I’ve just come from the town health clinic where I saw my first human birth! After twelve hours of labor, Carmen – with whom I became acquainted as I entered her delivery room – pushed a beautiful baby girl out into the world and I witnessed the climactic finish. She didn’t seem to mind my presence amidst all that huffing and puffing, and besides privacy is a rarity for Salvadorans. Though much the same as videotaped births on the Discovery Channel and in my fifth-grade sex-ed class, this was exciting! And gross, but very exciting. And as the doctor reached for the waning supply of gauze and sterilized scissors, the experience was very much a reminder that I live in a third world village.

In a similar exposure to medicine in the campo, a month ago I joined one doctor and two dentists on a medical brigade just over the border of Honduras. More than 200 people waited patiently in one or both of the two lines: the first line offered a three-minute check-up with the doctor and resulted in a prescription of some sort, which I filled from the medicine we brought with us; the second line was a quick dental examination behind a blue plastic tarp which usually resulted in one to several on-the-spot tooth extractions. That was interesting to watch but very gruesome, I won’t lie. The other PC volunteer and I gave impromptu lessons to the waiting throng of people on treating diarrhea and sexually transmitted diseases.

Things that do not remind me that I live in El Salvador are the malls for the rich, of which there are several and they are very beautifully done. Yes, I go there often for retail therapy and to feel normal for a few hours with a latte and an air-conditioned movie. Then I hop onto two different busses filled with chickens and very poor Salvadorans for a cumulative seven hours of travel to come home. The contrast is stark and fantastic. Thank goodness for capitalism and globalization, I don’t know what I’d do without good sushi and a decent makeup counter.

As for American fiestas, I am spending Thanksgiving at the residence of the great American Ambassador to El Salvador. I think we’re to watch football with his marine detail then indulge in tryptophan the good ol’ American way and with as much stuffing as I can possibly…stuff…in my mouth. I like pupusas a lot, but a break ain’t bad. I will dutifully relate all the fabulous hobnobbing in the capital once the affair is over, though I am always sad to be missing my favorite holiday – the only one I celebrate with gusto – with my favorite family. I have much to be thankful for this year and my own happiness tops the list. I have become conscious of Joy and Stimulation several times a day, and Adventure and Challenge always meet me at the doorstep; I’m glad to have them as companions in a strange and wonderful place. I’ll put a door to my room on my Christmas list, though, as I’d love to renew my friendship with Privacy and Quiet.

Aside from the seemingly plentiful extracurricular adventures in medicine and cuisine, Joateca is all a´bustle with the coming festivals: recently passed is the celebration of the land and the plentiful crops we (well, they) reap, and the festival celebrating Mary’s divine conception comes next and promises bullfighting and lots and lots of good food. Then Christmas comes, which obviously celebrates Jesus and the many presents he received at his famous birth. We continue that tradition faithfully today. As for the weather, the rainy winter season has been replaced by dry and windy summer. The rains that used to dependably undo all the work that went into hanging my drying clothes on the roof have gone. The permanent sinkholes and mudpools have dried to reveal that there actually is earth beneath, and I’ve stopped carrying my umbrella with me everywhere. But as the air dried it was replaced by an astonishingly strong and cold wind reminiscent of Chicago. Bundled in two sweaters, long pants and a jacket, who knew El Salvador gets cold! My PC recruiter certainly didn't mention it. If I can suffer from tropical skin rashes, where are the tropics?

Besides partaking in the festivities and the many imaginative incarnations of the single corn plant, I’ve been quite busy with work. I helped organized the first open town hall meeting of the year (there should have been three already), I am soliciting the municipality to repair the ambulance that has been out of commission for more than a year; I am helping a community group become legalized, learn how to administrate projects, and am getting my hands dirty with the construction of a two-room schoolhouse; I am working with a government program that deals in ‘conditional cash-transfers’ to the most impoverished to provide warm clothing to kids under ten; I am teaching beginning English to two sixth grade classes (forty-five rugrats in all) and tutor a bright sixteen-year-old; I am working with the health inspector to create a presentation on sanitary trash removal and composting to the town council and the urban population who will soon have to become conscious of their trash disposal methods and, well, pay for them. It ain’t free. I’d like to: help a group of women create a small business, spruce up the park, and help five communities gain access to potable water. I’m getting ahead of myself, but The Moral of the Story: don’t believe those who say one person can’t effect change.

Cultural Notes: *Continuation of wage comparisons:

- A local construction worker earns about $260/month.- The pastor of Evangelical Church earn about $160/month in donations from his members to support his family of five.- The paid helper who lives in my house earns $100/month for cooking, cleaning, caring for the 3-year-old, and washing all laundry by hand. -A low level government employee makes about $250/month after taxes.*The Millennium Challenge Account, to which the US is donating about $460 million aid dollars to El Salvador. Out of 262 municipalities across the country, 92 will benefit from a border-to-border (Guatemala to Honduras) highway the will be built across the mountainous northern zone beginning next year. Joateca’s horrible earthen road will be paved! I feel like most people here prayed for that at least once, so thanks to Jesus and to the US of A.

Let’s quickly recap the last five weeks of training – a chaotic flurry of activities that, I can say in hindsight, adequately prepared me for the quick shove out of the warm, comfortable nest – so I can bring you up to speed on my life in a new house, with a new family, in a new part of the country.

Field Based Training: Three other trainees and I visited a volunteer for four days of activities in the northern department of Chalatenango. With this chance to see the many opportunities and challenges of volunteer life, we began with an introduction to the leftist lady mayor, an ex-guerilla. We played women’s softball, sang (yes, yes I did) in a talent show (no, there was no talent), and gave a spirited one-hour lesson to the fifth graders on how and why to separate their banana peels from their juice boxes. We went on an all-day guided hike with a youth group hoping to jumpstart eco-tourism, which was inspiring and wonderful, but with the coming of the rainy season turned out to be less hiking and more clawing through wet jungle. We got to see caves carved out of the mountainside wherein many villagers hid with their neighbors and families – often for months at a time – when the government’s army came to smoke out the guerillas during the long and bloody civil war of 1980 – 1992 (the army literally burned down the hundreds of houses of suspected guerilla supporters). We later spoke with several ex-guerillas, a woman who was a nurse and schoolteacher in the caves and a small group of older men who fought against the army. They recalled incredible tales of triumph and death, of speaking out against an increasingly tyrannical military government that turned into a sustained war, of losing everything and of seeking haven in Honduras until the tide turned. The civil war was an incredibly complicated, interesting, and twisted twelve years in the history of this country, and although the political left and right are no longer violent, the scars have left a deep impression on its people.

Learning: Training was a time of constant stimulation, with one’s curiosity the only limit. In the area of forced learning, however, our teachers gave us a dance lesson in the ways of Latin hip-shaking. Our salsa, meringue (originating from the Dominican Republic), and cumbia (from Columbia) class exemplified why most Americans shouldn’t attempt Latin dancing in public. / My family invited the two Guadalupe trainees to our home for a lesson of washing your clothes in the stone sink (pila) since their families owned washing machines. / The group held a day camp for about 25 kids from the surrounding pueblos of Guadalupe, San Lorenzo, and San Esteban on the importance of exercise and good nutrition. Although we maintained a ratio of 1 trainee to 2 kids, the many guided activities of kickball, water balloon throwing, lessons on the food pyramid, and making beaded bracelets and lunch were utterly exhausting. I know they enjoyed the day of unusual activities, but the Guadalupe kids didn’t even make it onto the bus home without stopping for a quick soda and chips. We’ll get ‘em next time.

Volcano Trek: After nearly three months of living in its hulking shadow, our group finally hiked the two-coned volcano of San Vicente called Chinchontepeque. During a grueling 8-hour trek over loose, rocky, and wet terrain, we were rewarded with no view from the top because the small army base perched at the zenith was swathed in clouds. It was wonderful to stretch my legs and come out unscathed save for a mysterious plant rash. It’s gone now.

Transition: Though born with little to no stage talent, I managed to write, direct, and star in a short comedic play for our beloved departing training director, depicting how she will bring brow-raising ‘Salvadoranisms’ – cultural quirks that will clash with the American way of doing things – back with her to Oregon. After we said our goodbyes to her, we did the same to all the host families in a big ‘Thank You’ party - complete with piñatas and a dunk tank – and then we lowly trainees packed our belongings and left Guadalupe for the capital. After a nice speech by the Ambassador from the United States (in English. With a translator. Groan.) and a repetition of the oath, twenty-seven wonderfully naïve and optimistic Americans swore in as Peace Corps Volunteers, adding to the slightly less optimistic and entirely more weathered 125 volunteers currently in the field.

I have since moved to Joateca and here is where I’ll stay for the next two years…

Joateca (pronounced hwah-teca) is a seven-hour bus journey from the capital of San Salvador, the road continues to climb north and eventually the pavement stops and rocky, red dirt leads you deeper into the cypress and pine forests of El Salvador’s northern mountain range. Out the window, the scattered houses and intermittent pueblos are much the same, but the rolling hills become more frequent and the air cooler. Joateca is the last stop before you reach Honduras where the border is separated by a river and guarded by no one. Citizens and visitors, mothers carrying children, men carrying machetes and bound chickens all disembark in the park, a central square of grass with a decaying basketball court hemmed in by the Catholic Church and the Town Hall.

Joateca is a special place, at 820 meters above sea level, no closer than a five- hour round-trip bus ride to a decent shopping market in Morazan’s capital, and more than half its population with the surname ‘Argueta’ (No, not all are related to each other. Yes, it’s even the mayor’s name). Census data from 2005 lists this municipality as the fourteenth most impoverished in the country, and as such the government provides modest financial assistance to more than 2,000 of the poorest families. The pueblo itself is quite nice, with paved roads, electricity in the homes and on the streets (though not all the caserios are yet electrified), little trash scattered about (which is not the case in other places, including the wealthy capital), and a friendly population (which seems to be the case everywhere). The town boasts some good infrastructure: an agricultural cooperative, a health clinic, a potable water tank provided by Canada, a resident NGO that maintains the potable water, several schools and high schools, a judicial office, both Catholic and evangelical churches, a police station, several stores selling basic foodstuffs, a market open on Friday mornings that purveys of all sorts of goods, and the Town Hall, where I have a small desk in the corner with working internet. Sometimes. And the street dogs are bigger than in Guadalupe.

Notably, the town does not have a trash sanitation solution, meaning all rubbish is buried or burned. The mayor is supposedly working with consultants on a solution, but it has been a long time in coming and is next on the list after a new soccer stadium. Priorities. Among other things, an environmentally-friendly trash system is a project I hope to get started in the coming months. But for my first two weeks I’ve been focusing on simply putting my face out there and saying Buenos Dias to all who pass. I’ve spread gringa cheer in Catholic mass, on the soccer field with the girls` team, on the basketball court with the boys` team, baking bread and cookies in an earthen oven, depluming chickens for soup in a family ‘restaurant’, observing classes in the school, attending more wakes and vigils than I can shake a stick at, accompanying the social promoter to the different cantons as she gives ‘trainings’ to poverty-stricken mothers, joining a teacher as she teaches literacy to adults, sitting on a civic education committee, watching four people carve all the useful parts of a large cow in the wee hours of the morning for the morning’s market (a very macabre scene; envision the carcass on the cement floor of a rust-colored building, a radio blaring the voice of an angry pastor preaching about the Sin of Adam), and climbing to the top of the cliffs that overlook Joateca and southern Honduras. In the coming months, my plan is to continue getting myself known and invited to community meetings, school field trips, and funerals. These are valuable social events and I’m aching for some love. I am being well taken care of, though, in a house with a flush-toilet where I live with a woman who works in the health clinic, her 3-year-old daughter, and her paid helper who is my age and lovely. Between the hours of 6am and 9pm, I take a warm bucket bath, go about my daily business, read books and study Spanish, and eat lots and lots of different types of corn products. Life is good as a volunteer, and although people generally cannot understand why a young, single woman would leave the U.S. when so many are trying desperately to get in, I think they are intrigued. It’s a good start.

Cultural Notes:

*Let me clarify the terms I’ve been throwing around. Department is similar to a state and contains many municipalities: they number 14 and each has a capital city. Municipality is similar to a county but all smaller parts within (one pueblo and any number of cantones and caserios) are governed by one Town Hall: they number 262. Pueblo is the ‘urban’ area where the Town Hall, park, the main school, and stores are located. Cantones and Caserios are smaller and more rural areas differing in number and size. In summary, the municipality of Joateca is located in the department of Morazan and has three cantones and nineteen caserios.

*Trailing Mexico (with 6.5 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.), El Salvador boasts the most illegals (with 0.5 million). If you consider that El Sal is the smallest country in Central America, this statistic is a decent achievement.

*Neither health insurance, life insurance, car insurance, nor home insurance exist here. If your property or person becomes damaged, you must repair everything out of pocket. Or if you’re lucky, with the help of international aid. There are no welfare or social security systems. Keep in mind that most people live from day to day - as ‘paychecks’ are extremely rare and exist only for government employees or sophisticated companies - and without savings, investments, or cushy retirement plans.

*After hacking up chickens for soup and watching a cow get diced for sale in the marketplace, I understand how the Salvadoran`s way of life is much more connected (blood, sweat, and all) to their food: raising animals for meat and dairy, and planting and harvesting their basic food staples of corn, beans, rice, and coffee. With a more sanitary and disconnected system for many in the U.S., our chickens come clean, pretty, and individually wrapped. But with rampant diabetes and obesity in our countries, respectively, diet is a complicated beast.

*Salvadorans homes either have a latrine or a flush toilet, the latter being expensive for the space it assumes inside the house and because water is a precious commodity. Note, however, that flushing paper down the toilet is not allowed because the system is too delicate. You done going to the bathroom? You must put the toilet paper in the wastebasket next to the toilet, not in the toilet. Even in the nicest hotel in San Salvador. Sorry.

*On the subject of water problems, only 58% of El Sal’s population, it is claimed, has access to potable water. This is the lowest level in Latin America. Although there are frequent rainstorms during the current winter season, deforestation, soil erosion, river contamination (due to daily trash dumping and clothes washing…sometimes with both occurring in the same spot at the same time!), and inadequate containment and treatment facilities contribute to the problem.

Now at the midway point in training, Peace Corps is scaling back its protective bubble and is slowly pushing its trainees out of the nest. We’ve received training on government hierarchy and combating skin diseases. Legalizing community groups and malaria prevention. GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and HIV. Our activities the past few weeks have been many and varied…

House Calls

I accompanied a health promoter from the Ministry of Health on his rounds in a small community on the outskirts of urban Guadalupe as he made house calls, the ministry’s method of ensuring both that each home is utilizing prescribed anti-dengue (a parasite-carrying mosquito) methods and that all in the community have basic access to health care. And it is basic. He weighed babies and children on a scale he hung from the rafters, took down their names and ages for his records, reminded the mothers not to feed their children too much soda or sugar bread (pan dulce, a common treat), then pleaded for them to visit the Guadalupe clinic for check-ups knowing that it was unlikely they would - access to transportation and finding the opportunity to do so with several children and a house to maintain are just two of many obstacles. An enlightening experience on rural living conditions.

School Lesson

Never a happy public speaker, for two days I prepared to give a lesson to Guadalupe’s fifth grade students on values. I dreaded the pressure to perform and the inevitable scrutiny, nevermind suffering a drought of ideas on how to improve the morals necessary for young Salvadorans to contribute to a functioning society in 45 minutes. I planned an icebreaker (called dinamicas here, and popular the country over) name game, an individual activity sheet, and a group storytelling activity. I diligently cut out numbered squares of colored paper, photocopied activity sheets, highlighted worksheets and went to bed with my nerves. The next morning the lesson was fantastic. Those fifth graders were perky, attentive and fun, though they may have merely been distracted by my charming smile and the absurdity of my skin color. After the first five minutes of clumsiness I segued into a confident groove, moved in and out of the desks with ease, and treated everything as a game - which is always a nice change of pace from the usual rote memorization and endless note-taking with little interaction. The flow of Spanish wasn’t bad either…I mean my reading level is about theirs. The lesson was a good one for me: the high I still feel from successfully navigating the often intimidating halls of middle school and feeling comfortable giving lessons – a common teaching tool used by all PC volunteers for all age groups and topics – really improved my street cred and confidence.

Immersion Days

Accompanied by another trainee, it took four buses to get to the pueblo of Santo Domingo de Guzman in Sonsonate where a volunteer named Barbara scooped us up for lunch. The town’s pick-up truck then dropped us off at separate houses for a two-night stay in a nearby caserio, or rural zone of the town. My new family was amazing. Their adobe home was flanked by a blooming garden and I was lucky enough to have my own room with a hammock on the porch! The man of the house guided me through the cornfields with a view of the ocean and the trail of a church choir in the breeze. I followed him and his eldest son to the soccer field for their weekly game then headed back home for a wonderfully prepared dinner. My mouth still waters for crab soup, kidney beans and freshly made cheese. SIDEBAR: Most food I have encountered here is cooked in salt, oil and plenty of it – even the basic staples of rice and beans. Even with an agricultural economy, sweets and chips and coffee frequent the daily menu and malnutrition is rampant – the Guadalupe Health Clinic estimates that 30% of its citizens in both the urban and rural communities are malnourished, and high cholesterol and diabetes is common. Consider also the dynamic between production costs and the export market: locally grown coffee - a major crop - yields a high enough export price that very little is saved for local consumption…in a land thick with the fragrant trees, the daily dose of coffee is brewed with instant powder from the Swiss company, Nescafe.

The next morning I woke up before the sun, threw on some sandals (a mistake once I realized what I would soon step in) and followed the father and his two young sons across hilly pastures and a river to reach the ten cows he keeps in a field on the border of Sonsonate. One by one, he and his eldest took turns milking and feeding each cow and its calf until their three large jugs were filled. The cows were put out to pasture, each man threw a jug on his shoulder, and we trekked back across the landscape to sell the milk - less the two liter bottle I carried - to a neighbor who then makes cheese and sells it to their neighborhood. Once home I donned a bathing suit and bathed with the help of buckets from the outdoor sink, then sat down for a hearty breakfast and fresh (boiled) milk. The rest of the day, and weekend it seems, I read in the hammock and enjoyed the breeze that arrived with dusk. After two days of paradise – complete with presentations of fresh coconut juice and mango slices at regular intervals – I took the pick-up back into town for a day with Barbara. After a chat with the mayor, we took the bus to the big city and ate at an air-conditioned Pizza Hut, watched a dubbed American film in the (also air-conditioned) theater, then bought dinner at the supermarket. Such wonderful gluttony.

We danced the night away alongside several teenage girls – some shy and some very un-shy – competing to be Queen of the town. The following morning we hiked through town and across cow pastures to a waterfall made all the more splendid that ten or so Christian Evangelical families were standing at its edge and signing hymns, complete with guitars and a bass. After a quick swim, we wrapped up our weekend in the country and gossip time with a volunteer and headed back to good ol’ Guadalupe.

Next entry will tell the story of four days visiting a volunteer high in the mountains of Chalatenango where I sang in a talent show, gave a lesson to fourth and fifth graders on how to separate trash, and listened to ex-guerillas weave their tales of adventure and risk during the recent (if not in history, then in memory) Civil War that wracked El Salvador from 1979 – 1992. Stay tuned.

Cultural Notes

*Gas prices in El Salvador are about $3.50 per gallon. When you take into account that a day’s salary out in the fields is $3 per day and that both lunch and dinner can be purchased for $3, gas is expensive.

*Barbed wire is ubiquitous. In San Salvador it is often electrified around the homes of the wealthy; it protects the roofs of some city houses to deter thieves from moving the clay tiles and jumping in; it separates pasture lands; it surrounds properties, both in the city and the campo; and is used to hang wet clothes to dry.

*Winnie the Pooh is also ubiquitous. Winnie and friends have somehow survived the maelstrom of American icons hurled at El Salvador, and for that he’s won top prize: his image on paper towels, handbags, murals, t-shirts and figurines. Winnie lives in almost every household I’ve visited.

I have lived in El Salvador for two weeks as a Peace Corps Trainee. I call the green house on the hill in the town of Guadalupe my home, where my room is separated from the living room only by a curtain and a mosquito net surrounds my bed like one of a princess. I am the ninth member in a family of eight, three children under 11, their parents, a sister, her mother, and her brother. I do, in fact, know all their names: Neyci, Jossua, Cristofer, Mandy, Beto, Maritza, Etelvina, and Salvador, respectively.

There is always action in the house, beginning anytime before 5am when the roosters begin their cacophonous calls for dominance. Our house actually doesn’t boast animals of any kind, but outside our concrete walls all sorts lend their voices to the morning noise, and often the birds begin their morning with a regretful rooftop tap-dance on my corrugated tin ceiling. Many mornings I will rouse myself before the sun rises, stumble in the dark to the latrine, pull on my running clothes and head out to the soccer field for a (sometimes) spirited run with the exquisite outline of our great two-coned volcano in the backdrop. When I return, I brave the cold (but thankfully running!) water of our outdoor shower – located in the central courtyard of the house but adequately concealed – and watch the steam rise from my skin. It is refreshing if nothing else. Only one morning did I take a bath with water from a bucket when none was running; it was quaint and wonderful. I dress carefully in my room (curtain!) and the TV or radio is already blaring in a noisy din that lasts until bedtime at 10pm. Breakfast is anything from eggs, rice, beans, tortillas or fried plantains to cereal with cold milk (rare and upon special request only). Actually, lunch and dinner are about the same, with avocado, soup and local fruits available for substitution. I cover myself in bugspray to stave off malaria and dengue and head out to meet the morning bus to San Vicente – the capital of this departamento – with the two other lovely trainees who live in Guadalupe, a Californian and a Montanan. A crowded $0.60 ride takes us to the busy center of San Vicente where we make our way to the Peace Corps Training Center for daily classes of Spanish, technical lessons, and medical sessions that last until 5pm. I return home on a similarly crowded bus (old American schoolbuses painted green and white, named for a woman on the outside, and retrofitted with religious and pop-cultural paraphernalia on the inside), bypassing the many vendors of all things sweet, succulent, and crunchy in order to get a seat on the left side: as the bus winds up and down the verdant mountains, through fields of sugar cane and exotic trees, dusk is the best time to observe the hazy blue outline of the volcano perched steeply atop farmland and tin-roofed homes. We weave through pick-up trucks crammed with people, stray dogs, cows and horses lazily headed somewhere to get to my town, and when I step off the bus I feel at home. The climate is much more enjoyable, the smog significantly less, and the people inherently more friendly.

The alternative is to receive day-long Spanish class in another trainee’s living room in Guadalupe, our sessions of vocabulary and grammar peppered with exciting visits to interview the directors of the school (first thru ninth grades), an after-school program, and La Casa de la Cultura – a national phenomenon that houses artifacts, clothes, an musical instruments from El Salvador’s bygone eras in order to preserve its indigenous culture – with plans to visit the health clinic and mayor’s office in the coming weeks. I eat dinner at the table alone then join the multitude of people inevitably enjoying a soap opera or dubbed film in the living room. Etelvina and Mandy make tortillas at midday and in the evening and sell them to anyone who stops by. I’m actually not a bad tortilla maker and my pupusas are quite scrumptious, but I’ll need a lot of work before I head out to my new, yet-to-be-determined site to cook for myself. I lack – quite apparently – the skill of hand-washing my clothes, as I get the soap stuck on buttons and crevices quite easily. But the many ladies in my house are happy to laugh at my efforts and show me the way, allowing me to do only my undergarments myself while they finish my load in the stone sink and hang them to dry in the courtyard.

My Spanish is improving and although there are moments of serious frustration, there are also moments of breakthrough. My training class is 28-strong – one girl quit just yesterday due to “personal reasons” - and there are three married couples in the bunch. We are a diverse group, ranging in age from 21 to 54, the oldest of whom did Peace Corps in Paraguay twenty years ago and signed up for El Salvador after she recently entered retirement. We all get along and show a sincere curiosity and desire to learn, which is great for morale. We are divided into two groups: Youth Development and Municipal Development, the latter to which I belong. Although vague, my charge is to work in conjunction with a mayor’s office and assist in anything I can while remaining apolitical; the benefit to the lack of a stringent “job description” is the flexibility in which I can maneuver while seeking to increase citizen participation in the local government and increase service delivery, efficiency, and effectiveness. In eight weeks, my job will be to live as a Salvadoran and work among them to help strengthen the existing infrastructure. I’ll send more info when I know more!

Cultural Notes, gleaned from technical sessions and the newspaper:

*The majority of Salvadoran families receive remittances (money sent back from family members living in the USA where work is more plentiful and the pay is infinitely better). This is causing the economy to change; whereas it was once based on agriculture (70% in 1978), it is now based on remittances (75% last year).

*25% of the Salvadoran population lives in the USA. The phenomenon of immigrating to the US began during El Salvador’s civil war (1980 – 1992) where many were granted refugee status. Many were granted citizenship in 1994 and those in the US applied to have their families join them.

*Many Salvadorans try to cross the border every day; 41,500 were apprehended at the Mexican border last year.

Contact Information:

Mailing address, valid until August 20 when I’ll have the address of my new site.

Stephanie Rozsa, PCT

Apartado Postal #1947

Correo Nacional, Centro de Gobierno

San Salvador, El Salvador

*Instructions for mailing: Send all mail and packages via USPS. Send no packages via FEDEX/UPS because I’ll have to get them out of customs at the airport in San Salvador, no fun. Mail is reliable, but for packages try to list “Libros” as the contents and keep the packing material discreet so that it’s contents are not deemed valuable by handlers. Care packages are loved deeply so send, send, send!

If you want my cell number, email me; all incoming calls are gratis, so dial or text freely!