. The end is in sight, and it's coming at us like a train with no brakes. When the new cohorts come in a few months, though, we will be that old group that doesn’t give a shit and looks super impressive to the new kids who are terrified about starting their service and how long two years will be. That's a good feeling. 

The unending phone calls have been to NGOS and our cohort, some personal and some to take care of business, because holy crap we have so many things coming up and not enough time to do them all. It's good to catch up, especially since almost everyone just got back from a vacation stint in the US basking in the glory of the first world. I've been back for a while, so now I'm in work/summer mode (I realize that doesn't make sense, but half the time I am crazy planning and working, and half the time I am doing jack squat hanging out at the river and reading endless books, hence work/summer).  I'm taking my two lovely young men trained in HIV/AIDS trainings to teach my new women's group all about HIV/AIDS next week, and right afterwards a big group of us organized a GLOW camp for teenage girls to get empowered. At the end of the month everyone is celebrating some milestone and even those who aren't will still have the Super Bowl, so we have a huge all-volunteer party at the beach which will surely result in many bad decisions and lots of good food, immediately followed by a Staff/Volunteer Retreat in Chalatenango. I'm excited about the retreat - it is something our Volunteer Advisory Council (I'm President as of next month!) proposed to improve staff-volunteer relations and they took us seriously and now it's actually going to happen, and it's at Rio Sumpul, my old stomping grounds with the Tamarindos. Somehow I got on the organizing committee again, so I suppose I should plan some cool activities so everything goes off without a hitch. We also have a regional meeting and another check-up kind of conference, then before we blink we will be training the new kids and attending the close of service conference. 

Edwin and I spent all morning burning holes in plastic bottles and stringing wire through them to make planters and trash cans. I have been collecting bottles for months now, and it was finally time to make them into something other than the little self-watering planters I currently use. This is part of a personal recycling project that I'm hoping to expand to the community once the school year starts. It includes self-watering planters, big 12-bottle hanging planters, trash cans, soccer nets made from water bags, and hopefully a few little flower and piggy bank art projects as well. I filled the two planters with compost that should be ready to plant in next month, and I'm collecting thousands of water bags to wash and cut and knot into a soccer net. Both the soccer field and the river desperately need a serious cleaning campaign, and trash cans seem like a good start to me. Edwin and Nayely, my favorite kids ever, upon seeing the work in progress, took to the projects with gusto. Edwin has already made his own three-level bottle trash can and collected, washed, cut and knotted 350 plastic bags for our soccer net. I've been using my Leatherman a lot on these projects, so take that REI guy who told me he bought one then only ever used it once; clearly he needed to go backpacking around Chile and make freaking amazing campfire food, then serve in Peace Corps. 

If my community gets its act together and finds housing, a new Volunteer will start his or her two year service in May in my community. I'm looking forward to sharing my site and hopefully getting some good work out of my community members too. My new women's group in Monseñor Romero impressed my boss enough that she's considering putting a Volunteer in that community to work with them. They certainly deserve it and I couldn't be prouder of them. My ADESCO is just as much of a mess as ever, but I called the NGO we are looking to build a hammock bridge with, and they are on the hunt for a funding source to start the project in our community. It's not the big bridge for cars, but it's a much-needed start and an awesome opportunity for my ADESCO to get some experience and show the community they mean business. Someday they may even get their shit together enough to submit their project proposal to Engineers Without Borders and get the real bridge built too.

I added another kid to my English class and he's doing an amazing job. He studies like crazy and is tearing through the material. Alfonso is still the best, but this kid is doing his darndest to get up to speed before I leave. Other than my host family, Alfonso is without a doubt my best friend in site and he has so much potential I just want him to be president. He never made it past sixth grade, but he's smart, always curious and so pure of heart. As another PCV recently noted, good service is all about the people. The school year starts soon and I'm hoping to get Alfonso in to teach a bit of basic English to the littles, and to start up sports classes again. I also had this idea to do a world geography or history class, which I think would be more interesting (for me) than English. If I do world geography I could even end the class with the World Map project that many PCVs do.

I have millions of plans floating around in my head and New Year's Resolutions to keep and women's group activities to organize. A business camp must happen (we planned it ages ago, after all) and I desperately want to do it because I love and admire the PCVs who are doing it with me. An artisan catalog also is in the works because I like the idea and I think it's a worthwhile activity. Somewhere in there I also need to study for the foreign service exam, plan my post-PC travels, apply to grad school, and decide whether I want to do a third year (in a different location in El Sal) or apply to Peace Corps Response or work for the Tamarindo Foundation or get some real small business experience working for my training host family.

Oh, and we're making frozen horchata tomorrow, which is my all-time favorite ice pop ever. And butter cookies, because I can make butter and with butter everything is better.

I don't know what Peace Corps service is or should be, but even on the shitty days this is the best ever. I don't have an office or a schedule, I work with whoever I want, I take as much or as little responsibility as I choose, and I craft each day exactly as I see fit. I stole kids out of a celebration mass to teach them to make bracelets; it's a better use of their time anyway. They were so proud of themselves and were perfect little ladies and gentlemen asking for help, teaching and helping each other, and thanking me at the end. These are my first and second graders. I adore them. Two days ago I spent the entire day at the river with Edwin and Alfonso just listening to music, jumping off the rocks, racing in the water, and answering their endless questions. We wandered back collecting bottles and water bags, finishing the day surrounded by plastic bottles and wire, trying to figure out how to rig a stable second ring for the trash can. Edwin's idea worked a treat - make a hole in the cap and a hole in the bottom of the second-level bottle, then put a twist of wire through the bottom of the bottle and out through the cap of the one below it. Twist a tight loop in the wire so nothing will move around, then screw the cap back on the first level. Next week we are baking an entire brick oven's worth of banana bread. I get to take two girls to a place they have never been to teach them to stand up for themselves and change the world. In the beginning I felt guilty on when I didn't visit houses or try to "make something" out of every day, but now I'm a year in and everyone knows where I live so they can come find me or call me if they need me. I relish the fact that I don't have to leave the house and that making bracelets is a team building, leadership building, confidence building, income generating activity. Even when I'm doing nothing, which is a lot of the time, I feel grounded here. This isn't home and I don't have any desire to stay longer than my service in this community, but I'm happy while it lasts. I have no illusions that I have made much of a difference here, but a few people have more skills than they did a year ago, and a ton of kids have more bracelets than they know what to do with.

New books read: 72
Total books read: 108
Currently reading and enjoying: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and The Fallen Man by Tony Hillerman