Well, I talked to my family the other day, and they said that the Spurs are doing well in the play-offs, so it´s good to hear that so far, they´re doing what they do best. Go Spurs Go! and I hope I didn´t just jinx them for posting that.
Despite missing out on things like television and the Spurs and Round Rock games, I´ve had no shortage of sports action. Two weekends ago, I went to the Maria Auxiliadora high school festival in Santa Ana, which is where Sydney volunteers. That´s the place where I had my ¨hamburger¨. It was like a Fiesta event, because there was a ton of food booths, dancing, music in English and Spanish, and it was packed with people. In the morning, there was also a basketball tournament for kids from high schools in the area. Sydney was drafted into keeping the books for the games, but she´d never done it before. Since I´ve kept the books for baseball games, I thought I might be able to help her, so we pretty much ran the tournament. I still don´t know how we ended up doing it, because none of them had ever met me before. It was super fun though, and not hard if you know basketball signals - they´re the same in every language. I also got to keep time because there was no shot clock or game clock. Soccer is definitely the big sport here, and kids are still learning how to play basketball. There were a ton of calls for traveling and double dribbling because they kept forgetting the rules.
In the afternoon, there was a dance show with kids competing in troupes from the area. I really don´t know how to explain it, but I´ll try. They call it modern dancing, but it´s more like hip-hop dancing mixed with stomp, and each routine lasted twenty minutes, non-stop. The kids were amazing and so athletic! I bet a ton of back-up dancers for celebrities are Salvadoran. But the troupes were made up of all girls, all boys, and mixed, and ranged in age from elementary kids all the way to high school. Serious talent and serious entertainment!
This past weekend, I got to go to a professional soccer game! And it was just as I thought it would be. I went with three guys from the local VIDES group (so nice to be out with people my own age!) and they wouldn´t teach me any gritos (cheers) until we were at the stadium because they all have bad words and they didn´t want the sisters to hear them teaching me. I bought a disposible camera since mine was still in the shop then (it´s back now and in perfect working order), so I´ll post pictures once I can finish the roll and get them developed. The team from Santa Ana is FAS and they were playing their rivals, San Salvador. We sat in the least insane section, and the tickets were only $3. For most of the game, the score was tied at 2, and as the end was getting closer, the guys were getting nervous because they had to get me back to the high school by 9, since the girls who answer the door go to bed at 9. Well, it was 8:45 and the score was still tied, with 4 minutes left. I begged the guys to stay to the end, unless it went into extra time, so we watched from the gate at the exit so we could escape before the crowd. Within the 90th minute, I kid you not, the FAS team finally scored to win! I didn´t get to see it because one of the guys was taking one last picture of me in the stadium and I had my back to the game, so I can´t wait to see if he got a picture of the goal in the background. Anyway, all in all, a very fun experience, and I even caught one of the give-away towels that they threw into the stands!
If I thought I was missing out on baseball, I was wrong too. Today were the finals for the intramurals for all the public school kids here in Chalchuapa. I went to see them play and two of the girls´ teams played in the championship games! Here in El Salvador, there are only two high school sports. All the girls play softball and all the boys play soccer. There´s no mixing, and basketball is only a pick-up sport. So I got my fill of softball games. It was great to see the girls having a good time, and one of them was even the winning pitcher. I am so proud of them, and I felt like a soccer mom too, since I was sitting with all the parents (and Sor Paty).
So keep me updated on all the sports action, but if you forget, I won´t be sad since I´m getting plenty of it here.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
¡Buen Provencho!
Pretty much all of the food here (with the exception of one; refer to an earlier post) has been extremely delicious! Since I´ve been here, I´ve eaten pupusas, which is the national food of El Salvador, pretty much every week. Normally, it´s saved for a special occasion, but since almost everything I´ve done has been a special occasion, I´ve eaten a lot of pupusas. A pupusa is kind of like a stuffed crust pizza that the size of a small tortilla. It´s a corn tortilla that is stuffed with different things, like beans, or cheese, or beef, or a combination of those. On top is a like a vinagary mix of shredded carrots and cabbage, and then there´s a tomato-based red sauce you can dribble over it. You have to eat it with your hands, and it´s really delicious. I think I might be able to eat them every day!
As well as the national food, I have been eating a lot of the national flower also! It´s called la flor de isote and it´s kind of bitter but goes well with rice and chopped up hot dogs, of all things. I can´t really think of an example of eating flowers in the US, other than maybe honeysuckle, but we do it a lot here.
We have different kinds of beans with almost every meal, and usually tortillas too. The tortillas are really plain, and are just a complement to whatever you´re eating. They´re meant to stay out of the way of the flavor. I made one for the first time this past weekend, and I did a pretty good job! It took me a few tries, but I could make three in a row without being reminded how to do it. It was a lot of work, but if I did it all the time, it would be a lot easier and I wouldn´t have to think so hard about what I was doing.
We also drink a lot of juice. There is a mango tree in the courtyard ( or was, it got chopped down yesterday because the roots are interfering with their plumbing), so there´s always refresco de mango, which is basically an entire mango in a blender, plus water to make it a liquid. They also drink a lot of powdered milk mixed with hot water. I´m still not used to it. It´s really weird to have cereal in hot milk and I usually eat something else for breakfast. One day, we had actual cow´s milk that they bought from a woman who walks around to all the houses with big bags of milk. We had to boil it because it was raw, so no cold milk for me then either.
They make a lot of soup too, but it´s not like the soup in the US, because when you´re done, there´s still a lot of stuff in your bowl, like bones or corncobs and things like that. Chicken soup is boiled chicken in a liquid with vegetables. And it´s the whole chicken, without the head. So you might find a chicken foot in your bowl.
We also eat vegetables from the garden that I work in for a few hours every afternoon, and eggs from the chickens right outside the girls´ dorm.
So basically up until now, I´ve been describing what I eat with the sisters, for breakfast and lunch. For dinner, I eat with the girls and they eat very differently. They rarely eat meat, because it´s so expensive. Their usual dinner consists of some kind of beans, sweet cream (the kind from milk), and some kind of bread, either a tortilla or a roll. If they drink anything, it´s warm milk or water from the tap. They never eat sweets, but they do eat fruit all day, from the trees around house.
I don´t drink water from the tap because it has a lot of parasites and is slightly polluted. The sisters boil tap water and then refrigerate it. A few weeks ago, a group of doctors that volunteer their time for the poor, gave all the girls a physical. They determined that, as a whole, they all have parasites in the intestines and they´re dehydrated, so they need to drink more water. Only the water contains the parasties, so it´s a catch-22. A couple of days after the doctors were here, a group of people from a pharmeceutical company came with medicine to kill intestinal parasites, so everybody took some. The sisters and I had to pose in baseball caps with the company name on it for a promotional photo, a small price to pay for free medicine for the girls.
This past weekend, I went to a carnival in Santa Ana at one of the high schools there, that Sydney, the other volunteer, works for. They were selling hamburgers and I was so excited to order one! They asked if I wanted everything on it, so I said yes, thinking I could just take off whatever I didn´t want. Turned out it wasn´t that easy. It started out simple enough, with a hamburger patty (not sure if it was beef) on a bun. Then there was cheese, followed by a slice of ham. Then they put ketchup on it, and strawberry syrup. Yeah. Not the kind of thing that´s easily scraped off your bun. It was still good, but definitely not what I thought I was ordering.
So I hope this satisfies everyone´s questions about what I´ve been eating, and as soon as I get my camera back from the repair shop in San Salvador, I´ll take more pictures!
¡Buen provecho! (Enjoy your meal!)
As well as the national food, I have been eating a lot of the national flower also! It´s called la flor de isote and it´s kind of bitter but goes well with rice and chopped up hot dogs, of all things. I can´t really think of an example of eating flowers in the US, other than maybe honeysuckle, but we do it a lot here.
We have different kinds of beans with almost every meal, and usually tortillas too. The tortillas are really plain, and are just a complement to whatever you´re eating. They´re meant to stay out of the way of the flavor. I made one for the first time this past weekend, and I did a pretty good job! It took me a few tries, but I could make three in a row without being reminded how to do it. It was a lot of work, but if I did it all the time, it would be a lot easier and I wouldn´t have to think so hard about what I was doing.
We also drink a lot of juice. There is a mango tree in the courtyard ( or was, it got chopped down yesterday because the roots are interfering with their plumbing), so there´s always refresco de mango, which is basically an entire mango in a blender, plus water to make it a liquid. They also drink a lot of powdered milk mixed with hot water. I´m still not used to it. It´s really weird to have cereal in hot milk and I usually eat something else for breakfast. One day, we had actual cow´s milk that they bought from a woman who walks around to all the houses with big bags of milk. We had to boil it because it was raw, so no cold milk for me then either.
They make a lot of soup too, but it´s not like the soup in the US, because when you´re done, there´s still a lot of stuff in your bowl, like bones or corncobs and things like that. Chicken soup is boiled chicken in a liquid with vegetables. And it´s the whole chicken, without the head. So you might find a chicken foot in your bowl.
We also eat vegetables from the garden that I work in for a few hours every afternoon, and eggs from the chickens right outside the girls´ dorm.
So basically up until now, I´ve been describing what I eat with the sisters, for breakfast and lunch. For dinner, I eat with the girls and they eat very differently. They rarely eat meat, because it´s so expensive. Their usual dinner consists of some kind of beans, sweet cream (the kind from milk), and some kind of bread, either a tortilla or a roll. If they drink anything, it´s warm milk or water from the tap. They never eat sweets, but they do eat fruit all day, from the trees around house.
I don´t drink water from the tap because it has a lot of parasites and is slightly polluted. The sisters boil tap water and then refrigerate it. A few weeks ago, a group of doctors that volunteer their time for the poor, gave all the girls a physical. They determined that, as a whole, they all have parasites in the intestines and they´re dehydrated, so they need to drink more water. Only the water contains the parasties, so it´s a catch-22. A couple of days after the doctors were here, a group of people from a pharmeceutical company came with medicine to kill intestinal parasites, so everybody took some. The sisters and I had to pose in baseball caps with the company name on it for a promotional photo, a small price to pay for free medicine for the girls.
This past weekend, I went to a carnival in Santa Ana at one of the high schools there, that Sydney, the other volunteer, works for. They were selling hamburgers and I was so excited to order one! They asked if I wanted everything on it, so I said yes, thinking I could just take off whatever I didn´t want. Turned out it wasn´t that easy. It started out simple enough, with a hamburger patty (not sure if it was beef) on a bun. Then there was cheese, followed by a slice of ham. Then they put ketchup on it, and strawberry syrup. Yeah. Not the kind of thing that´s easily scraped off your bun. It was still good, but definitely not what I thought I was ordering.
So I hope this satisfies everyone´s questions about what I´ve been eating, and as soon as I get my camera back from the repair shop in San Salvador, I´ll take more pictures!
¡Buen provecho! (Enjoy your meal!)
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The Great Silence
First of all, I apologize already for not posting very often. The internet is a little spotty here and the internet usage is even spottier. Since I don´t have the password to the wireless internet, I´m sharing the community computer with 6 other women, who all, not coincidentally, share the same free time. So I barely get to use it.
Anyway, as promised, I will include photos:
This is a view of the volcano over San Salvador on the way from the airport on the main highway.
There are lots of these, cliffs with permanent billboards painted on the side. There are regular billboards, too, but I think these are more interesting.
Well, as it turns out, it´s taking quite a while to upload the pictures, so here´s the link to more of them: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2437374&l=2bf73&id=7911406
I´ll post about what´s been going on soon, but I know you´re anxious to see photos!
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Am I even in another country? Oh, right...
Here in El Salvador, I have plenty of reminders of the United States. They use the US dollar, and despite the poverty, prices are the same, if not more expensive. The cheapest gallon of gas I´ve seen was $4.52. The terrain, minus the volcanoes, looks a lot like the Hill Country, and the kids here all wear clothes donated from the U.S.
Over the weekend, most of the girls go home, but a few, for multiple reasons (their families live far away, their families don´t have space for them, etc) stay here. This is the time when they´re allowed to watch TV or movies. Their favorite is the Disney Channel. So I watched Hannah Montana en español with them, and some Disney Channel movie I´d never heard of but I´m sure my sister has seen it a thousand times already. They´re really obsessed with High School Musical, too. In fact, I asked one of the girls what her favorite song was of all time, and she said ¨You are the Music in Me¨, only it took a few tries for me to get it because I didn´t understand with her accent (and I wasn´t really expecting it). She had no idea what it was about but she loves it anyway. The girls´admiration of the US is really bizarre to me, but I guess it makes sense, since Disney Channel is the only TV channel for kids here. We also watched Beethoven´s 5th and the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movie, both new for me.
However, despite the presence of the US, I was quickly brought back to El Salvador yesterday around lunchtime. So far, I couldn´t complain about Salvadoran food, in fact, I´ve loved almost everything I´ve tried... Anyway, I walked into the kitchen to see that lunch was an entire fish, yes, head, fins, tail, everything but the scales, simmering in a pan. Now, I´m not really a big fan of fish in general, so this was just unreal. Sister Marta Julia (or Sor Che, as she´s known, since she spent her childhood in Argentina) hates fish, so she offered me an alternative: Spam. Hmm, decisions decisions. In the end, I decided to give the fish a try anyway, since they were using spices I´d never tried. It actually didn´t taste too bad, but it´s not really the taste that drives me away. It´s the tiny bones, and this fish was full of them. DEFINTELY not of US influence, or at least not what I´ve ever experienced. I choked it down and prayed that there wouldn´t be any leftovers, which there weren´t.
Today is my free day, so I´m meeting with all the VIDES volunteers in El Salvador in the town of Santa Tecla. It´s just outside of San Salvador and apparently the local volunteers plan on taking us on field trips every weekend to check out the country. I´ll let yáll know how everything goes. In the meantime, have a wonderful Sunday!
Over the weekend, most of the girls go home, but a few, for multiple reasons (their families live far away, their families don´t have space for them, etc) stay here. This is the time when they´re allowed to watch TV or movies. Their favorite is the Disney Channel. So I watched Hannah Montana en español with them, and some Disney Channel movie I´d never heard of but I´m sure my sister has seen it a thousand times already. They´re really obsessed with High School Musical, too. In fact, I asked one of the girls what her favorite song was of all time, and she said ¨You are the Music in Me¨, only it took a few tries for me to get it because I didn´t understand with her accent (and I wasn´t really expecting it). She had no idea what it was about but she loves it anyway. The girls´admiration of the US is really bizarre to me, but I guess it makes sense, since Disney Channel is the only TV channel for kids here. We also watched Beethoven´s 5th and the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movie, both new for me.
However, despite the presence of the US, I was quickly brought back to El Salvador yesterday around lunchtime. So far, I couldn´t complain about Salvadoran food, in fact, I´ve loved almost everything I´ve tried... Anyway, I walked into the kitchen to see that lunch was an entire fish, yes, head, fins, tail, everything but the scales, simmering in a pan. Now, I´m not really a big fan of fish in general, so this was just unreal. Sister Marta Julia (or Sor Che, as she´s known, since she spent her childhood in Argentina) hates fish, so she offered me an alternative: Spam. Hmm, decisions decisions. In the end, I decided to give the fish a try anyway, since they were using spices I´d never tried. It actually didn´t taste too bad, but it´s not really the taste that drives me away. It´s the tiny bones, and this fish was full of them. DEFINTELY not of US influence, or at least not what I´ve ever experienced. I choked it down and prayed that there wouldn´t be any leftovers, which there weren´t.
Today is my free day, so I´m meeting with all the VIDES volunteers in El Salvador in the town of Santa Tecla. It´s just outside of San Salvador and apparently the local volunteers plan on taking us on field trips every weekend to check out the country. I´ll let yáll know how everything goes. In the meantime, have a wonderful Sunday!
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Nieve Negra y Huevos de Amor
First of all, to clarify, I just want to say a bit about the program I´m working through. It´s called VIDES, and it´s through the Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians (more commonly known as Salesian Sisters), whose mission is for the advancement of youth and women. They have Sisters all over the world and VIDES volunteers from all over the world that stay with them. Their order was founded by St John Bosco and St Maria Domenica Mazzarello in Italy. The United States is divided into two Salesian provinces, East and West. The Western province is based in San Antonio at St John Bosco School. You can learn more about it from the website: www.vides.us.
So anyway, yesterday, in the middle of the afternoon, I was helping one of the older girls with her English homework, when everyone suddenly got really excited, pointed at the sky and yelled, ¨Nieve Negra (black snow, for you non-Spanish speakers)!¨ I looked up to see little pieces of ash floating in the air, from a nearby volcano. And apparently this is very exciting and not at all alarming. It only blew in for a minute or so, but I definitely had never seen anything like it before. I guess that´s the closest it gets to snowing here.
Also, I know the other volunteers and I have talked about this, but it seems like, worldwide, the Salesians as a group are really really good at two things: working you and feeding you. The sisters here eat four meals a day! Of course, you probably would too, if you woke up at 5 am, like I will every day (oy!). The sisters get up even earlier. But they also go to bed at 8:30. In fact, the whole town of Chalchuapa does, too. They have police at night that patrol the streets honking at houses with their lights on past 9, because apparently, nobody should be up doing anything at that hour.
Despite eating four meals, I don´t think I´ll be gaining weight as fast here as I would be if I ate four times a day back at home. They eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables from their trees and the garden, and beans with almost every meal. For breakfast, we had hot dogs mixed with eggs from the chickens in the back of the house. The call the eggs ¨huevos de amor¨ (eggs of love) to differentiate them from the eggs they buy at the store. And speaking of love, I just have to mention this story from the preschool class this morning.
The kids (18 of them) are learning the parts of the body and how to take care of their bodies (bathing, brushing their teeth, washing their hands, etc.). With the parts of the body, they learned really vague things like la cabeza (head), el tronco (trunk), and the extremeties (las extremidades). I was thinking how easy it was to teach them that the body has only three parts because that meant I didn´t need to know a lot about vocabulary. However, right after that, the teacher busted out some worksheets about genitalia! Talk about awkward! We all talked about the difference between boys and girls, and colored diagrams and everything. I guess when they learn at such a young age though, they´re not embarrassed about it later in life. Still, it was so awkward for me to teach it in my very first lesson!
Also, for those of yáll who asked me about my address, if you email me letting me know you want it, I´ll email you back. I just didn´t want to post it on the internet. ¡Salud!
So anyway, yesterday, in the middle of the afternoon, I was helping one of the older girls with her English homework, when everyone suddenly got really excited, pointed at the sky and yelled, ¨Nieve Negra (black snow, for you non-Spanish speakers)!¨ I looked up to see little pieces of ash floating in the air, from a nearby volcano. And apparently this is very exciting and not at all alarming. It only blew in for a minute or so, but I definitely had never seen anything like it before. I guess that´s the closest it gets to snowing here.
Also, I know the other volunteers and I have talked about this, but it seems like, worldwide, the Salesians as a group are really really good at two things: working you and feeding you. The sisters here eat four meals a day! Of course, you probably would too, if you woke up at 5 am, like I will every day (oy!). The sisters get up even earlier. But they also go to bed at 8:30. In fact, the whole town of Chalchuapa does, too. They have police at night that patrol the streets honking at houses with their lights on past 9, because apparently, nobody should be up doing anything at that hour.
Despite eating four meals, I don´t think I´ll be gaining weight as fast here as I would be if I ate four times a day back at home. They eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables from their trees and the garden, and beans with almost every meal. For breakfast, we had hot dogs mixed with eggs from the chickens in the back of the house. The call the eggs ¨huevos de amor¨ (eggs of love) to differentiate them from the eggs they buy at the store. And speaking of love, I just have to mention this story from the preschool class this morning.
The kids (18 of them) are learning the parts of the body and how to take care of their bodies (bathing, brushing their teeth, washing their hands, etc.). With the parts of the body, they learned really vague things like la cabeza (head), el tronco (trunk), and the extremeties (las extremidades). I was thinking how easy it was to teach them that the body has only three parts because that meant I didn´t need to know a lot about vocabulary. However, right after that, the teacher busted out some worksheets about genitalia! Talk about awkward! We all talked about the difference between boys and girls, and colored diagrams and everything. I guess when they learn at such a young age though, they´re not embarrassed about it later in life. Still, it was so awkward for me to teach it in my very first lesson!
Also, for those of yáll who asked me about my address, if you email me letting me know you want it, I´ll email you back. I just didn´t want to post it on the internet. ¡Salud!
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Chalchuapa
Well, folks, I have safely arrived in Chalchuapa, in El Salvador. The trip was relatively uneventful, but everything is going well so far. I flew into the airport outside of San Salvador and Sydney (another American volunteer) and Sister Patricia (Sor Paty) were waiting for me at the airport!
The drive through San Salvador and Santa Tecla (where another volunteer lives) on the way to Chalchuapa was like most other rides. There were roadside stands with fresh fruit and other things, a lot like stands along highways in the U.S. The landscape is really hilly, and it´s not really tropical. It´s hot and pretty humid, a lot like Texas. Chalchuapa, however, is definitely pretty foreign. I´ll put up photos when I get the chance, because the town is basically just buildings that are connected to each other and streets. The sidewalks are really narrow and usually people set up stalls on them, so you have to walk in the street. Also, the cars always have the right of way, so you have to jump out of the way when one comes down the street.
The house here is pretty big and I have my own room and Sydney and I share a bathroom (but she´s only here two days a week). Everyone here is really nice, but I definitely don´t know what they´re saying most of the time. Sor Paty tells me that I need to learn Salvadoran because they have a lot of words that are different from the Spanish I know. That´s probably why they put me in the classroom with the three years olds in the mornings. Everything in the room is labeled and we´re on the same level of Spanish, apparently.
The older girls are like typical teenage girls, very into fashion and boys. In the mornings, they go to school and they come back in the afternoons to do different trades that they sell to support themselves. Some of them make clothes and just look at magazines for their patterns. They have to practice with butcher paper before they can use cloth, and they have an entire wall of life-size clothes made out of paper, with zippers attached and everything. They also do things like make piñatas and paint.
The buildings are really open too. Even when it rains, things are pretty much out in the open. For example, I´m sitting here at the computer in a breezeway between two buildings, and their TV is under a patio, not indoors.
When I got here yesterday, the first thing we did was harvest the radishes from the garden. We picked over 85 and left all the ones that were too small.
I´ll put more pictures in when I get the chance, but right now we´re working on the wireless internet issue. It´s definitely available, but nobody here seems to know the password, but they ought to be able to figure it out soon. Despite having wireless internet, there is not hot water, but since it´s fairly hot here and the water comes from the water tower right outside my room, it´s not really very cold.
I hope yáll are having a wonderful time and make sure you update me on your lives! Also, thank you to everyone who sent their prayers and good thoughts in my direction. ¡Hasta la vista!
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