Windowsill Garden...

For now that is.  Here are some pictures of my garden that I am starting from fertilizer pellets and cow manure and yogurt cups. :) The little green sprouts in the pellets are the zinnias, to the right is a pumpkin seed, to the right of that are tomato seeds. In the first cup is a sunflower (it already grew out of its pellet and had to be transplanted) and the other two contain papaya seeds! Here's to hoping all of this will soon be a beautiful, delicious garden!

Magic pellets that make seeds sprout almost overnight

Here is a picture of the door that my host dad/ neighbor
Orlando helped me put on my chicken coop

Fresh, delicious limes that I make lime-aid out of regularly :)

Also big shout out to my good friend Alex and her mom who have been a big help in getting my garden off the ground! Thanks guys!

Oh and for my avid followers (Hi Mom, Hi Dad!), I have added a subscription addition to the side of my blog, you just write in your e-mail, confirm and when I post you will get notifications! :)

The Chickens Are Here!

 As I mentioned briefly a couple of weeks ago, I just turned 23. Two of my good volunteer friends who live in the area came by on a surprise visit and brought me this beautiful cake! We had a lovely day down by the river and then my host family had a nice dinner for all of us. :)

Here is the first of my eggs that started hatching! Egg hatching is a very exhausting business, and often the chicks are so worn out by the process that they die inside their shells. I had this happen with one of my eggs. And sadly out of the 14 eggs my hen laid, only four hatched. And again sadly, one of those passed away last night. 

But here she is. This is the first of my chicks to hatch. She is right out of the shell in this picture and a little gross. 

Here is a pic of my chicken coop. A door is currently being added, as is some tarping for shade and protection from rain. 

Here she is looking much cuter! I swore I would not name my chicks, but I just cant help it. This one is Henrietta. :)

 And here he is in all his glory: My rooster! He is a miniature rooster and really pretty. He is running away from me to go get into trouble. No but literally, like 5 min after I took this picture he had to be separated from another rooster that he started a fight with. No one in my community is going to like me if my rooster keeps these shenanigans up.

Aaaand this is what happens when you get into rooster fights. You get tied up inside the chicken coop where you can cause no trouble. 

And last but not least, this is my newest hen and her chicks. She is a miniature just like my rooster and she has 8 babies. Some will be mini like her, and some will be full sized.









We are all just one big happy family here!

Why I should have listened to my mother...

How many times did I hear my mom tell me 'not to count my chicks before they hatched' growing up? Well here we are on chick hatching day and I have to say I am totally guilty of counting my chicks before they hatched. Yesterday I noticed that one of my hen's eggs was a little cracked, so I showed it to my host mom and she confirmed (by smelling it) that it had indeed gone bad and was no longer living. Down to 13 eggs. Then this morning I could not resist a little peak at the eggs (as tomorrow is the 22nd day, and that is the gestation period for chicks). When I picked my hen up, yes I can pick up hens now, I saw some broken egg shell. I got super excited because I thought this ment one of my chicks had come early, but sadly I was mistaken. Apparently sometimes when it is super hot (as it is now here) the eggs 'explode' more or less. This is what happened to egg number two, it exploded. Which in and of its self is sad but especially because it was only a day or so away from hatching. So here I am still counting. There are 12 eggs unhatched. We will see, but I am now terribly fearful that the heat has gotten to the rest of them. and I will have no little chicks. Updates to come.

Hot, Sweaty and Dirty

Note to self- figure out how to say "I am melting into a puddle because it is so freaking hot" in Spanish.

Mano de Leon or hand of a lion: either way an enormous leaf

All of a sudden it is so hot here. It used to be hot, but not hot enough to complain and definitely not hot enough to write about. All of a sudden at the beginning of this week, someone flipped a switch here and it is outrageously hot. I told my host mom that I wanted to walk around naked it is so hot, and she just about died laughing she thought that was so funny. I want to do nothing except go swimming and lay in my hammock eating frozen grapes. haha Someone please remind me that this is what I signed up for in joining Peace Corps El Salvador. I signed up for hot hot HOT heat. haha But really though I am enjoying my time in my site so far.

I am slowly but surely completing my health census.  Some days it is hard to motivate my self to knock on random people's doors and ask them to talk about their personal health life. But it is getting easier and many people in my community are so inviting and kind. And they love to give me gifts of food. So far I have received home made cheese,  a bottle of honey, tamales,  and a bag full of delicious mangos.

This is my chicken sitting on her eggs up close. Doesn't she look like she could attack at any moment?

Ok so since I last wrote, I have acquired a few more things for what we will call my current chicken obsession. So it all started with one chicken and 14 eggs (which are still growing away). Then this past week, I was chatting with a new friend, who sells lumber, about my CO and he mentioned he could help me out and provide the materials I would need to build my chicken coop! (wood stakes and chicken wire) He dropped them off on Saturday, so now I have all of the materials, it just needs to be assembled. As my friend and I continued chatting, it turned out that he has a chicken over load at his house. He has one hen too many (with 10 eggs) and a rooster with an attitude problem. So I have now inherited all of these animals as well! That puts me at about 25 chickens and a rooster. It is pretty common that not all of the eggs will hatch so it might be a few less than that, but never the less I am super excited!

One of my host sisters, Catherine, enjoying a freshly picked orange 

Another thing I am going to try out is growing a papaya tree. I feel like a tree is a very lofty project to attempt from a seed (as I have never done this before), but I hear papayas are super easy to grow. So as I had hundreds of free seeds from the papaya I ate yesterday, mounds of cow manure and an empty yogurt cup I have decided to give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is that nothing happens, and the best thing that can happen is that in a year or so I have my very own papaya tree!

Also something I am looking into is composting. I have done a little research, as I know nothing really about composting, and wow is is complicated! It has to be just the right size, with just the right carbon to nitrogen ratio. You can't put in this and that, and to make it compost just right you really should chop everything up into little pieces before you add it to the pile. And here I was thinking I could just start throwing things in one spot and it would just start composting. It will keep my brain going though (not that it is not working hard enough as it is with all this Spanish!).

Joelle at the top of our hike, elated! 

On Saturday I went on a hike with my friend Joelle (another volunteer who lives super close) in the Parque Nacional Monticristo. There is a place you can hike to in the park where Honduras, Guatamala and El Salvador meet. Pretty awesome! And I have to say this hike was much more relaxed than the volcano hike I did when I was in San Vicente. No more lost toenails for me!

Also just as a side note, my feet are filthy. It is so hot here it really is a necessity to wear some sort of sandals all the time. And because it is so dry my feet just get caked in dust. No amount of scrubbing will make them clean. Also can anyone imagine if I went to get a pedicure right now?  I bet they would send me away with my dirty feet and two big toes missing nails. haha

Spanish word of the day: Fan- Ventilador

(my latest purchase, which I am currently sitting in front of) 

New life!

Well I am officially a Peace Corps volunteer as of 2 weeks ago. Our swearing in ceremony was very nice, and it was super nice to stay in a hotel with air conditioning for the night. Haha Oh the little things. The US Ambassador to El Salvador, Mary Carmen Aponte, swore us in. The next day we headed to the capital, San Salvador, for what the call counterpart day. Counterpart day is where you meet the Peace Corps appointed people who work or live in your community that will be your guide for the next two years. If you want to start a project, or figure out who will be the best to work with or just want some support, they are your go to people. My primary counterpart is the Health Promoter here in my little town outside of Metapan. A Health Promoter’s main job is to know the general health of everyone in the community. They also give vaccinations, birth control and are often the first person people in the community will go to when they are having a health issue or want to learn more about a health issue. My secondary counterpart is my next-door neighbor and for all intents and purposes my new ‘host mom’. She is super nice and super active in the community. I am replacing a volunteer here, so my community has some experience dealing with gringos, which is good, but I am hoping that eventually I will stop being compared to the volunteer I replaced. My town is semi-mountainous, which sometimes is beautiful and sometimes a pain to walk everywhere. There is a river that runs through my town, but is mostly dry right now as we are in the middle of the dry season. Speaking of that it is HOT here.



My House!



Some interesting things that have happened to me in the past two weeks:

-          I killed a chicken. I got up one morning and one of my host sisters asked me if I wanted to kill a chicken right then and there. Really there was no reason to say no, so I did not. Haha It was pretty interesting and I have to say I felt like I might faint, but it was also pretty cool to see exactly where your food is coming from. I then helped de-feather it and then ate it later that day. It was delicious. J I have spoken to my host mom about getting some of my own chickens, and in a matter of days I will have my own brand new baby chicks. They are growing away in their little eggs as I type this. Now I just have to figure out how to build a chicken coop… anyone?

-          I moved into my own house. I was originally supposed to live with a host family, but through some mis-communication I moved straight into my house (next-door to the family that was supposed to be my host family). There are 2 rooms, a kitchen with a wood burning stove, a pila area, and a pretty sizable front yard. There is a lime tree, an almond tree, 2 orange trees, a marenon tree (I cannot seem to escape them), and 2 mango trees in my front yard. And I already have plans for a garden. Not a whole lot in my house right now, but slowly but surly I am collecting items.

-           I ate rabbit for the first time. And you know, it actually does taste kind of like chicken. Haha I have to admit, I was a little nervous about trying it, but as it turns out, I loved it! Go figure. 

-          I also got a new address here in my area. I have changed it on the side of my blog here. So when sending things, this is the correct address to use. 

-          My counterpart, the Health Promoter, took me around my little town and introduced me to the majority of the families. There are about 150 houses here in my town, which compared to some of the other volunteers near by, one has about 50 houses and another only has 17, 150 is a ton. It took us 3 days to just stop in and say ‘hi’ to all of those families, so I can only imagine how long it is going to take to complete the census.



My wood burning stove and my chicken sitting on her 14 eggs



-          Speaking of the census, I have officially started my community census this week. It is about 75 family and health related questions. I have to say, it is a little awkward going to houses and asking super personal questions, like when was their last obgyn exam, to people I have only met once before. And it’s even more awkward when they do not answer truthfully (like when you ask how many times a day they brush their teeth and they answer 3 times a day, everyday, and half of their teeth are missing/ visibly rotting). I have completed about 30 houses, and am trying to average 6 a day, finishing sometime at the end of April is the goal.

Spanish Word(s) of the Day: Chicken: Pollo

Hen: Gallina

Rooster: Gallo



Chick: Pollito (pronounced poy-e-toe)



Also happy April! Hard to believe it is already April, but here we are. If you go to the post office today, you can still get those birthday presents out to me, and there is a chance they will make it in time! ;) Just kidding (kind of).





View from my front porch



My Pila area

View of my back yard and neighbors house

^My main room