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

Salvo life

My living room at my host family's house- My room is the curtain right by the right edge of the camera

Composting Latrine that I use haha

Shower, that I am sad to leave behind for bucket baths

Sugar cane right by my house (huge industry here)

Chicken coop so the chickens dont get eaten by the large cats that live in the sugar cane

My tiny room and mosquito net (this picture was taken from my doorway)

My family's pila- the left is for washing clothes and brushing teeth and the right is for dishes and food prep. The middle is where the water is

Coffee beans up close. Where my perm site is in Santa Ana is where Starbucks buys their coffee

Where sugar cane is turned into sugar

Black bean field

Sugar cane on fire real close to my house

This is my host families chicken coop from above and the sugar cane on fire. This picture was taken from the front porch of my host famlies house

How close the fire is to the community... Crazy


So this is going to have to tide you all over for a while. I am getting sworn in tomorrow and will not have regular internet access for a while. This is a pretty good idea of my last two months!

So this has been a pretty eventful week. We got out site assignments (I am going to be about 20 min from the Guatemalan border in the department of Santa Ana), the sugar cane was burnt next to my house (aids in cutting it down), and I purchased my first machete. But I am dedicating this blog post to interesting food discoveries I have made here in El Salvador. Oh also I would like to add that Charlie Scheen is an asshole, and the shoe venders here in El Salvador lead respectable, happy lives. What a jerk…

So one of the interesting things about El Salvador is the diversity of fruit that is grown down here and I have never heard of in the states. For example there is a type of fruit that grows on a tree and looks like a green bean the size of your arm, called a Paterna. When you open it the seeds that are in it are covered in a fuzzy white coating. That is the part you eat, the fuzzy white part. It is pretty weird, but really sweet and then the seeds inside are cooked in the ashes of a fire.

Volcano I hiked as seen from my house

 Another interesting discovery I have made is a fruit called a maranon. Now if you enjoy getting cotton mouth, this is the fruit for you. Personally I think it is pretty gross and try to stay away from it as much as possible. There is another part of this fruit that you may have heard of though, semillas de maranon. No? How about a cashew? Ever wonder where cashews are from and why they are so ridiculously expensive? This is how it goes down. The seed for the maranon fruit grows on top of the plant in a casing that connects the fruit to the tree. One cashew for one fruit. You have to break off the casing and then roast it in order to get the cashew out. Here in El Salvador people grow this fruit for the fruit. Cashews are just a side thing that, if you happen to like them, you can collect them or buy a baggy of them for 25 cents on the bus. Literally cashews litter the streets here, because people do not care about them. As I wrote that I realized how odd that sounds, but it true.

Some other interesting food facts here-

-You can have a whole meal of chicken, rice, and salad for less than 2 bucks

-Salad is rare haha

-Yesterday for dinner I ate a potato and chicken tamale (which consists of a corn mush like substance) and my host dad encouraged me to eat it with a corn tortilla (which I did because it was not really a suggestion as it was expected that I would). Would you like some corn with your potato and corn? The answer is always yes.

-Pupusas (which are basically a food group here) can be purchased for 25 cents each

- You can buy an entire meal while sitting on a bus. Meat and tortillas, French fries, drinks, fruit and vegetables, chips, candy, etc are all sold by independent vendors (aka random people who sell food on the bus to make their living) on the 45 min bus ride from my town to the capital.

- You can make fruit juice out of any kind of fruit, water and sugar. Coconuts? Check. Pineapple? Check. Cantaloupe? Check. Watermelon? Check. Gross maranon? Double check.

- I believe a person could live off of frozen choco-bananas

- We take breaks in our training when the bread lady comes

- Salvadorians love salt and sugar and use it abundantly on about everything

- Cereal here is not a common breakfast food here, but when consumed it is done so with hot milk, which has the effect of making the cereal soggy in about .5 seconds

- Eating the scales, fins, and head of a fish is normal and expected (Which I have learned and done)

- When hiking an enormous volcano, people will bring a full meal of pupusas and salsa and whip out plates half way up to have a little sit down snack

- When tomatoes are in season, you can buy about 30 for a buck

- Beans go with everything

- Guacamole here consists of avocado, onion and egg

- Un-ripe green mangos covered in salt are wildly popular (yuck)

- It is common for people to eat the peel of mangos

- Plantains are put in soup, peel and all

- Pineapples grow on top of what looks like a large aloe plant

- I can now climb a coconut tree with a rope, still figuring out how to get down

Also I have decided to bring back the Spanish word of the day (or week or month) haha to my blog. You all need to learn a little something out there as well.

Today’s word: Sandia =  Watermellon

You know you are in El Salvador... and Pictures of my life :)

You know you are in El Salvador...
-when your host mom's best friend is the towns witch doctor whos day job is the towns chicken killer.
-when chickens lay eggs next to your Spanish class
-when babies drink more coffee and coke than an adult
-when you hike 4.5 hrs up a volcano only to see a heli-pad and loose both of your big toenails in the process
-when the entire country wakes up at 5 and even people that are lazy are up by 8
-when it is quite normal to eat some form of rice, corn, potatoes, and wheat in one sitting
-when papaya is the solution (digestive or otherwise) to all your problems
-when the bread man is the high light of your day

-when you can buy 30 tomatoes for a dollar.

Waterfalls near my house!

Your morning cup of coffee

Rural Health group at a sulfer lake ontop of a volano