If I had one wish

I would wish for more wishes. I guess I am selfish...

But otherwise I've been nice all year long.

So here is my Christmas Wishlist

• SD Cards for my Camera
• Any laptop new or used, as long as it works.
• Sharpies
• a 2011 agenda
• a new journal
• A pedicure
• Invitations out to local bars that serve frosty Micro Brews
• Mix CDs
• Arts and Crafts supplies
• a trip to The Chowder Bowl at Nye Beach.
• A camelback waterbottle. Mine have been thrashed.
• Lots of Hangout time with friends and family. I miss you guys.

I'm pretty much counting down the days. This week is packed with stuff. Work, a marshmellow roast at my house this evening, 70 bottles of shampoo to deal with, and PAC meetings to close out the work week. Next week is open, so far, but I have a feeling it will alternately fly and drag by. I'm too broke to do much, but I'll make it work. I can't wait to see my people and be overwhelmed by it all. I'm a little anxious about that second part, but all shall be well. Oh yes. And soon I will be in the land of the free and the home of the Brave. "La Yusa."

Bichos, Bats and Beaches

The Month of December is in Full Swing.

I have a little work and a little play in my agenda, and I started the month off right with a two night trip to La Libertad. Dan Hinkle's grandparents John and Beverly came to see the Savior and made great beachhouse-mates... playing cards, sipping sangria and dishing out lightning fast, one-line zingers.

Some local Beachies
Waiting for the Mytical Green Flash

Heading out for a twilight fish?

Jugando....

Salvadoran Sea Cows

With the change of the season, I have had a new array of plagues in my house. They all keep me company...

The Latest Intruder

They stop by several times a day. Tito and his little sister.
Despite local gossip, she is NOT my child.

BATS! They came back, unfortunately.

Milena and Carmen (or is it Cristina?) after we spent the morning selling chicken.

My Neighbors across the street.
The Little boy looks like Bobby Hill to me...

My pet Leafcutter ants.
These guys are HUGE and go crazy for citrus fruit.

I don't know what species of spider this is, but those tiles are 12in x 12in.
After I took this I went back to take another with something
else in the photo for scale, and he was gone. Cold Shivers.

Another Ant, working away.

Despite my new hatered for shampoo, like I said, I love seeing the finished product. Here is the first in a soon-to-be-expanded line of handmade shampoos. Champu de Manzanilla... or Chamomile shampoo...

Happy 50 something-th Birthday, Mom.

The elastic of my remaining underwear are unravvling at a rapid pace, I have adopted a fleet of leaf cutter ants as pets, it's getting REALLY hot again, and my tomato plants are as tall as I am and FINALLY have 'maters growing. It must be winter, and about time to make my way back home for a little vacation.

At this point La Yusa is so close I could smell it between whiffs of burning plastic and perfume (if my airways weren't clogged with snot and flim from this lingering cold from hell.)

In other good news, my women and I made our first batch of Shampoo, bottled it, and put the labels on. Those babes sold all the shampoo in the first two days. HEY YOOOO.

Next week we will be adding aloe vera to the mix and doubling up. I do HATE shampoo at this point, but I have to say, seeing the bottles all full of honey colored shampoo with the pretty labels was only bettered by how fast those women got them all sold. Bravo, ladies.

Finally, I bought a new camera memory to replace the TWO that have been stolen from me. So I've been taking some photos again. Though, mostly just of my ants, my bats, and stuff like that...

Next week I will be hosting a marshmellow roast in my yard for some local friends. These days, most of my 'friends' are between 4 and 14, so my late night activities have changed. Should be a treat.

Tomorrow will be a fun-filled travel day for a night in La Libertad, in a beach house with La Familia Pato. This month will fly by... I can feel it.

I will throttle you, sir.

I was as surprised as he was when I said it... `You must be totally crazy.´

My wicked scoundrel of a counterpart didn´t think this day would come. From site development on he pleaded for a woman volunteer. Women are nice, easy to handle, and would never speak up against any lies, stealing or shady business. Hell, women probably would never even NOTICE the corruption.

Oh, but wait, Tio Richard. If you're going to invite yourself into my home, sit there and insult my intelligence, talk to me like I'm a 14-year-old and then tell me that maybe I wasn't worth the phone cards and meetings it took to get me into El Cocalito, I will demonstrate to you how your ideas about women are incorrect.

But I will not stoop to your level. Because I will level with you. If you're going to go around behind my back, throwing snarky comments around about me and hinder my progress, I will speak my snark right there to your face. If you want to use intimidation and cohersive measures to keep your position of power over my community, I'll just have to tell you that those measures you took were unethical, unfair, and against all the statutes of your own organization.

When, the next day you call my boss to 'offer suggestions' as to how I should be behaving and such, please keep in mind that if you spent a fraction of the time you spent talking ABOUT me to other people talking TO me, you'd waste a hell of a lot less saldo, and maybe you'd actually get what you asked for: a badass woman volunteer who would get your ADESCO in fighting shape, so a second volunteer could help you all get a Casa Comunal.

But if you think that's what is in store for you, Tio Richard, you are totally crazy.

Scattered.

Another night in the city. This month has been chock a block with out of site time, but it's all been for the greater good: desarollo.

There happen to be quite a few new little tidbits of "chambre" to pass along. Blogging in bulletpoint:

• After damn near two months of medical vacation in Washington DC, the delightful Erica Matsumoto is back in action in the savior. A big thumbs up to her as well as the unknown organ donor whose ACL our fond friend will be using from now on.

• The one and only Ms. Clelia will be making the trip to El Cocalito in the coming week to check out the climate (and I'm, for once, not talking about the opressive heat) and maybe, hopefully, using her fierce jefa power to break the Cocalito curse.

• Thanks to my counterpart's love of selling trees and small plants at 100 percent profit, an organization will be implementing a two year environmental project that includes a compost site, contra-littering education and (drumroll) a regular garbage pickup service! Yes!!!!! oh, and I have some exciting project plans of my own for the coming months, including a leadership camp for rural youth. Fun!

• My nightly yoga has paid off in a peace corps appropriate manner. I can hover endlessly over unclean toilet seats or prickly brush for the duration of even the longest pee. I would much MUCH rather be running, but whatever. My self image is algo low but my hopes are high.

• I'm frustrated in oh so many ways currently. But technologically, I'm a mess. ipods and radios and broken laptops and podcasts and CDs. Jesus. I feel like I have my foot in two techno paradigms. Like I'm installing a Garmin in a Ford Model T. Just send me mix CDs, and make them count.

• Selfishness, or rather, greediness is a recurring and frustrating theme here. In a world where the over uttered "prestame" and "regalame" mean the same thing in the end, my patience has been thoroughly tested and my trust broken. I wish people would stop asking me for money. I wish folks would stop asking me to gift them things. I wish I could just say no without feeling compelled to give an excuse or feel selfish.

• I saw my friend Philip Shilts bearded salvadoran twin at metro centro today. I think that pretty much rounds out my salvo twin spotting. I've seen damn near every one of my friends and enemies in this country. The little kid down the highway who looks like my second cousin Emry, the cobrador on the nice 259 bus that looks like my uncle Tony, my neighbor Oscar, who is the spitting image of the cartoon character Bobby Hill and now a coffee cup frequenting Philip Shilts whose surprising cameo this evening brought up a chain of thoughts:
* I told my friend Dan Hinkle that, due to his chronic inability to keep a hangout date, the verb shiltsed was created. No matter who was standing me up, it became the commonly used word for myself and my dear roomate Kelsey.
* I recently read a book by Sarah Vowell called "Assassination Vacation" in which she wrote about the rivalry between Edison and Westinghouse. After inspiring the creation of the electric chair by zapping animals with AC electricity in an attempt to demonstrate its greater danger over DC, Edison suggested that the verb to describe the act of dying by electric shock, which we now call electrocution, should be "westinghoused."
* the shower in my hotel room has an electric hot water shower head. In many of the hotels here, these things electrocute you. It varies from a slight staticky shivering felt on the knobs, to a full force Westinghouse to the body. Dan Hinkle calls them widowmakers.
* thinking of widowmakers my mind strays to the palm fronds that regularly fall from my trees. I did a little online research, very little, and could find no true statistics on the deaths caused either by falling fronds or coconuts. I'm kind of disappointed. I still won't hang my hammock in my front yard, though.

Hello, my name is Jessica...

But sometimes I'm not really sure who I am here.

I love El Salvador, I love Peace Corps, I love my community and my work...

But sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in my own head a lot. Despite the time I spend with my fellow ahuachapanecans and the occasional meet-ups with PC friends, I feel like I have lost touch with pre-corps Jessica and the inner gringa.

That's the point though, isn't it? Break down cultural norms, challenge yourself, blah blah blah.

The thing is that maybe I've gone too far, I've gone campo, I've gone soft.

Being here in El Salvador has forced me into making compromises and sacrifices... Force me to take bucket baths every morning, to pour water into my toilet, to have filthy feet... Whatever. I dig that stuff. Just give me the ability to tell grodie boys to eff off when they make lame comments on the street, to go out in the evenings without my neighbors playing 21 questions, and to go running at will so that everyone in my town would stop telling me I'm getting fat every five seconds.

At what point do I get to say "hey, let me do my gringa thing. Let me tell you boys to go to hell, that I'm going to walk the three meters to the market, and if you force me to eat your tortillas, and make me uncomfortable when I run, you can't always be saying I'm getting gordita.

I need to tell people when they're shredding my self esteem, and making me self conscious. Of course it's a cultural difference. They aren't trying to destroy me with their over protective vigilence and compliments on my salvo-squishy middle. But It's all too much, man.

In other news, I'm in San Salvador for the night after a PAC meeting, so I'm missing a fiesta rosa in my community.

I'm not going to the aventura concert, or anywhere else, tonight. Too poor, too uninteresed in hangoverland.

Heading back to site tomorrow... Aye dios.

I need a pick me up. I need to get control of mi vida

Something about the Climate...

and I feel like I'm home.

Apparently I should brace myself for the downward slope of month 11, but I am way to stoked about how happy I still am, here in month 8.

Can't complain.

But I will... for a moment. Unfortunately, someone has 50 of my US dollars and my memory card with ALL MY PHOTOS on it. I don't know how it happened, but I knew I didn't like San Salvador for a reason. With that in mind, all the photos I had hoped to share here are now... somewhere.

Things in El Cocalito have been wonderful, and I have some stuff going on with youth and my women´s group is still going strong. I was recently inspired by the sad state of my skin and the high price of St Ives apricot scrub to learn how to make facewash and then grind up coconut shells (which, as you may guess from the name, are in abundance in El Cocalito) to put in as an exfoliant... Stay tuned for that one.

In other news, things have officially (and yet somehow, unofficially) come to an end with the Payaso Ave. He is not "the Salvadoran to change my life," as everyone hoped he would be. I'm one hundred percent okay with that. I only wish I would have gotten a photo of him, to go with the book I may write on our ill-fated, but highly entertaining, friendship. If only I had thought ahead.

I recently spent a phenomenal weekend in Concepcion de Ataco for a regional meeting with almost all of Ahuachapan and Sonsonate's finest gringos. But I got to meet the new volunteers, who are quality, stroll around with my homeboy Dan Clarahan, and then hit up the food festival... All under the clear skies and warm Ahuachapanecan sun.

Pretty much blissful.

I came home to a happy community, and a happy host family, as it seems that people are really getting Pollos de Engorde, that my first friend in El Cocalito really is coming back to El Salvador, and people actually do want to buy ecocinas after all! Oh yeah!!

Probably doesn't hurt that I will be in the US in several weeks, too.

If my friends could see me now...

So it's the day after El Salvador's Dia De Independencia, and thank god. Watching little bichas shaking their stuff in fishnets, heeled boots and a pound of makeup was not my idea of freedom.
I spent my morning sitting in the wafting aroma of pupusas, hanging out with my vendadora friends on the El Cocalito football field. By the coffee hour I was sipping a weak brew in the Plaza of Atiquizaya and by noche I was sitting on Ave's bed, waiting for the next good story, and ready to bob and weave.

Let me backtrack...

Last week, de repente, I found myself being kissed by a Salvadoran. I won't get into details, but let's just say it was not so great. The lingering sabor of cigarettes, fruity gum and fear didn't really do it for me.

We had plans to hang out this week, so I didn't break them. I generally enjoy his company, though I have to admit that I spend a fare share of our time together discreetly chuckling at him rather than with him. His nearly constant movement, his romantic view of everything, his cliche phrases, and his tendency to overshare are like a fuente of entertainment. He's just so weird, but it is hard to remember sometimes that I am not in Kansas anymore, and nothing is like it is back home.

Which takes me to this scenario. Sitting in the Ave's bed, listening to music and talking about one thing or another. I was a little on edge, assuming he would again try to kiss me, and I had to have a means of dodging it. Then, in the next moment, he was doing that thing with his eyes that he must think is super suave, and I know it's time to act.

"Hold on a second," he said in his too cool-for-school voice, and he reached up onto a nearby shelf. "I want to show you something."

So I brace myself. Could be something cool, could be something horrifying.

He keeps his back to me and I hear some questionable sounds.

He turns around and has a two foot balloon inflated and starts making me a balloon animal. A dog. I cringe and choke back my laughter and try to keep cool with every squeaky twist.

"Normally I do this in my whole clown costume, but for you I'll make the exception."

And that's where I loose it.

Not saying that you´re fea....

"I just need for you to be a little more pretty..." said Milena. "You have a iron for your hair, and lots of cute shoes... but you're always in flipflops and your hair is always pulled back"

This coming from a woman whose hair I haven`t seen down more than twice, who never wears makeup and who also only ever wears flipflops.

"I live in a humid, sweaty climate, with dirt or mud roads, and I bathe with a bowl. I don´t think I am game for traipsing around with my hair down in high heels," I told her. "Besides, who cares?"

Apparently, she sure does. I embrace my role as la gringa despeinada. Dirty feet, unpainted fingernails and all. Though, I do wish I could wear my hair down a little more often.

At least I have someone here telling me la verdad!

Thankfully I have had some minor victories to bouy my spirits against such blows.

My first women´s business group meeting had a fantastic turnout of 25 women. The second meeting had 20. We made our shampoo, and it is pretty decent. All the women are excited to make some minor changes, and then a little money.

With a little luck and a modest request, I was able to win a small grant to fund our training and a few batches of experimental soap and shampoo as well as some hardware. Thanks US embassy. Though it is only a little money, the women seem to encouraged by it, and it has definitely encouraged me, too.

The last few days of August will be as jam packed as the rest of this month has been, and September, so far, is looking pretty busy. Thank god.

I can´t believe August is almost over. How time flies in the developing world.

Other tidbits:

1. I am now accepting donations to add to my personal bank account. My Cause? Coming home at some point. My plan had been for Christmas and New Years, but things have been working against me. If you would like to make a donation, please let me know. haha.
2. After a very awkward conversation with the Birdman, my questions have been answered, and all is well in El Salvador. We will continue "caminando juntos" for the time being. I´m glad for it.
3. I learned a lot of good shit during a three day in-service training session in Ataco with all my favorite PCVs. It´s days like those I feel the full impact of my great luck in knowing such chivo people.
4. My veggie garden is coming in full force. I expanded my beds and will be moving around my tomato plants. I´m nerdily excited about it, and my neighbors are impressed that I know how to dig holes and plant seeds. Cultural bridges. White girls also get their hands dirty.
5. My nephew will be turning 7 on the Fifth day of September. He is really cool. Here´s a shoutout to my riot of a sobrino, Connor.

Future Butterfly, attached to my plastic chair

He waits

My Wall of Recuerdos. Thanks to Kelsey for amping

up my photo collection with a recent package.
My Salvi friends consider you a great photo artist.
As do I, of course.

Daily blossoms

Making Shampoo

Making Shampoo, still.

The day I stop being amazed by ants....

Ugh.

SUPER UGH

They eat mosquitos, so I´ve been told. I like them even more now.

Gotta get me a Buzz

The view across Lago Cojutepeque,
where I spent a great night kicking damn near full bottles of rum into
the great depths, making merry with The Hinkle duo and Alex,
and, less fortunately, contracting a horrendo enfermedad.

A Family of worms, eating the leaves off my jocote tree.

Lil´bichos out in front of Niña Carmen´s house at La Barra de Santiago

Look how cuuuteee, and smaller than the word picturesque....
Nothing like a little Jane Austen.

On Tuesday, I witnessed the fall of my best US import. My french press slipped from my soapy hands and landed on the rocks next to my pila. It was a rough moment. But I gathered up the peices, consoling myself with the fact that I still have my big coffee machine that I inherited from the previous PCV. Not all was lost.

At 5:30 a.m. Friday, as I stumbled out to my pila with chelitos in my eyes, I reached out, glass coffee pot in hand, and hit the corner of the cement lavadora just right with the edge of the carafe, and crack. Done for.

El Salvador is major coffee producing country, and you can get some gooooood java in this place, if you have the means to brew it yourself.

Despite the coffee production, no one here uses real coffee. All the best stuff is exported, the next best stuff is bought by those who can afford it, and the rest of the population use Cafe Listo.

To me, instant is not an option. I need that early morning hit that only 2-10 cups of real, black coffee can give. In fact, along with having electricity and not having dengue, the switch from crap coffee to real coffee was a huge factor in the move from my old house to my own house. So now I begin my seach for a new coffee pot.

Upcoming events: Tomorrow we're making shampoo! Really excited to see how it goes. Tomorrow morning I'll also be hosting the Bird for a cup of coffee, and hopefully get a few interesting responses to a few scandalous questions. Wednesday is the start of IST. Very excited to see all my fellow COED and Muni PCVs in the fresco clima of Ataco.

Bus Lag

Roller Coaster. Thats what I imagined during my 4 am trip this morning. The inevitable snoozing Salvadorans crammed into a microbus on a windy mountain hill. They´re dreaming of rollercoasters.

I had my own rollercoaster thoughts bouncing around in my brains. After spending a weekend traveling across the country (Perquin, Morazan with my Pato followed shortly by some time in Atiqizaya, Ahuachapan with the other feathered enigma) I felt like I had been going in ridiculous circles.

What the hell am I doing in El Salvador, anyway? Do I have my priorities in order? Shouldn´t I have been in my site all weekend, instead of crossing the country, dancing in the mountains and then going to a western pueblo, where I felt like I was running into big cultural and language barriers, over and over again. I don´t know.

Ok, so...

Here´s the thing about the bird.

Initially: Curious to see what this loon was all about, at least for the sake of knowing. Nothing to worry about.

A little later: Could be something to worry about. I´m going to throw out some cliche, but more or less accurate words to clear it up - kind, respectable, magnetic and hilarious.

Now... For this visit, all those nice adjectives were in full force for the duration of day one. BUT, Day two... well, I felt pretty lame. Like an idiot, like a pain, like I should have gone home much, much sooner.

So, if I had to guess what the next step would be, my guess will be a mutual fizzle, because I don´t like feeling like an idiot and he doesn´t seem to like listening to me speak so much. haha. Which is kind of a problem for both of us. Maybe it was just a blip, but either way, I´m not going to worry about it.

All I know is that I feel good back in my house, where the pan is integral and the coffee is black. I am super excited for a week full of useful work. A women´s business group, an ecocina demonstration, and an Asamblea General? BLAMMO!

Now I just have to write a damn grant... without my computer. Wish me luck

With love!
Jessica

Where am I?

Still home sweet home, indeed.

Starting sometime between 7 and 8 p.m. every evening, I am ridiculously bored.

If it is raining, I can scurry around, moving guacales to catch the streams of water pouring from my roof into my house.

If my host family dogs have decided to spend the night on my side of town on my patio, I can spend a few minutes talking to them and throwing meaningless threats at them. We all know I won't hit them, so they don't even stir.

If my computer wasn't broken, I could use that to watch a movie, listen to podcasts or edit photos. But it's screwed up, too.

The books I have in my house are cien por ciento bad. Books in english here can be expensive, so I've been trying to rotate through various selections from the Peace Corps office. They all suck. I just finished a terrible "travel tale" because I had nothing else to do. Hey, buddy, just because you decided to leave your super senior year at university, 7 credits short of graduation and move to mexico to do blow and screw tourists, doesn't mean you're qualified to write a book.

But I digress.

I finally broke out the Polymer clay my mom sent me some months back.
I made a super badass ring. I put it in the oven, and it bubbled, melted and smoked.

Damn.

I re-made it.

Same thing.

So I called my mom. She made a few suggestions, but footnoted her ideas with "make sure to clean out the toaster oven and air your house out really well, that plastic is not good to be breathing in."

I told her I would. But I kind of laughed in my head.

I kept it to myself that just earlier that day I was standing in my yard, putting matches to a plastic bag of toilet paper, a churritos bag and various other pieces of debris that people threw into my yard.

I also didn't mention that my fire was a tenth of the size of the fires of my neighbors, and that they don't make it a point to pack all the plastic and paper garbage they can into the Sonsonate bus terminal garbage bins, like I do.

Nor did I mention that damn near every cooking fire in this country is started with a little wood and a whole lot of plastic or styrofoam.

Breathe it in. Deep.

There is no point in mentioning any of that. Because my mom is still right. The toxic residue from the clay probably should be scrubbed out, and my windows should have been open. I think it is just easy to lose sight of what makes sense when you live in a way that forces you to do and accept things that are absolutely lunatic. - burning trash, pouring bleach and detergent into rivers, not refrigerating your eggs, and drinking cafe listo, to name a few.

I finally got a ring to come out right. And a few hairpins, too. I shook my fists at the dogs, locked my gate and went to bed, listening to the rain hitting the bottom of a guacal, and wanting to tear apart whatever lame book I am subjecting myself to until I can fall asleep at last.

Rain on My Parade

Well, as usual things have been just insane here in The Little Coconut.

I have been amping up my community time since I moved into my new pad. My Spanish is getting better - except for a disastrous comedor experience with Danny Clarahan in Sonsonate - people are finally "tu-ing" me, and my house is full of watermelons that my neighbors and friends have gifted to me. I've been doing house visits here and there, and despite the initial awkwardness, they feel good.
The other day I had about 7 visitors over throughout the day. If I could just get those jovenes on the corner to not make kissy sounds at me when I pass, life would be 100 percent.

And then it happened.

"Your 'tio' (the codename my host family and I have for my devilish counterpart) was over yesterday. And he was talking about you." My Tio was talking mad smack, turns out. "Los de Cuerpo de Paz... He said, do nothing. The guy that was up in Jujutla or Juayua, he just wandered around, gallavanting, never worked... Looks like we have the same problem on our hands." Ben and milena defended me, saying that I go to everything, that I participate and talk to everyone.

"Naaaaahh," he said, "you're just defending her because you consider her family."

So, I HAD been having a great morning - the details of which I shall get to shortly - and then I heard all this, and I wanted to cry for the first time since I've been here. How dare that so and so say those things, he just wants me to throw money into his pockets and give things to the people he finds worthy.

I got home, heated up my tortilla, fed my one remaining bird, and decided thoroughly that my tio can lump it. I'll show him. I made a mental list of all the things I had done that day and I have to say, I'm not doing nothing. I decided to address the expectations and role of Cuerpo de Paz at the next ADESCO meeting. That jerk.

Va.

Home Sweet Home, or Making a Nest

The Kids playing with the glow sticks (sent by mom back home)

Part two

Casi Angeles

My Spare room

My Kitchen, messy

My Bedroom, Messy

My Living Room

From the "yard"

The View from the Ground

The View from the Porch

I've got a bunch of Bananas!

This is what they look like...

My lime tree bears fruit

Well, thats the tour of my new house. It's really big, but I dig it, big time. Fifty dollars a month in rent, and today I got my first electricity bill, $2.95. Killer.

Living alone has changed the experience here pretty thoroughly. Parts I like - cooking my own food, having electricity, privacy, drop-in visits from neighbors, living in the calle principal, and parts I don't like - too much alone time, not having the pots and pans to cook my own beans still, and having the occasional day where I spend my hours just trying to kill time before I can justify going to bed.

Such is life.

But the good news is I have made some new friends on this end of town, and my friend Milena has broken her promise of "never coming to visit me" and has been by many times.

The other day I heard the sad news that one of my first amigos here in El Cocalito jumped ship and is on his way for the USA. I hardly could believe it, as he had a steady income, a family of three young kids and a loving wife. It came out of nowhere. "He had some troubles," my friends say. I got a text message from him the other night from Guatemala. He really is going. I wished him well, and warned him that the USA is full of Gringas Pasmadas, a claim he negated, saying that all the Gringas Pasmadas went to El Salvador. I am really going to miss having him around to joke and shoot the shit with, but I hope that his trip goes smoothly.

In other news, I had a date with a Salvadoran this morning. It started an hour late, and more or less was successful. I will write a whole blog entry on these developments just as soon as I can stop laughing.

Ooohh La La!

Things finally got BETTER!

After about a week long bummer fest, things in El Salvador have finally, finally, fallen into place.

Some frustrations came up with my ADESCO members. They're really protective over me, to a fault, and were trying to take the lead on getting me a house. They had chosen a little, dark, no electricity, no water craphole. (Literally, the latrine was a nearly full craphole in the ground).

I vetoed, and found myself a spacious, electroded, superpad (photos to come once I have it looking better). So far, all but one of the bats have moved out, and I've patched the roof up nicely.

My friend Nancy came over to help me hacer limpieza, and she we shared some hot toast and jelly with icy Salva cola on the front porch. She informed me of the tasty treasure trove in my yard. Cocos, limes, jocotes, chiles, mangos and bananas (which are about a week or two from being ready to pick and eat)

That, plus the garden beds I plan on putting in once I'm a little more settled will make for some good eating.

My host family has been really moody about my leaving. Despite my insistance that it is just as far from my house to theirs as it is from theirs to mine, they say it is just way too far for them, but not so far for me. Pish Posh. I guess I am being a little moody too.

There has been some chambre concerning the love life of yours truly here in both El Cocalito and all interested parties of La Barra de Santiago. My salvadoran friends and family want so badly for my life to be like a telenovela (as do I, on occasion) that they really like to embellish the littlest things. But that is a story I will save for another post.

With that, here is wishing a happy retirement to my Aunt Kathleen, and speedy recovery to Aunt Judy.

With Love.

A Milestone.

Things in El Salvador have been pissing me off for the last week or so.

Instead of dwelling on cheats, scandals, chambre, and my stint wading through thigh high flood water in the streets of El Cocalito, I decided to pay tribute to the fact that a few weeks ago, I filled my first journal, ever. I'll for sure go into greater detail on all the crummy bits later, when they've -hopefully- come to a happy conclusion.

But for now, a recap on ¨Journal June 2009 to June 2010.¨
(which was gifted to me by Amanda Patt at our graduation.)

December 20, 2009

"I can't beliveve my life right now. I love so much of it....
It kills me when my warmest, funniest, most loving moments with people now are punctuated by phrases life 'I can't believe you're leaving,' 'I'll really miss you,' and 'Will I ever laugh this hard again for two years?'"

Jan 19, 2010

How long will it take for a snail to get to the East coast?

Jan 20, 2010

It's good to know that I still find him as bland and intellectually uninteresting as I did when we finally broke up...

Jan 21, 2010

I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something like, "Well, Jessica, We'll just have to get together soon, so we can end out friendship." Alex Leffler, you put it so well.

Feb 4, 2010 (El Salvador)

I'm already tired of being in this big group. Chatter-Chatter....

Feb 6 2010

Started the day with the worlds most gigantic breakfast of all time.
Recap: Coffee, scrambled eggs, cheese, beans, 1 tortilla, and a plate of fried bananas.

Feb 12, 2010

I ate a whole fried fish, with a face.

Feb 21, 2010

Got on the 161, started to go, bus runs over the cobrador.

***

The Communal Kids swarmed us with grimey, sticky, cheesy hugs.

***

Friday, nothing happened. Oh, except Queso nailed Dan C. in the junk. Hilarious. Crazy lil Queso.

March 7, 2010

The sun is an agressive force.

March 14, 2010

I made a mountain of popcorn and some serious faux pas with plastic bags.

March 30

Rough one. Grandpa passed away this morning in his house. The service is on Friday and I feel bad about missing it... I feel bad that I won't be there, or that I wasn't there.

April 3
My host grandpa brought me some cough syrup he made out of some plant. It is the exact color and temperature as pee.

May 7, 2010

... and then I have to pretend to laugh, over and over again.

June 20, 2010

Oh shit, June's "over," it's almost Christmas.

El Salvador Can Be Beautiful

Leashed.. because turtles... are... fast?

That turtle, from the river by my house, is not long for this world.
Brian is not the nicest of pet owners.

La Barra de Santiago. Which I live 10 minutes from.

Fly Hat

Happy Birthday, dutch yodler.

Thats neato.

Dan Hinkle... the morning after two bottles of tinto and
what must have been some hearty giggling

The view from Vista del Lago, in Suchitoto.

Beauty. Mercury, poo, and chemical invested beauty.


I hit my breaking point this last week... It is still lingering, but I took a walk down photo memory lane and that made me feel better. I can't hate a place where such great people and such potentially great adventures are just around the corner. I hope.

PS,

ahem... also, I know that not every one of my lovely friends and family members reads every one of my blog entries... but if you do, don't hesitate to comment.
Like the letters, packages, emails and fb messages, your comments are like... pennies... from heaven? Or maybe like little arrows of support? Positive vibes? Whichever term you prefer, they mean a lot. :) So thanks for all of it already.

Love you!