Ramblings

So, as you can tell, blogging has not been high priority lately. (Actually, this is the first of 3 new entries, so scroll down and check them all out!) I believe that is at least partly a reflection of what point of service we are in. There is just not as much stuff that we run into now and think…”Whoa, how strange/different/weird/cool/great”, ect… Also we are pretty comfortable with our community so no big cravings for things to be “normal” or more like back “home”. Combine all of that with being busier than we were last year, and the fact that we can now see how fast the end of service will be here… Well, it all makes for less time to ponder those things that make good blog entries, and fewer moments that seem so… bloggable!

I typically don’t go back and read any of my old entries, so I’m sure I have said some of this before… but here are a few of the more interesting phenomenon of the second year of service, at least in El Salvador:

**You stop making any real effort to get to know any of the new volunteers. You realize they don’t have much in common with you. They are going through all of those new things, learning about their site, the language…and they still have big ideas, most of which you have given up on by now…or at least resigned yourself to lower expectations. You find it hard to talk to them because of these differences. If you do talk to them, you end up sounding so negative from their perspective that you scare them, or they think you are “jaded”.

**Everyone in your site starts talking about the fact that you are leaving soon! This one was almost like a switch, one-year, boom! We are leaving in a year, and everyone starts to comment on that. You want to tell them no! That we still have lots of time, a full year left… but it’s true, you are now at the point where you too realize how short a time that is. People you hardly know come up and tell you how much they will miss you! Even little kids will come into your room and say things like, “so, you gonna be leaving this camera/iPod/hat/guacal/box/book/bag of churros behind, right?” They start looking around your room wondering and hoping that they will inherit something cool when you go. Still, they always tell you how much they will miss you too.

**You start to think about the things you will miss most when you go home. Things like, back home as you are walking down the street not everyone you see will be yelling out, “Don Jon, Niña Katie!” You have to remind yourself that back home you are unlikely to even be “walking” down the street. Then you realize you also won’t be able to walk to the store, work, friends houses… anywhere! You won’t be so important anymore! No longer will the Mayor come by your house first when visiting the town, or the Minister of Agriculture, President of “Blank” organization… you won’t be served first at all occasions, get the best piece of chicken. Kids won’t be coming over every afternoon just to hang out with the cool gringos and listen to their funny Spanish. (this point is a whole blog, and better done a bit later)

**Your first more conversational question for fellow volunteers is no longer “How are your projects going?” or “How are things at your site?” but rather, “What are your plans at the end of service?” You don’t have an answer to this question yourself, but it is comforting to hear the others stumble over this as well.

So yeah, here we are nearing the end of service, or in Peace Corps jargon Close of Service (COS), with just around 4 months to go. It’s a weird time. You are mostly pretty busy, the days go quickly unlike the start of your service. You are still trying to accomplish some things, anything really… and yet, at the same time you are definitely preparing to leave… mentally you are spending at least half your time thinking about where to go, and what to do “after”.

Scholarship and Babies

So, this is just a fun blog, with some pictures, but has some serious stuff as well. First off I´ll start by talking about the kids who got scholarships thanks to donations made by you guys!! Or perhaps some other friends who don´t read the blog.

To the left you can see the winners. From left to right they are; Claudia, Karina, Nelson, y Kenia. They were very happy and excited to win, and get money too! They are all going to instituto or high school...roughly. Both Claudia and Karina hope to go to University next year, but would definately need another scholarship to do that... plus they have to pass a test that is very difficult for those that go to public schools, especially in the campo. This year they might have to pass a portion of the test that is in english. Great, except you can´t get good english teachers to come out and work in the boondocks for a public school... Anyway, they have there work cut out for them.

We would like to help them again in the upcoming year, and for that we need your help again. Go to the Aid El Salvador websight http://www.aidelsalvador.org/ and follow the donation links. (the site does have issues, I just tried to go, and it didn´t load) but people with pay pal have managed to donate! Thanks!!! Be sure to list that you´d like some or all of you money to go to the kids of Canton El Centro, San Ignacio, Chalatenango. You put that in the memo section of your donation page. It takes a long time to process through, which is why we are asking now!! Please go and help them out! If we get enough, we´ll add a couple of new winners...

Ok, time for baby photos. This is the baby of our house, Brenda Liset. That´s her ten year old sister Rebeca holding her above and her nine year old sister Carina to the left. For us Brenda is a reminder of our time here. We moved into our house in March 2007 and shortly after, her mom, Juana learned that she was pregnant. We got to watch the development through til birth in October. Now this coming October we will get to celebrate her first birthday... then we´ll leave! Ok, well enough for now.

Culture Shock?

“So, how was it being home?” That’s the question that we are dealing with now. Both from our Salvadorian neighbors, and from the Peace Corps volunteers that we run into. Furthermore, it’s a natural question to ask ourselves at this point. So how was it?

It was great is the natural answer, and true too… but with some reservations. It was really, really good to see everyone. We had the fortune of my sister’s wedding to gather a bunch of people in one spot for us to visit with them. It was nice to have a family event like that to kick off the visit. There was nothing strange about being back, no strange instant culture shock things. Maybe all of the long overseas travel adventures helped us to get used to coming home after an absence.

Still, there were things that stood out as noticeable. Like the fact our sofa just felt amazing! I spent a lot of time playing Halo on that sofa, and kept thinking what a great invention comfy sofas were! It’s true. Down here we don’t have (pretty much nobody does) comfortable furniture! Even our bed is less than comfy, and our chairs are just molded plastic things, functional, but not something you enjoy passing time in.

So, if my newfound love of the sofa was an indication of culture shock… then the more obvious was taking long hot showers! Showers down here are neither… not hot, and therefore not long. I think that the first few days I was home, I took probably three or more showers a day!

So it wasn’t the big or drastic changes that I noticed. It was easy to put things like playing Halo on an Xbox360 into a whole other realm… the realm of “solo en los estados”. Therefore those things are outside the realm of comparison between the places/cultures/living conditions. Rather it was the subtle everyday things like getting up in the morning and taking a shower right off the bat, without checking the weather or waiting till the sun is out so that the cold water won’t feel so bad once you are out. Another thoughtful moment occurred the first time I hopped in a car and headed down to the store to pick up something.

At my dad’s house the store is probably a quarter mile away, including his driveway. This would be easy walking distance down here, but up there you’d never think that way. As I was driving the convenience of the whole thing hit me. No timing the trip to match some elusive bus schedule. No walking to where the bus would pick me up, and getting off close, but not at the store. Most important, not having to wait at the store until the returning bus passed by to take you home… or at least near home.

We folks from “alla” are so accustomed to things being convenient and around our schedule. We have created our world that way. It’s part of that whole being independent thing. It is why things like good mass transit systems are mostly doomed to failure. They make you dependent on something outside your control, and that always bothers us at some visceral level. I am mostly just postulating here, I haven’t yet taken the hours to turn it into a good argument, so bear with me.

Down here so many things just fly in the face of your independence. It goes beyond the transportation thing, which is obvious. For instance, every family needs to make masa to make tortillas, an imperative. To make masa, you need a grinder, but not everyone has them. Back home if this were the case houses would probably be built with grinders (mills) pre-installed, because the mill would be considered a necessity, like running water and a car (garage anyone?). Here only about one house in twenty or thirty has one, and instead of an inconvenience, it is an opportunity to socialize, plus at least one family is making money from it. For the rest though it means up to an hour out of your day just to get the corn ground into masa.

I’m going to leave the whole independence thread now and return to cultural stuff. To close this subject out I will point out that the most surprising shock I received during the trip was not wandering through the “cube-land” of consulting firms, or walking into a Nugget Market, though both of those elicited a sense of disorientation. Rather the biggest occurred in the Los Angeles airport on the way back. Sure, just LAX is enough to freak anyone out, but what got to me was standing in an airport bookstore watching a thirteen year old girl (or thereabout) buy an amazing amount of completely unnecessary crap at inflated airport prices and not even flinch as she pulled out three twenty dollar bills to pay for it! (Just so we’re on the same page regarding “crap” she had three magazines, Us, People and Cosmo, four candy bars of different varieties, a bag of chips, some cutesy lip gloss things, and a tin of Altoids.)

I’m still not sure if it was the blatant consumerism, disregard for the value of things… or maybe the arrogance. That’s what it felt like to me, an act of arrogance. Not sure why, just stating how it felt to me. It just made me feel a little disgusted. Like she didn’t even realize or value what she had, and instead was perfectly willing to throw it away… The funny thing is, it’s not like I’m living in some frugal culture right now. They waste money with the best of them. Spending on worthless things is rampant here, and there is very little concept of budgeting or saving money.

No it’s not a cultural thing, it’s a personal thing. I myself have been living on a fairly tight budget down here. When we go to the capitol, we have to really think about whether that six-dollar fast food meal is worth it! Then, returning to the states and finding the price of gas almost doubled from when I left, and thus affecting the prices of almost everything else… well, I guess it made me feel a little bit vulnerable thinking about what I should do to prepare to live with this new economy when we return. So seeing that girl flaunt her disregard like that just made me think… are we prepared to be back?