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.