12-12-11 There’s an art to riding a bus in El Salvador, and it’s taken me almost two years to learn and catalogue all its subtle complexities. The trick is in finding the proper bus stance and fighting to maintain it. In order to do this, you may or may not have to nudge, shove, and [...]
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I finally got my hands on a video of me blatantly cheating at the pinata at the All Volunteer Conference (as referenced in my 10-14-11 blog post, All Volunteer Conference). Click here to watch! Enjoy!
October 14, 2011 With a short six months left of my Peace Corps service, I’ve found my thoughts turning more and more often to one question: what next? Truth be told, I’ve been asking myself this question since almost day 1 of my service. With two years firmly placed between myself and the necessity of [...]
October 13, 2011 I took a break last weekend from tramping the roads drumming up participants for the baking class to attend the All Volunteer Conference in La Palma. Every year, Peace Corps El Salvador talks about doing a conference for all the volunteers to get together, and every year, we lack a budget for [...]
10-21-11 Over the past week and a half, El Salvador has experienced its largest rainfall in recent history. A tropical depression dumped an average of 1500 millimeters of rain (that’s almost five feet, for those of us not on the metric system) across the country in just ten short days. For your reference, that’s almost [...]
…also known as “One More Reason to Hate my Latrine”. I woke up the other morning and went outside to use my latrine. (The Peace Corps is kind of like camping for two years, but with less beer and more work. So awesome.) On the floor of my latrine was a snake, blissfully napping with [...]
9-7-11 Last week, my ADESCO directiva and I went door to door asking if people were interested in taking a free baking class next month. A lot of women (and some teenagers) were interested, but when we told them it was a 200 hour class that would be five days a week, six hours a [...]
9-3-11 This summer has officially been the longest time I’ve been in this country without blogging. Don’t worry, as always, I have lots of good excuses: My computer no longer has Microsoft Word on it. Apparently, when the trial runs out, they make you pay a bunch of money or something. The man’s always trying [...]
5-24-11 Well, doomsday has come and gone, and I have to say, I’m a little bummed out that I didn’t get raptured. I knew it was a mistake to give away my life savings. Ha, just kidding! I don’t have any life savings. It’s surprisingly difficult to save money on a $300 a month stipend. [...]
5-3-11 My rodent problem continues. I use the word rodent, not mouse, because I can no longer deny the truth. Those aren’t mice in my house. They’re rats. In my defense, I’ve never seen either a mouse or rat up close and personal. I’ve been blessed to live in rodent free houses all my life. [...]
4-22-11 There’s a mouse in my house. Okay, so there’s probably more than one. But saying that “there’s a mouse in my house” has a more pleasing symmetry to it than “there are mice in my house”. And it scares me less to imagine one rogue mouse scurrying around at night, rather than a whole [...]
4-11-11 El Salvador is like an oven right now. A scorching, merciless cooker, baking everyone in it to an absolute standstill. Even the dogs have stopped chasing the chickens. They stare apathetically up at me from their little patches of shade, like it’s too hot to even lift their shaggy heads or beat their tails [...]
(Full disclosure – this post is not as racy as the title implies. Sorry.) 4-9-11 For the last two days, I’ve been in Northern Chalatenango, helping to host a workshop called “Horizontes de Prevención” – a workshop aimed at educating youth about HIV/AIDS and general sexual health. We stayed in a free, government run campsite [...]
Sorry everyone, this is a post that I meant to put up before I left for the states in March, and it completely slipped my mind… 2-21-11 I’m glad I have this new-found closeness with my community, but I gotta say, now that I’m understanding more, and people are feeling more comfortable with me, I’m [...]
2-16-11 This weekend, having finally come into my own as a seasoned, hardened, tried-and-true veteran (snort, snort, giggle) with one year of experience under my belt, Peace Corps sent a trainee to stay with me in my site. See, the way it works is that after about three weeks of training, Peace Corps decides that [...]
1-29-11 I went to a baby shower this afternoon, which I enjoyed immensely. I stopped at my host family’s house in the morning to do some laundry, and Niña Angelita asked me if I had a gift bag I could regalar (gift to) her. I told her that I unfortunately had only the one which [...]
1-29-11 I went to the internet café today, and for once, it wasn’t just to check my Facebook status or watch reruns of Glee online. Things are finally starting to pick up for me, and I had a checklist of things to do, especially since I’m going to be gone from my community most of [...]
1-28-11 I had a meeting last night with my town’s ADESCO directiva and the comité de agua. We needed to discuss the legal rights to the land that we’re proposing to use for our new water system, as well as some the points of concern that the engineers from Engineers Without Borders raised with me [...]
Alright, I’ve been told by some people (Grammie) that I should put some more photos on my blog, since not everyone has Facebook. Well, fair enough. The following are the highlights of some of my more recent photos. I would’ve put more up, but just these 20 took me about an hour to download (stupid [...]
So my counterpart Don Alfredo just stopped by my house asking for some of the anti-allergy pills I gave him a few weeks ago. He keeps bees, and got stung on the face and got all puffy. I left him waiting on my porch, and when I came out again, he was looking at the [...]
I realize I haven’t actually written much lately, but in the post I’ve compiled a number of anecdotes, observations, etc. from this month. 1/15/11 The old volunteer from my site, Patty, came to visit last week. After a few hours of knowing her, I realized that I was a miserable volunteer who wasn’t doing right by [...]
1-15-11 I went to a convivio this afternoon, a meeting of all the youth and women’s groups in eight of the nearby caseríos. It was held in the casa comunal of La Ceiba, a town that’s just a short walk up the hill from Los Alas. At this meeting, everyone was supposed to give a [...]
12-17-10 As some of you may know, I came to El Salvador as a Rural Health and Sanitation volunteer. I assumed that my job would be to teach about basic health and hygiene. I believed I’d spend the majority of the time in the centro escolar of my town, teaching kids and teenagers and adults [...]
12-14-10 So, you are quite possibly asking yourself, what’s happened to my favorite blogger, Emilie? Where have all her witty yet heartwarming blog posts disappeared too? Has she been killed by a falling coconut? Kidnapped by maras? Bedridden by parasites? Have the roosters waking her every day at dawn broken her fragile hold on sanity [...]
So, I get asked on a pretty regular basis from folks back home…how can we help you? Is there anything we can give? Finally, the answer is yes. The Women and Youth in Development Scholarship Committee (WYD) needs help raising funds for their yearly scholarships. Every fiscal year, Peace Corps volunteers look for that superstar [...]
Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting the new ambassador to El Salvador, Maria del Carmen Aponte. She was taking a morning to come visit the Peace Corps headquarters in San Salvador, and our boss Jaime invited any of the volunteers in the area to stop by and meet her. Aponte is a Puerto [...]
10-27-10 I was disturbed this morning at 8 am, shortly after finishing my daily, icy-cold bucket bath. (Really, is there any more pleasant way to start the day?) For once, the disturbance was a soft tap-tap-tap at my door, rather than the roosters cock-a-doodle-doo’ing me to the very brink of insanity. I answered [...]
10-7-10 I’ve decided that it’s time to sharpen my machete. This revelation came about (as the majority of my most important revelations do) when I was talking to Joanna on the phone. We had just finished our usual hour-long venting/gossip session, and hung up the phone to go to bed. Five minutes later, I get [...]
10-4-10 I was in San Salvador for a couple days this past week. The first day that I got in, my friend Andrew and I decided to grab some lunch from a little café up the street from our hostel. As we were walking, I heard a scream from someone behind me. I didn’t want [...]
9-27-10 A few weeks ago my counterpart, Don Alfredo, came to talk to me. For those of you who have been following my blog, you might be wondering, “What’s this “counterpart” nonsense? Who is this man Don Alfredo? Why has Emilie never mentioned him during her voluminous yet spectacular blogging career?” The reason I’ve never [...]
Freebies in the super!! They’re so desperate to get rid of that mozzarella that only the weird gringo buys, they’ve slapped a free bag of crema on top of it! (For those of you not in the know, crema is this delicious Salvadoran kind of sour cream, popular with breakfast dishes. Some people hate it, [...]
Alright, catch up time. I was out of my site all of last week, first for an in-service training (IST) in Apaneca, Ahuachapan, and then for a couple days of R&R in San Salvador. Going to Ahuachapan was like stepping into a different country. We stayed in a resort in the mountains that, if it [...]
9/11/10 About 10 days ago, the government in El Salvador drafted a new anti-gang law. This move is mainly in response to the deaths of 14 people in June, when gang members doused a bus in gasoline and set it on fire. With this new law, simply being found to be a member of a [...]
9-6-10 On Saturday morning, I decided to leave early for Chalate to pick up some last-minute supplies for my HIV/AIDS youth workshop on Sunday. I got to the bus stop about 15 minutes early, but shortly before the bus was due to be there, a pick-up truck with a big open bed arrived and everyone [...]
9-3-10 For the past two weeks, our water system has been acting moody and stubborn – sometimes running and sometimes not. It hasn’t been too bad until the last few days, when it hasn’t been running at all. Needless to say, as a desert rat who drinks her full 8 glasses of water each day, [...]
8-31-10 I’ve been in El Salvador for almost exactly 7 months now. I was talking to Joanna on the phone (what else do I do with my evenings, really?), and she pointed out that it feels like the cultural stuff is getting harder, not easier. I get what she’s talking about. When we got to [...]
8-30-10 I was supposed to go into Chalate today to buy some materials for an upcoming HIV/AIDS charla I’m doing for the jovenes in my town. I also figured I’d take the time to update my blog, since I’ve been lazy and haven’t touched it since before I left for the States in the beginning [...]
7-31-10 Right now, I’m dizzy with excitement, because in just two short days, I’ll be kissing the floor (as my friend Sam says) at the Newark Airport. Alright, I probably won’t be literally kissing it. (For the sake of hygiene, I try not to kiss things in Newark.) But I’ll at least be bounding enthusiastically [...]
7-23-10 My days have started to fall into a familiar and (mostly) pleasant routine. I get up most mornings at about 5:30 am – but usually only long enough to open my front door and kick the rooster who’s perched outside, crowing his little heart out like it’s goin’ out of style. While I kick [...]
When I got home from shopping in Chalate on Wednesday, Angelita greeted me with this exciting news: ¡Hay luz en la casita! There’s light in the little house! I don’t know that I’ve talked about this on my blog yet, but I was supposed to move into my own house at the end of my [...]
7-12-10 I was just reading Worldview, the official magazine of the National Peace Corps Association (NPCA). It was filled with pictures of volunteers in different parts of the country – the majority of whom were average-looking, middle-class Americans – grinning widely, usually with their arms slung around a beautiful, native, exotic person. The contrast is [...]
7-8-10 Today, I gave my first charla in Spanish. It went off well, considering I forgot what day it was, forgot my notes, and the cat (chicken?) vomited (crapped?) on my only Peace Corps polo. But let me rewind a bit here. I’ll get to that. I spent last weekend in San Salvador with the [...]
6-28-10 I was sitting on the porch the other day talking to my friend Joanna on the phone. Ana, Angelita, and Cruz were there also, trying to fashion a dress out of recyclable materials for a competition in Chalate next week. In the midst of my conversation, my host sister began shrieking wildly and ran [...]
6-26-10 Life is like a bowl of soup…you never know what you’re gonna get. Well, you don’t with Angelita’s soup, at least. She served me fish soup the other day, which I’m not crazy about simply because of how much effort it takes to eat the soup. Angelita puts several whole fish that have been [...]
6-22-10 I’m finally back in Chalate. It’s good to be back in my site, but it’s been a slightly rocky homecoming. I left San Vicente on Friday, but decided to spend a night in San Salvador for a little “me time”. I’ve been so constantly surrounded the last month by either other volunteers or my [...]
6-15-10 Alright, I realize I haven’t posted in three weeks or something like that, and I’m sure you’re all dying for a new installment of my El Sal adventures. Sorry. Truthfully, now that I’m back in training, I’ve had a lot less time to write hilariously witty accounts of my life here. I’ve actually done a lot [...]
Last week I was sitting in my hammock reading, when my host mother carried one of the plumpest, handsomest (and noisiest) roosters we own into the room. She tied its feet together, hobbled it to the leg of a table, and left it there. Thus trussed, the chicken looked into my eyes like a creature [...]
5-21-10 Since I’m about to bounce off to San Vicente for a round of month-long training, I thought today was a good day to demonstrate my culinary prowess. Don’t laugh! I’m serious! I can cook! (I’ve said that a lot in Spanish today, too.) A few weeks ago, I had my sister Lindsey send me [...]
It occurred to me that, while I’m sure that my friends and family are enjoying my stories about bug, spider, bat, and rat encounters, and laughing heartily over all my culturally awkward encounters, some of you may actually be wondering, “What is she actually doing there? Surely the Peace Corps didn’t send our beloved Emilie [...]
5-20-10 Salvadorans really love their mamas. I mean, I love my mom – honestly, she’s my best friend – but even I can’t match the level of enthusiasm displayed here this Mother’s Day. “Wait,” you may be wondering, “wasn’t Mother’s day two weeks ago or something?” Yes, it was. I think. I’m not really sure…Mother’s [...]
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