Site Update

So, it is getting close enough to our departure now that I thought I'd better take the time to learn how to tweak our blog a bit while I still have a high speed connection. The new features include some links on the sidebar to the left. The catagory "Other People" is for the blogs of other El Salvador Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV's) or Trainees (PCT's) like us. You can take a look at these link when we are being are usual selves and not posting frequently enough. The parenthetical info denotes what Peace Corps group they are in. Example, ag4 05 would mean that they are in the Agroforestry/Environmental Education program (the same one that Katie and I are in) and that they started in 2005, so they are one year in now, basically one year ahead of us. There are a couple of links that are in the same group as us, and those may grow as we meet more folks. Just to complete the explanation, the "muni" means Municipal Development, and I lumped the Youth Development folks in that catagory. That group of folks started back in June, so the muni 06 folks are not with us in our group, rather they started back in June, and have just now completed their training, and started working at their sites. I have read these blogs as they went through their training, becasue it will be very similar to what we will start to experience in a few weeks.

I have also added a "Resources" link and put a few quicky overviews of El Salvador for those of you who want to learn more. I hope to add to this catagory as we go.

Now I need to learn how to post a picture, bear with me... Ok, learned something important, I need to reduce the images prior to inserting. Blogger reduces, but the upload time for the full image will kill me in El Salvador. So, this is a
Golden Trout, the State Fish of California. We went backpacking in the Eastern Sierras as part of our "do a bunch of things before we leave for two years" quest. We caught (and released) a bunch of these fish, very pretty little buggers. They live in a very scenic habitat too! It was a good trip, we hit Lone Pine, Bishop, Bridgeport Mammoth and Tuolumne Meadows.

I do think that my blogging will improve as we hit the road. For those of you who still bother to check the site, I'm sure that it will get more interesting soon. Right now we are in pack mode, and buy mode! Money is flowing like crazy, or so it feels. We are also trying to get in some visits with friends. We have done ok on that end, but it is really hard to find the time to visit everyone we'd like too. We actually leave on the 16th of September, we booked an extra day in Washington DC, so that we could take in at least a miniscule part of the sights. Staging starts mid-day on the 18th in Arlington, with departure to El Salvador at "oh-dark-thirty" in the morning on the 20th (4:30 am.).

Encuentros!

Just got back from Cuernavaca Mexico. We were down there to take another two weeks of Spanish. I know it is going to help make the first weeks of training a little less stressful, we learned a lot. It was also a fun trip. The school was very professional, and fun. The family we stayed with was great. Also, we got to see a few sights that were on my unoffical "list". We went to Mexico City's Zocalo, checked out the Templo Mayor of Tenochitlan that the city was built on top of, saw a lot of murals by Diego Rivera, and spent a day at Teotehuican.

It was a pretty good use of two weeks. It was even better that on the first two days I returned I got out and fished with a friend, and had some really good fishing days! The best so far in this lackluster year. Now a few more days to fish, and then we head out for our backpacking trip. It will be nice to get over to the east side of the sierra's. It always relaxes me to be over there. Plus, we'll get a bit more fishing in over there.

On the way back we will swing through Sacto to visit with a few folks. No matter how much time we have, it never seems like enough to visit everyone. Cheers to all.