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.