Saturday, July 25, 2009

Cultural Awakening

I'm sitting in my little "living room" which is my front room that overlooks my little garden. The furniture includes a cloth mattress on the floor, a plastic table, and a plastic chair. There is a beautiful bay window from which I can see my grass, a huge freesia plant, and the other flora of my mini garden. This is my favorite place to sit in the morning and enjoy my oatmeal and tea. This morning I am remembering a time about 3 hours ago when I was awoken by a cultural event. . . I was sleeping soundly, dreaming my crazy malaria prevention pill dreams, when I heard LOUD music, drums, and fireworks. That's right, 4am on a Saturday morning and there was a parade going on. I just wish somebody would have warned me. Apparently it's Tecpan's birthday. Well, Happy Birthday Tecpan! I also get frequent window shaking music from the church next door. Between that, car horns, busses, etc. , there is a lot of noise pollution here to say the least.

A little bit about my neighbors. As you all know I moved in April. I LOVE my new house and my new neighbors. They are all sisters in the houses surrounding mine. My neighbors that share my back wall (Dona Rosa and Family) have the most adorable daughter who I give English classes to once or twice a week, depending on my work schedule. She's 9-years-old and is named Michelle. She is so adorable, so sweet, and so smart. Next to them is another sister who has 2 adorable sons (and more children, but I interact mostly with the little kids) names Chiqui and Jorge. Chiqui is called that because that's an abbreviation of the Spanish word for tiny (Chiquito). Jorge is about 10 and always comes over asking random questions like doing interviews for a class, selling raffle tickets, or bringing over the lyrics to "Beat It" by Michael Jackson and asking me to help him with pronounciation. In front of my house is Dona Mercedes, the happy, nearly jolly, owner of the store in front of my house. Her children are a bit older and all go to school and work in the store except Victoria who is a little younger and so sweet. She also works in the store from time to time and I believe she's 10 or 11 as well. Dona Mercedes sells the BEST tostadas with avocado, makes tortillas, and sells basics like eggs, flour, snacks, etc. One of my favorite parts of coming home in the afternoon is greeting them.

June was a tough month for work. The Ministry of Education suspended classes country-wide for 2 1/2 weeks. 1 week was for H1N1, 1 for Teacher's Day, and 1/2 for a holiday. So, as you can imagine, we had to rework the schedule and lost some valuable time. However, this month we are hitting our stride again and have had a few successful visits. Some have been less successful. The first training we gave about Phase III of the project, 7 superintendents missed the meeting. The second makeup training 5 missed the meeting. So, we've been going to them to explain the new pilot project. Right now in our visits we are visiting the proposed schools of each superintendent (which are 2 or more). Each has to pick 2 schools to run the Healthy Schools Project in. We go, make sure the schools are excited and fill out a set or requirements that our us, our boss, and personell from the Ministry of Education developed for the pilot project. If the superintendent has difficulty choosing between 3 or 4 possible schools, we help them make the decision based on the animation of the teachers, need for the program, and the adequacy for the program. We've had some great visits and some mediocre ones, but so far it is going well. At times we find ourselves saying T.I.G. because somebody doesn't show up, there is no transportation, etc, but overall everything is going well. Soon we want to do a training on how to do a baseline survey on the school, how to present the results, and how to make a plan of action to set small goals to eventually accomplish the certification of the school according to the Profile of a Healthy School. This week SueEllen (my partner) is in Spain, so I will be visiting 3 superintendents on my own or with other volunteers in those areas.

Life as a Peace Corps Volunteer definitely has its ups and downs in work, culture, living situations, and personal lives. Work is on an up right now because we've got a good pace set and everything is flowing nicely (most of the time). Culture is great. I love living in Tecpan even though the guys in the street are extremely disrespectful at times. My personal life is great. I'm working on getting in better shape, have great neighbors, a great home, and great friends. There are actually some other volunteers in Tecpan right now, 2 from Spain and 1 from French Canada so we have a great time cooking together, hanging out, etc. Being with people from different places, cultures, and languages is an experience that I never want to be without. Living situation: this is pretty funny. Everything is great on that front except I'm dirt poor. This month started with the 4th of July. This involved spending 3 nights in Antigua, spending money on food, nighttime activities, a hostal, etc. We also had to put down a deposit on a house we're renting for Thanksgiving in El Salvador as well as pay for some T-Shirts we ordered earlier in the year. You can imagine how much all this affects a volunteer on our salary. For the last couple of days I've been eating oatmeal, pasta, and the occasional piece of fruit of vegetable but pay day can't come soon enough. It's all a part of being a volunteer though, and part of it's exciting. I'll never go hungry, but the quality of food is a little low right now.

Something I forgot to include earlier: Teacher's Day. It happened in June and we got to participate in a ton of activities including going to a department wide awards ceremony with a lunch and dancing to a live band after, going to Santa Apolonia's celebration (our old stomping ground), and going with a group of teachers from Santa Apolonia to El Salvador for a Teacher's Day trip. It was really fun, tons of interaction with our counterparts and teachers, and I'm really going to miss this time of year when I'm back in the States.

Other great news: I'm going home for a visit in a little under 2 weeks! I'm going home for Brittany's wedding (One of my best friends, we've been friends for over 10 years now)! I can't wait to see my family, my friends, and of course my dog Maggie. So, email me if you'd like to get together, I'll be home August 5th- 18th. Also, the great thing about working in a pair is that we won't lose time in our work because SueEllen will be able to visit communities while I'm gone just as I'm doing while she's on vacation now. I'm also watching her dog Nala which is SO fun. Nala is adorable and hilarious to watch, although she has been digging in my garden.

I realize this is a super long post. I'm probably forgetting a ton but let me know if you have any questions!

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