So for now...

All of a sudden, I only have 4 days left? Bizarre. Especially because I cannot believe that it is December as I sit here writing this in 90-degree humid heat…honestly, the thought of coming home to a temperature 1/3 of this is pretty frightening.  I feel like this should be some climactic, dramatic blog entry about these past four months and my future and everything else…but honestly, at the moment, I would rather be hanging out with my room mates, eating my last few pupusas, and not be on the internet…also I have absolutely no words to sum up the last four months.  That is impossible now, and will be even when I get home and have endless amounts of hours over winter break to talk it all over.  So bear with me when I get home, with my inability to explain all this and my rough re-adjustment to home and to American culture in the most American of all seasons, Christmas. 

            So I guess I will do two things…one, write out my “El Salvador is…,” something we all wrote the other night at our last reflection.  I just did a stream of consciousness list, and a lot of these will probably make no sense.  But maybe they can spur up some stories when I get home, or maybe give an idea of how amazing, liberating, and all over the place this experience has been.  Also I have no idea what else to write…

 

 

El Salvador is…

-Waking up at 6:45, making my 3 pieces of French toast, and still somehow not making it onto the Be Real bus until 7:34

-Discovering that my mind can work, even if not perfectly, in philosophy

-Learning to make pupusas from Aminta even though mine are always the ugliest ones

-Being spoiled with the best praxis partners in the world, our morning cafecito at Centro Hogar, our hearts breaking a little every day when Dawn can’t come, and our afternoon nev run in her honor

-Flipping off another gross man in the street for yet another cat call and continuously being angry at this machismo culture

-Never knowing if I have rid my life of kitsch or filled it full of it

-Realizing that you can never shut yourself in your room because, inevitably, you will hear people in the kitchen and realize that you would rather be playing bananagrams in the kitchen instead

-Learning to hate the internet and the phone card voice lady for entirely separate reasons

-23 amazing people who, on the first day of orientation, I honestly thought I would never learn the names of and now who I can’t imagine not seeing every day

-Never knowing how to react to kids at Centro Hogar, whether they are loving each other or killing each other

-Sitting in a living room in San Ramon drinking the biggest glass of warm coke I have ever had the pleasure of drinking

-Salvadoran open mic mass on Sunday at San Ramon, never knowing how long it will last

-Knowing the state of everyone’s bowel movements in your whole house—dengue, dysentery, and amoebas will do that.

-Forgetting ‘pena’ as we have a dance/cleaning party in the Romero courtyard

-Sometimes feeling fluent in Spanish, and often times feeling like I don’t speak it at all

-Having no idea what to do next, and being completely fine with that

-Knowing that the only way I can leave is with the definite knowledge that I will be back one day

Also, I want to make a list of things I will miss and things I definitely won’t miss from El Salvador…

 

THINGS I WILL MISS
-pupusas…for dinner every Thursday and every weekend meal

-People inviting you to their house whenever you want…and really meaning that you can show up one random day it would be fine

-PANDULCE

-90 degree weather every day

-Feeling completely comfortable all the time with a group of 23 people

-Living with 14 crazy, wonderful, energetic, brilliant people

-Philosophy class blowing my mind every day and framing every part of my life in a new way, history class amazing me with famous and wonderful speaker after speaker, literature class with Maria Ester in general

-having 8 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, and 3 pairs of shoes to choose from—getting dressed in 5 minutes every day

-Cold showers

-Walking into my classroom and hearing 25 3-year olds scream “SABINA!!!!!!” and run over to hug my legs

-Lunch at the Soy Project every Monday and Wednesday, after lunch ice cream, and story time with Anita before walking around with Areli

-People openly sharing their lives, their homes, their stories, and their food with you

-All the people I met here, both American and Salvadoran 

THINGS I WON’T MISS
-Not being able to walk to school without being cat called, kissed at, or “I love you”ed every step of the way by men aged anywhere from 15 to 70 years old—machismo in general

-Being eaten alive by mosquitoes every day and night

-Having ‘vegetarian’ mean “well, I don’t eat chunks of meat, but yes, I would LOVE that chicken flavored seasoning in everything I eat”

-Being told I look 14 by every Salvadoran woman, who means it as a compliment for some weird reason

-Being called ‘gringa’

-Being woken up by the evangelical church singing every Sunday morning

-Cold showers

-Throwing toilet paper in the trash

-Being overwhelmed by everything

 

Anyways, I am going to leave it at this and get back to life…sorry this was kind of cheesy, kind of all over the place, and kind of random. Like I said, bear with me when I get back and can’t explain them or can’t function in 30 degree weather and America for a little while. I can’t wait to see you all, that is for sure, and I can’t wait to try to share all of this with you.  

Beginning of Despedidas and Energy Baths

As I get closer to leaving, I have become worse and worse about updating this…apologies. Possibly because our homework load has suddenly increased, possibly because I am tired of the internet lately, or possibly because the prospect of leaving this place, and much less writing about leaving it, is the last thing I want to think about right now. Seeing as I have become increadibly lax and un-perfectionist about my school work lately in lieu of more important things, and that I can actually write these when I am off the internet anyways, it is probably the latter reason. But, reality check fun, I have only two weeks left here. (let tiny panic attack pass, start breathing again).
Among other things lately, one of the biggest event has been saying goodbye to the kids at Centro Hogar. The kids here get out of school in November, have summer break until January, then start the school year again in the middle of January. So last Wednesday was our last day with the kids at Centro Hogar, which was a fairly devastating day, for lack of any better words. On Wednesday, our last day, I got to class and they all (actually every kid came to school for once! All 28 of them in 1 room) got into an amazingly organized circle…then Lucy, the teacher, asked who wanted to say something nice about Sabina, which prompted every 3 year old standing up and mustering up enough eloquence to say…. “es que, es que, es que….te quiero mucho,” and running over to give me a hug. Needless to say, by about the third kid I was a mess and didn’t really even attempt to hold it together, which prompted questions from almost all the kids about why I had drops of water on my face. It’s a confusing world, isn’t it? Anyways, then we went about our regular day and, just as always, kids hit each other at recess and they didn’t listen to me when I told them to come inside and they didn’t eat all their lunch, and it was a perfect day.
We decided to come back on Friday, so Elizabeth and I (Dawn couldn’t go because of her back, pobrecita) went for their graduation party for about an hour to say a real goodbye and watch the festivities, which mostly consisted of hitting a piñata, putting on silly hats, and eating too much sugar. Again, all 28 kids were there in all their energetic glory. You know how in the US when we had a piñata for a class party or a birthday party, the parents or whoever would make sure every kid stood at least 20 feet away so they didn’t get hit? Apparently we don’t need to, because I learned during this piñata fest that, no matter how crazy or how hard kids swing the stick or how close the other kids are, there is some magical law of nature that says that it is IMPOSSIBLE to be hit with the stick during piñata. Finally we said our real goodbyes that we couldn’t put off anymore, which was probably more sad for us because I still had kids tell me “hasta lunes!” as I was leaving. If it weren’t for some reason illegal, I would smuggle them all home with me…maybe just a choice few in my carry-on.
Anyways, now that the kids are gone we are hanging out with the teachers in the morning. Yesterday we had a massage and meditation workshop put on by Oti and the Mariona people, another Praxis site where there is a meditation and massage center run by a wonderful group of Salvadoran women. At first, the teachers were definitely a little uneasy about sharing how the beautiful centerpiece with flowers made them feel, but little by little all the teachers were doing tai-chi, meditation, massage, and feeling sharing like none other. I think what strikes me most about Mariona and the workshop today was the fact that it absolutely discredits the complete load of shit (excuse me) that is the “hierarchy of needs.” Who says that just because someone isn’t fed that they can’t do yoga? Or because someone isn’t safe they can’t meditate? Or because someone is unemployed they can’t receive a massage, or join a women’s group, or create art? It seems like such a basic concept that if you don’t have time, money, safety, food, etc, you won’t have the time or resources for so many other things. But after seeing beautiful projects like Mariona, set in a community with one of the biggest jails in El Salvador and a pretty big gang problem, it becomes so evident that this is absolutely a creation of our own culture. We consider money, food, safety to come before everything else. If we are hungry or poor, how could we ever make art or meditate or organize? For Oti and everyone else who I have met doing equally as amazing things, how can they NOT make art, meditate, organize, read, massage, give energy bathts? Anyways, just my random thought of the day..or week…or until I have more time or energy to update again as I grapple with the fact that I only have 2 weeks left in this beautiful country, in this beautiful program, with these beautiful people. Asi es.

::sabine

SOA Protest Replacement Time!

So, usually at this time of year I would be at the School of the America's protest, which I am really sad to be missing (but also living vicariously through Sofia and am very excited she is there). Instead, this year I was at the UCA 20th anniversary vigil for the UCA martyrs, which is the same date that the SOA protest is based on. It was an absolutely crazy week, since it was also the 10th anniversary of the Casa and about 90 casa alums were also down here AND the Seattle U delegation came down, which means I got to see some lovely familiar faces and share my experience here with some SU family. So, needless to say, we were busy.

The day of the vigil, people come from all over El Salvador, Central America, and the world to the UCA campus, where I take classes here and where the 2 women and 6 jesuits were killed in 89. It is amazing to see the campus SO full of people from hip university students to campesino old men to confused looking American delegations. In the morning, we drew out our 20-foot long alfombra design and started coloring the salt. Alfombras are essentially huge paintings made of colored salt that different groups from the UCA and other organizations design and make. The Salvadoran students who live with us were definately heading this up, since american students dont know the first thing about drawing huge designs on asphalt, coloring salt to the PERFECT color, or laying salt down in a way that looks neat and organized. At the same time, some people from our program played in the soccer tournament. Hmm....crafts or sports, guess which activity I was a part of?















That night, we went back to the UCA for the vigil procession around the UCA campus. In what can only be described as organized chaos, we were handed candles and song sheets, assembled into a psuedo-line, and began to walk and sing along to the songs projected by the pick up truck with speakers that drove along side the thousands of people in the procession. The procession itself was as beautiful as it was realisitic: we walked along the highway, past honking cars and burger king and mcdonalds and the Chevy dealership in a semi-organized fashion, attempting to sing songs we didn't really know and couldn't really hear. Then we all somehow ended up back on the UCA campus, walking through the salt alfombras that had been made that morning and ending up at a mass in the parking lot. The mass was packed and had some wonderful speakers and music...but it was absolutely, for lack of a better word, when some random scottish bishop or someone high up in the church got up and gave a speech that made it sound like he had never even been to el salvador. He called Elba and Celina, the 2 women who died, the 'lady helpers.' Thankfully for him, his translator translated it as 'companeras.' It was just interesting to see that they opted for someone with an imortant name and face when they could have put any Salvadoran up there to give a speech 100 times better and more telling about what the Martyrs mean to this country. Thankfully it was redeemed by a woman who sang the most beautiful and haunting song about the 2 women, which for a country full of machismo and sexism in the church, was amazing to see in the middle of mass.

After mass, there is a celebration at the UCA all night long...I made it until 11 pm. I have truly converted to salvadoran bed time. Overall, the UCA celebration was great to be at to see how this counry officially celebrates the martyrs, but most of me couldnt wait until monday to get back to regular life and watch how people live outside of these big celebrations with important speakers and big screen tv's and translators for people who cant speak spanish.

Then back to regular life....one more week with the kids at centro hogar, because school here ends in december. Starting on final papers and projects and all of that...we had Casa Prom on friday, which consisted of a lovely dinner and an equally good dance party. I went back to chalatenango this weekend to visit my campo family again, who were so welcoming it made me want to live there forever....etc etc. Now off to philosophy movie of the week (blue), then starting the week again with all the parents arriving for thanksgiving.

Peace & love
:sabine

Just a Quick Post to say that I'm Alive...

So I had no idea how much El Salvador was making headlines until I was informed by a few people that they thought I was dead....so, just an update on my life status: I am alive.
The rains here last week were definately strong--nothing too much stronger than we got in August, but definately a few nights in a row of REALLY strong rains. I couldn't walk from house to house without being SOAKING wet. But beyond a few leaks in the house and the inability to walk outside, the rains were really not too big of a deal for us.
The news that is all over the US makes it seem like the rains absolutely ravaged the country, which is true. But what isn't really reported there is that the rains were only a small part of the problem. Our house, which is made of cement and very well constructed, was fine. As were the very nicely paved roads in Antiguo Cuscatlan, where I live. The houses and roads that were NOT fine were the houses made of lamina (sheet metal), mud, or sticks. The roads that were not fine, for the most part, were the dirt roads or the roads already in bad repair.
What I am trying to say is that being down here, I have seen the reality that the effect that natural disasters have on a country or on people is completely contingent upon factors outside the amount of rain or the magnitude of the earthquake. The people who were hurt down here the most were the people already living on the fringes. It was not so much the heavy rains that devastated El Salvador last week, but the poor infrastrucure and the poverty that already existed. It just took a flood to get this on the front page of BBC news.

As far as our connection to the floods, a few of the communities where we spend our time were badly hurt by the floods: a few houses fell, roads were washed away, and people are now left without food or potable water. In our houses, we got together all that we could, such as shirts, towels, blankets, shoes, medicine, etc etc. It was amazing how much stuff we all got together when 3 months ago we were all talking about how little we packed and how few clothes we had. It really is amazing to see what simple living can become when you realize what you actually need and what you can give away when someone is in dire need.
The amazing group coming down from SU tomorrow really quickly responded and is trying to bring down as much as they can to help out these communities. We are in contact with a lot of alums who are helping out with some of the relief efforts, and they are working really hard to get some of the basic things that these communities need. I know that one thing that is really lacking is money--which can buy potable water, help to build more permanent water systems, buy food, etc etc. If anyone wants to help out, the alums down here are setting up a donation site if anyone in the states wants to help out from afar. Once i find the website i will put it on here if anyone wants.

It is a crazy week here with the 85 casa alums here and the anniversary of the UCA coming up, and i have to go eat dinner and do some homework. I appreciate all the concern sent my way, and hope that now that you all know I am fine you will send your positive thoughts down to the people here who are not, who have lost houses or family members.

Hope you are all enjoying the NW rain, which is much less crazy. Good luck to everyone getting ready for the SOA protest, which I am very sad to be missing this year.
Peace & Love from El Salvador

:Sabine


PS
Here is the website for anyone who wants to help out with the disaster relief
http://friendsofsantamaria.blogspot.com/

I also have new pictures on my flikr as of late
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sabinetb/

Vacation!

I'm back! Alive and well, save for the weird bites all over my neck and arms (more on that after i figure out what in the WORLD they are). I got back yesterday night from 7 days in Guatemala, which involved visiting 5 different places, about 24 hours total of travel, and lots of random adventures that I don't even really know WHERE to start with...
so to explain a little first, here is a basic layout of the week:

Friday night, in El Salvador: celebrated halloween 8-year old style with a costume and games party. Dressed up as Pippi Longstocking and got 2nd place in apple bobbing. The best college haloween yet.

Saturday Morning at 5:30: Arrive at Tica Bus Station, 6 hour ride to Guatemala. Bought some sketchy looking pupusas at the border, arrived in a random part of Guatemala and took at taxi to the Rebuli bus station, where we got on a 1960's US school bus and rode for 3 hours (and$25 quetzales, about 3 bucks) to Panajachel, a city on Lake Atitlan. The bus ride may have been the most frightening few hours of my life, since they go about 70 miles an hour on curves that are just a few feet away from HUGE cliffs, but we got there in one piece and for only $3, so i guess i can't really complain.
We were a group of 10, but split off into a group of 6 that went across the lake and a group of 4 of us, who stayed in Panajachel for 2 nights. Pana is kind of crazy and mildly touristy, but really beautiful and right on the lake. Met some interesting international travellers, had a bagel for the first time in 2 months, bought some linen pants, paid $5/night for a decent hotel on the water.

Monday night, me and my friend Katie went from Panajachel by boat to San Marcos, another town on the lake that is a lot smaller and full of hippies. We stayed in Hotel Unicorn for $5 in the "Uranus Room" and enjoyed the company of the very excentric Jessie from Brooklyn while using the communal kitchen to make some dinner. Very randomly, we saw our friends who were staying in San Pedro, a 15 minute boat ride away, and decided to meet up with them the next day to go to Fuentes Georginas, some natural hot springs in the western highlands of guatemala.

Tuesday morning, after enjoying our free self-made breakfast of pancakes at the unicorn hotel, we headed to San Pedro, met up with our 6 friends, and hopped on another crazy 3 hour bus ride to Xela, where we got a 30 minute taxi up the mountain into the clouds to Fuentes Georginas. It was SO bizzarre to actually be COLD for once in 2 months, and the hot springs were like one huge swimming pool sized hot tub...it was amazing. The ony downside was that though our cabins had fire places and cooking fires, they didnt have a store there so we were forced to eat at the fuentes restaurant, which was a little more than we wanted to pay for 3 meals. Since we were staying there, we got to use the hotsprings all night, so i was in the water for a solid 8 hours and when i got out my feet were so pruny that it hurt to walk. defiantely worth it though.

Wednesday morning, we decided that fuentes was fun but a little too expensive for another night, so we headed down the mountian again and got on yet another 3 hour ride (this time in a van) to Chichicastenango, also in the highlands but a little closer to guatemala city. Here we mostly just went to dinner, saw what there was to see of the tiny town, hung out in our $3/night hostel, being very confused by the unprecedented amount of fire works going off for seemingly no reason. we still dont have an answer for that.

Thursday we went to the HUGE HUGE HUGE market the next day, where I attempted to avoid my consumerism but caved and bought a guatemalan shirt. Unlike el salvador, guatemala has a very strong and beautiful indigenous culture, so almost all the women wear the traditional skirt and dress, and it made me want to wear every color all at once. After we were all marketed out, we hopped a 3-hour van ride to Antigua, a little colonial town that is the tourist center of guatemala. That night we found Kafka hostel for $5/night and ordered some pizza and played cards and enjoyed the only dark beer that central america has to offer (unlike the half water that they sell in el salvador)...8 college students staying in a cheap hostel eating pizza drinking beer and playing cards. sometimes it just is fun to be a stereotype i guess : )

Friday morning we got up at 530 am and climbed into a van (after realizing we were locked INTO our hostel and had to wake up the night guard to let us out..) and drove an hour or so up to Pacaya, an active volcano. After one hour in a NW-like hike, we got above the tree line and climbed up and down volcanic rocks for about 30 minutes before we got the the top, which even after a really rough hike, was the MOST AMAZING THING i have EVER seen. I was standing INCHES away from FLOWING LAVA!!! FLOWING LAVA!!! Nothing can even describe what it is like to see lava and roast marshmallows on it and be standing on a rock with LAVA under it. On a volcano in guatemala. It was AMAZING. See pictures for my attempt to show how awesome it was. I think my shoes got a little melted...but it was so worth it. The rest of the day we hung out in Antigua which was all to expensive and American-Europeanized for our taste, but still fun times because traveling with 8 really fun and crazy people is always great. We found a kooky little noodle restaurant run by an english guy and enjoyed some tofu for the first time in a while.

Friday morning we headed out of antigua on our last, and maybe most terrifying, bus ride. I paid $1 to fear for my life to get to guatemala city....i love being cheap (thanks, dad). We got to the tica bus station to buy return tickets then went to pollo campero, the fast food mecca of central america, for an artery-clogging breakfast before a solid 7 hour bus ride home.

SO many more stories, obviously....but all in all, an amazing week. I wish i had a week of REST now, since it was still a pretty busy week. After my first traveling without my parents or a school group, I am madly in love with adventurous, spontaneous, cheap travel--and may have to do it for a while before i figure out what to do with my life. I mean, I may have feared for my life while on a bus, or wondered whether many things i was eating would give me some sort of stomach parasite, or wondered where i was even going to end up in the end of the day, but for a preson who loves to be in control and is a pretty big hypo-chodriac worrier, there is no better therapy than forced care-free adventurous travel.

And now i am back in El Salvador, ready for the second half of this wonderful program, tired from doing a huge load of laundry and hoping that I can eat the rest of the weekends this quarter after my vacation spending...and even if i can't, it was SO WORTH IT. (remember the LAVA?!)

hope all is well up north with the day light savings changes and all. If you are reading this, it's probably safe to assume I miss and love you a lot.

Peace & Love.
::sabine

Half Way?!

First of all, I had no idea I hadn't updated in forever. Oops. Also, I just (well, yesterday) realized that I am exactly HALF WAY DONE! That is mind boggling, not only because I have been here for 2 months but also because that means I have to leave in 2 months!
On that note, I am overwhelmed by the prospect of describing what i have done since I last updated...let's see...I went on a public bus to the beach, which was an absolutely hilarious and wonderful day....I went on a 3 day silent retreat, which was amazing but i wont bore you all with the inner details of my mind and my newly found infinite wisdom of life and the universe (ha)...my friend got Dengue fever (she is okay, don't worry)....i went to the El Salvador-Honduras soccer game which was absolutely the craziest sporting event i have EVER seen...etc, etc.

So instead of even attempting to write out all those ridiculous amounts of stories, I think I'm going to write about my Praxis site, San Ramon, and the absolutely crazy experience of working in a school here. Sometimes i get so lost in the weekend adventures and the BIG stories that i forget that I should probably also write about what I do every week....

So. Centro Hogar (the school where I 'work') is a private school, but in a very different sense of the word...most kids here are on scholarships for the $30/month tuition that the school charges. The school was started by Alfonso Acevedo, a community organizer who was killed in 1982 by the military for the work he was doing; it focuses on developing the 'whole person-'creativity (which doesn't really exist in public schools here), human and community development, nutrition, etc etc. the school has a lot of amazing programs and works with the San Ramon community a lot. So, there is Centro Hogar ON PAPER.

In real life....Centro Hogar is something along the lines of wonderful semi-organized chaos.
Every monday morning, the kids have 'asamblea,' which means that the teachers try to wrangle 60 kids ages 18 months-6 years old into chairs to sit for 20 minutes. Chaos usually ensues. Each classroom is made up of about 29 kids, but on a given day only about 20-24 come. Keep in mind that each class has ONE teacher, and most teachers don't exactly have their masters in early childhood development...they are amazing women (all women, surprise surprise) from the community who are involved in the school and take classes and workshops on teaching, but I can't IMAGINE managing 24 kids with no formal experience in early childhood education.
The classrooms are bigger than most in El Salvador, and have more supplies and materials than most public schools I'm sure, but nowhere near space for 20 high-energy 3 year olds. The kids have access to a lot of stuff that I'm sure most kids don't--art supplies, their own chair and backpack, a healthy and professionally cooked lunch, a nice playground--but are still missing some basic stuff for a school. Since the teachers can't really control the kids that well (one on 20, it's impossible), the kids miss out on 1-on-1 teacher time, story time (or books in general), general discipline, etc.
I definately love all the kids there--and now that they finally all know my name, I like them even more. But it's heartbreaking to see how violent 3 year olds can become if they have violent influences in their home, no discipline, no consequences for their actions, no problem-solving skills, and, most of all, very little show of love or affection in their lives.
These kids are 3, so it's natural that they aren't awesome at sharing or at talking out problems. But every day, i watch 3 year olds kick, punch, pinch, wrestle, hit, scratch, and bite (and oh, how they bite...). It's not even that this comes a few minutes into an argument. If Josue takes Daniela's swing, she goes straight to punching. Bite marks are practically normal, as are crying children and out of control fist fights.
I try and try and try to have some semblance of control or authority, but it's a lost cause. First of all, they don't listen to me when I tell them to stop fighting (or the teacher, for that matter). Second of all, i have NEVER, EVER, EVER heard a kid apologize. I try endlessly to get kids to say sorry to eachother, or to acknowledge what they did at all. But usually I get blank stares, kids running away, or (worst of all), more hitting. The sad part is, I usually have to give up and just hug whoever is crying myself. With 20 kids, it's impossible to solve every problem that comes up or try to get any kid to change their behavior. I have been hit, kicked, and pinched a few times myself; one kid tried to throw an egg at me once, actually.

Amazingly, I still REALLY like these kids. Even when I am tired in the morning, the second i walk into the classroom and EVERY kid turns around and shouts "SABINA!!!!" and runs at me, I forget that it is 8 am and that i am in for a long, long day. I guess it is kind of hard to NOT like kids this adorable...because even though they are so violent and often so crazy, what gets me more is imagining HOW a 3 year old can BE this violent. If there is violence in their homes, and violence in their neighborhood with gangs, and there are police on every street corner and in every ice cream shop with HUGE guns (true story), how does a kid learn to NOT be violent??
In the end, it's little things that get me through the absolutely insane day at Centro Hogar--like last week when Daniel (who does his fair amount of hitting) went up and hugged every kid who has crying during the day and asked them where they got hurt. It's a confusing world.
This is mostly rambling, so sorry about that. But now you know, if you have been looking at my pictures, a little more about the random kids that show up in all of them. In the end of the day, i have an amazing time every day at Centro Hogar, even when I have kids brushing their teeth and spitting water on me, or running away from me when I'm trying to collect them on the playground, or refusing to apoligize for grabbing eachother's face and hitting it against the wall (yes, that happened yesterday).

Now i am off to catch up on emails and try to plan my vacation in Guatemala for next week...hope all is well in the Estados Unidos. I wish I had more time or more coherent thoughts at the moment, but I suppose that is fairly representative of being in el salvador these past 2 months. cheers to the half way point.
Peace & Love
-Sabine

ps, i put up MORE pictures if you want to look instead of read....www.flikr.com/sabinetb

Campo Week!

Once again, I don’t really even know where to start with this post…and again, it will be unprecedentedly long. so I guess I will just start by simply explaining what in the world I was doing last week and why I dropped off the (technological and communication) face of the earth. Last Saturday at 7 am, all 24 of us in the program got on our microbus and drove about 4-ish hours to Chalatengango, in the Eastern part of El Salvador, for ‘campo week’ Chalatenango is one of the more rural parts of the country, and has a really interesting history because it was controlled by the guerillas during the civil war (1979-1992, ish), so the people there have seen a lot more fighting than most people in the city. For the week, we stayed in pair in the home of a family in one of 3 communities, all fairly rural. Once we finally got there (after a snack stop in Guarjilla to visit the house of Jon Cortina and a lunch stop in Artacao), me and my partner Betsy were introduced to Aminta Alas and walked with her to her house, in the center of the small town of Nueva Trinidad.
The funniest part at first of all this was how our conceptions of campo were pretty off. We all had an idea in our head of where we were going—we were thinking dirt roads, small houses with one room, farms in the backyard, no electricity, outhouses, no running water, etc etc. This is definitely what I was thinking—I have to admit that when I was working at Agros this past year I would spend probably an unprecedented amount of time looking through the amazing pictures in the photo database, and that was pretty much how I formed my idea of where we were headed. So imagine our surprise when we get to Nueva Trinidad on a paved road, see a beautiful small town center, and get to the Alas house made of cement blocks with a kitchen, dining area, 4 bedrooms, and a real bathroom and shower. They actually had a TV (bigger than one I have at home….) and a computer as well. This didn’t discredit at all the ‘campo’ (rural) feeling, but we just had to laugh at ourselves for having a completely generalized conception of where we were headed. Of course, some people did stay in houses with an outhouse, one big room for everyone, and dirt floors, but for the most part we were pretty unprepared for anything. A lot of the land and the work in Nueva Trinidad has actually been done in partnership with people from Spain and from St. Joes and St. Pat’s in Seattle, so it was really cool to have that automatic connection, living really close to both churches in Seattle.
Anyways. This is already long, sorry. Like I said, I am pretty bad at journaling for myself so this is also serving as my memory. Bear with me, if you wish. The family we stayed with, the Alas family, was wonderful. There were definitely some awkward moments and some misunderstandings language wise, but in the end Betsy and I were feeling pretty comfortable and at home in their house. Living there were Aminta and Pascual, her husband, as well as some of their kids, Rosa, Antonio (who just comes home from university on the weekends), William (who just graduated from the national university), Morena, and Morena’s children Kevin and Gaby. First of all, Gaby is basically the love of the entire family. She is one year old and gets more attention than anyone else. This girl gets her clothes changed at least 5 times a day and is played with more than any kid I have ever seen. Also she LOVES to dance unlike any other baby I have ever seen, so a lot of entertainment stemmed from that.
First awkward moment of the week came when, 20 minutes after arriving, Betsy and I had to break the news that we are both vegetarians…literally, right after I said this, the ENTIRE family in the kitchen stopped whatever they were doing—making papusas, sweeping, playing with the baby—to turn and look at us with blank stares. Oops. Food for the rest of the week was also kind of a funny situation. Going to one of the poorer parts of the country to stay with a farming family you would think that we would probably eat decently but not overly well….actually, I was more full of food this week than I have been all of El Salvador (and that is saying A LOT). The family was SO generous with food and, even though we had some awkward moments with the gross cheese they gave us and I had to hide half a grilled banana in my backpack to throw away later, it was overall amazing. We literally ate SO much…for breakfast one morning, for example, we ate 2 papusas (stuffed tortillas) each, a huge piece of bread, the aforementioned grilled bananas, and a cup of coffee each. SO much food. Actually, I have millions more stories about food but I will spare you all…
During the day we….didn’t really do much. It took a few days to get used to the fact that we would get woken up by the animals or the family at 6, eat breakfast, sit at home, eat lunch, walk around, eat dinner, and go to bed at 9 pm. But once we got used to it, it was actually really nice to just accept that we really weren’t going to do much. One of the best days, Pascual took Betsy and I up to the family’s milpa (field) where the grow corn and beans ON A HILLSIDE. Literally, probably a 30 degree slope. It was absolutely beautiful and frankly, just physically amazing that this 70-something man comes here every day to tend to this hillside. See my flikr account for the unprecedented amount of photos that I took. During the nights we would mostly talk to Aminta or the family about life, funny stories, or the war. One night we got to talking about the war, during which they had been refugees in Honduras, and it still baffles me that we keep meeting people with such amazing personal stories about the war, people, and places that I have read so much about in books and classes. It’s nice that El Salvador is a small country, because it seems like everyone knows someone famous.
There is SO much more from this week that I won’t make you all read here. Anyways, to sum up…some lessons I learned from the week:
1. Never, ever, ever ask a Salvadoran about food unless you are prepared to eat it. I had to eat some really gross cheese and got to eat some amazing rice pudding simply because I was making conversation.
2. Salvadorans love ABBA…first day in Nueva Trinidad, we had a sing along to Chiquitita IN SPANISH
3. Apparently, if you shower 15 minutes after you eat, you will die. That is what Aminta told us anyways. Everyone else heard the same thing from his or her campo mom….
4. Statistics and silly things you learn in classes or read in books have absolutely NOTHING to do with the reality of anything. Rough lesson to learn this late in my college career of studying things like poverty…but really. Facts about ‘poverty’ or have very little to do with the reality of this week.
5. I am physically capable of sleeping on a piece of wood, going to bed at 9 pm, and eating food that I am concerned about its origin. And it’s actually NOT that bad.


Now off to manage my life in emails and such from the past week...I just put up a BUNCH of pictures on my flikr so if you aren't already overwhelemed by this blog, then look at those!
(www.flikr.com/sabinetb)

:Sabine