This blog, although unwritten as of yet, was inspired by two very thought provoking parties.

The first: My grandmother who hounds me every time that I speak to her (not as often as she’d like) that I need to write again so she can have something to fill her time at work. Imagine that?

Me - ‘Happy Mother’s Day, Meme!’

Grandmotha – ‘You should really update your blog, you know?’

The nerve of some people. You think she’d be happy enough that I wasn’t in her basement wasting electricity by leaving the fan on all day, but no, she feels the need to assign me chores despite the fact that I am thousands and thousand of miles away. That’s how she provokes thought; through insistence.

The second: While wasting time (isn’t it always wasting time?) on facebook I stumbled upon something that my good friend KC wrote to another good friend Jaime on her wall. It read:

Don’t exaggerate your experiences, to yourself or others.

KC had written this to Jaime in reference to something Jaime had written in her blog. Well I damn near busted a move this quote excited me so much. ‘Wow,’ I thought ‘Jaime really hit the nail on the head on that one.’ It turns out, however, that Jaime just copied it from a book written by the Dolly Llama, (that’s how you spell his name, right?) but either way (sorry for taking your thunder Jaim) it really is something that needs to be acknowledged.

So here we go.

To those of you who are wondering, I have not yet saved the world. Furthermore, I don’t think I’ll be able to fit that in my agenda in the 2 years or so that I will be here. I am sorry but I just haven’t got it in me; the time, the resources, or the know-how.

My students that Lifting La Peña sponsors do not get all A’s. To be honest, out of a 10 point scale, our average grade right now in Social Studies is 5.5.

Last year I did a dental campaign. This year there wasn't any more toothpaste left, so I laid the responsibilities to raise money for more toothpaste on the teachers of the school. After three months of school the students still were without toothpaste. I had to buy it myself. I guess I'll be the one organizing raffles and fruit sales in order to raise these kids $10 for toothpaste. How's that for sustainable?

Last year we reforested. We planted about 500 trees of 17 different class of tree here in La Peña in an effort to reforest the most rapidly deforesting country on the planet. Just yesterday while chopping my lawn a man stopped by my house to chit chat and he, like so many others before, told me about how the majority of his trees already died and didn’t make it to the rainy season.

In all honesty, I often times find it hard to find interesting things to write about. You see, there is a certain dilemma to being here and actually successfully conveying even the slightest glimpse into what is really going on around me and putting enough spin on it that you’ll give a damn. Let me reassure you though, whatever it is that I am doing is not saving this world or the next. Most days are filled with small, almost obnoxious tasks that to be honest, when completed, fill me with more pride than you can imagine. For example, today I had to, again, fix the water that runs to my house from a little hole in a rock at the top of the mountain. Do you have any idea how unbelievable it feels to finally, after days of poorly thought out solutions, figure out a way to provide yourself with water when you were without before? You better believe I let out a sigh of relief and enjoyed the moment while I could before I had to wash 13 pairs of dirty socks, a bunch of underwear, TWO pairs of jean shorts ( I am a part of the Proud Jean Short Wearer Club of Western El Salvador), and a whole boat load of T-shirts by hand.

As if that doesn’t get your skin tickling, right? How is that for ‘making the world a better place?’

Let’s not fool ourselves here. Although I love being here, and I really and truly do, I think what Dolly Parton said was right… I can’t exaggerate any part of this experience. I haven’t found a free cure for AIDS or helped train some Salvadoran ninja-warrior who can take down FOX News…like I said, I probably won’t save the world.

I haven’t met the president yet, and I haven’t supplied La Peña with running water, and the road into town is unpaved, and we are STILL without a Health Promotor, and on top of that there are still a few houses in this town that are without electricity, and although I can imagine how great it would be to have a positive influence in these peoples’ lives there is an overwhelming possibility that I just can’t make those particulars happen.

But sometimes I do get lucky and feel like I may be heading in the right direction toward down MakingaDifference Avenue.

About a month ago my friend (and Lifting La Peña scholarship recipient) Marvin came by the house. It had rained the night before and a small landslide had made the dirt road to my house inaccessible so he came climbing up to my house from the face of the mountain. I am not going to lie to you, I was a little taken aback, but he explained what had happened to the street as I poured his cup of coffee and handed him a large bowl of Puppy Chow (thanks again, Cindy!).

After a few minutes of laughing at how dirty his shoes were from the hike I made a comment about how great it must feel to have a Saturday off from school for Semana Santa.

Marvin looked up from his cup of coffee and told me that was what he had come to talk about: that he was not going to continue with school.

My face got really red and a brick settled very abruptly in my stomach.

He told me that he would pay me back for the calculator and the uniform. He told me that he would just need a few weeks to make the money, but he would find a way to raise the $22.50 to pay me back.

‘Slow down,’ I told him after I could bring myself to speak, ‘Why aren’t you?’

Marvin is a genuinely great kid. He is the eldest in a family of six without a father. He plays guitar in the La Peña Catholic Church every Thursday and Sunday. He is the President of the Directive of the school in La Peña. He is a ‘vocal’ on the La Peña local governance committee. He is the captain of the La Peña soccer team. He is exactly who I had in mind when the opportunity to start the scholarship came up back in February. Marvin is the kid who took me to a swimming hole over an hours walk away from town the day after I arrived in La Peña last year. He is the kind of kid you’d wish your sons could be like. He’s the kind of kid I hope my sons are like.

He told me that the father of his brothers and sisters who lives in the US stopped sending money a few months ago and probably won’t be sending any more. Because of that he needs to find ways to earn a little money to buy sugar, rice, toilet paper and other things of that sort for the family. On top of that he said the rainy season is coming and he needs to plant all the corn and the beans to put food on his family’s table for the next year. He looked me in the eyes and told me that he just couldn’t keep up with all of it and have time to study every night and give up his Saturdays to go to school. He said he would need those days to work in the milpa.

I didn’t know what to say, and believe me, it’s the worst feeling in the world when you not only can’t think of the words, but in a foreign language.

I was broken, crushed. This wasn’t just any student. This was Marvin. Marvin who despite having so much work to do in providing for his family still voluntarily holds soccer practice for the younger kids in town every Wednesday afternoon.

I told him that the money was not an issue at all, that he was not to worry about it in the least, but that I really wished that he would reconsider because education is important and this is a great opportunity.

He told me that the students in Metapán were too far advanced.

I told him I would give him more classes, private classes if he needed, every single night if it came to it. I would permanently fuse a dry erase marker to my right hand in order to teach him every single date in Social Studies, every single pronunciation in English, every single step in the Water Cycle, whatever it took.

He told me ‘That’s just it, Grego, I just do not have the time.’

It was really, really heart wrenching. I explained to him that he is one of my best friends here and he was, more than anyone, who I wanted to see benefit from this opportunity.

He told me he was the man of the house, the only one who works, and he needs to feed his family.

He was right. I couldn’t argue against it.

I told him I would do anything, anything at all, except do his homework for him or give him money.

He told me he understands but with planting, harvesting, and

fertalizing his own milpa how would he have time to do his homework

and give up one day of work a week AND help other people in their work

in order to earn money.

Then I asked him if the problem was the workload or the ganas... Did

he want to continue and not have time or did he just not want to

continue? I told him to tell me the truth... I told him that he always

has and I wouldn't expect any different now.

He got really red in the face, with all the pena of his 20 years so incredibly apparent in every syllable, he told me he didn't want to continue.

I almost cried.

I told him to think about it. I told him he has an entire week and a half to think about it before the next classes homework should be started and finished. A week and a half. I told him to talk it over with his mother again and see what she says.

I told him if he doesn't feel like he is advanced enough we can make him advanced enough. I told him I may not speak Spanish very well but Math is in English.

I poured my heart out to him.

I told him how education is incredibly important. I told him that to me education is THE most important thing in the world. I told him it’s the only way that we can better ourselves without the help of any gringo, or the help of some mayor, or the help of remittances from the United States.

I told him if it came down to it I personally would go to the milpa with him every single day from the first day he plants until the last day of aporreando so that he could spend less time in the cornfield and more time studying. I promised him. I told him I KNEW that he could graduate if he was just given the chance, that I understood his situation, that I was going to help if I could, and of all the people in this town who deserve this opportunity, it is him. I told him that maybe graduating from High School doesn’t get him anywhere new, any extra money, or Claro satellite television, but that I didn’t want him throwing this golden ticket away. I told him that if any other student from La Peña had approached me about wanting to quit, I wouldn’t take it to heart or offer to spend months in the corn field, but he is different. I told him he's been one of my best friends since the day I got here and I mean it when I say that I will do anything in the world that I can to help you, Marvin. One week, Marvin, just go home and talk to Niña Miriam and think about it…

And then he interrupted me...

'La verdad es que voy a seguir,' with a very bashful smile, eyes half closed and filled to their brims with tears. 'Cuando me habla asi, me da la fuerza a seguir.'

‘The truth is that I am going to continue. When you speak to me like that you give me the strength I need to continue.’

I almost cried.

I almost jumped for joy.

I didn’t know which would have been more appropriate, but I was elated. I promised him again, just in case he didn’t believe me, that I would be there every single day. I told him I still had a lot to learn, but I would learn quickly and help as much as I possibly could. I told him to tell me when we begin, that I am really excited to get myself out of the house and learn how to plant.

He looked up from his Puppy Chow, smiled, and said ‘Hey, lets go back to that swimming hole we went to last year.’

The reality is that quite obviously that I am not saving the world, not providing clean water or jobs to the marginalized, or even doing anything that is worth the space this blog takes up on the interweb, but every once in a while, despite all of the 5.5s out of 10 and the dead trees, I get lucky and find a smile hidden behind all these doubts and failures.

So for any of you who stuck around until the end of this blog, please understand exactly what it is that I DO do: I chop my yard with a machete, I dig trenches behind my house to keep the water from rushing in, I spend hours every week unclogging the 300 meters of tubes that run water to my house, and soon I will spend my time planting and harvesting corn. I have not changed the world and I can safely say that I never will, but I am thinking that the next few months of planting corn with Marvin may be what I had hoped for all along.

Good Morning Folks!

It's been great to hear back from some of you who have interest in helping the project get off the ground, and I promise I am working right now with Peace Corps Partnership to make the beginning processes of this project TAX DEDUCTABLE. For the time being, though, any and all donations will not be tax deductable, but they will warm my heart, which I am pretty sure you do not have to file on an IRS form and will certainly brighten up my day.

Updates:

>Nicaragua, despite how much love I showed it, ate my phone. My new phone number is Country Code: 503 72779848. Feel free to text or call at any time.

>The project now has a name: Lifting La Peña. How catchy, no?

>Al Morel and I are working diligently on creating a website for the project and will be found at LiftingLaPena.org whenever we get our act together. I promise to keep you informed!

>We are down from 11 students to 10. Unfortunately the girl we lost just did not have the free time to committ to school.

>We have been having study sessions every Tuesday night from 5 PM until 7 PM. These classes have been possibly the most enlivening project I have done since I got here to La Peña! Even kids who are not enrolled in school have shown up to support their compañeros and learn. I once told my Spanish teacher in high school that I hate learning but I love knowing. These kids are the first kids I have ever met who actually love to learn. I mean, honestly, when was the last time you showed up to Microeconomics 104 even though you weren't enrolled in the class?

>Recently my host brother, who graduated from the 9th grade in 2009 and has not attended school since, got a 7 out of 10 on his first Language exam and an 8 out of 10 on his first Math exam. Pretty remarkable considering they missed the first 4 classes of the school year and that Tito thinks Math is his worst subject.

>I just purchased 10 Scientific calculators at $15 dollars each. These things are starting to add up.

>Students will receive uniforms and all their text books this weekend. They are going to be sufficiently embarassed when I show them that I have posted their goofy grins all over the internet.

>I will post photos next week.

Here is the PayPal link you can use to send money to help support Lifting La Peña!

That is all for now!

Please, please, please feel free to spread the word. A few $10 donations adds up to a month's worth of transportation. Please keep us in mind!

Be well!

I don’t want to waste any time or space or bore you to death with my increasingly worsening story telling without first explaining something very important to you first. I promise there will be time for Gregorio in Wonderland after I get this off my skinny little chest.

In the 12 years that La Peña has had a school only 18 students have graduated from the 9th grade. For more reasons than I could possibly have time to write and explain, I decided not only was this number extremely low, but also realized that these graduates have had no educational opportunities since they left school.

The problem here in La Peña is pretty simple, really. We are 29 kilometers outside of our nearest pueblo, Metapán, and there is absolutely zero public transportation. We, as a community, only have transportation on Mondays at 6 AM or on Fridays at 6 AM; nothing in between. No student from La Peña has ever gone to high school before due to this overwhelming distance, lack of transportation, and, most important of all, money. It literally has just never been a possibility for them.

Now the kind of high school I am talking about here is not what you folks back home are thinking of. The particular classes that I was interested in are Distance Learning and only have classes once a week, on Saturday, from 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM. They study Language Arts, Computers, English, Math, Science, Social Studies, and people of the opposite gender (this is Latin America, remember). Although far from perfect, this system gives an incredible opportunity to people who live in the campo, in very rural areas, who at a young age are forced to work every day of the week in the corn fields or in the kitchen. Distance Learning was created exactly for us, for them.

So I started asking questions. I set up a meeting with the director of Rodrigro Leiva School, Don Roberto, in Metapán and between the two of us tried to work out some possibilities. After a few meetings in La Peña with all graduated students and their parents I knew that this project had to get off the ground immediately. I had 11 of 18 possible graduates up in arms with excitement about going back to school and I wanted more than anything to help them achieve this. I called Don Roberto that night and asked him a favor: although the school year had already started three weeks ago, could he please admit 11 students from La Peña to Leiva?

When I was a senior in high school I didn’t think I was going to go to college because I just didn’t think it’d be possible. I met questions about college with about as much forced apathy as most of the graduates from La Peña did saying things like ‘No, I am not going to college. I just don’t think I want to,’ when in reality I wanted nothing short of that. Then a little birdy named Hegarty sat me down daily and demanded I fill out Financial Aid forms, bypassed a few college application fees, and told me that despite what I lack, I should still get a chance to give this whole ‘learning how to read good’ thing a shot. Without help like her, I’d probably be working at Chubbies Liquors, playing scratch tickets, and hoping one day to finally be able to request a decent song on JAMN 94.5.

And look at me now!!! – poorer than I have ever been, living in one room brick shack, bathing with river water, and mowing my lawn with a machete. All that made possible with the help from people who told me I deserved a shot even when I probably didn’t. Ain’t I just livin’ the American Dream?

But seriously, I genuinely believe these young guns deserve their opportunity to get out of La Peña, continue learning, reading, maturing, learn a skill, meet a nice boy or girl that isn’t their first or second cousin, and hopefully move back to La Peña to take care of their parents and become the President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, and/or Vocales of the ADESCO.

When I brought the students into Leiva on Monday the 14th of February Don Roberto looked each one of them in the eye and said (allow me to paraphrase):

‘This is not going to be easy. You have already missed the first 4 classes, the first two lessons. Do you understand me? I don’t ask for perfection, I ask for ganas. Gregorio has spoken on your behalf, has offered his help. Now it’s up to you guys. If you don’t feel up for it, feel free to tell me, do not be shy. This is a serious commitment and needs to be approached as such. If you have any doubts you better put them away right now because in my desk I have a whole lot of papers for you to sign. If I didn’t have faith in you, I wouldn’t have asked you to come here today. So what do you say? (My students say absolutely nothing. Crickets try their hardest to conquer the silence at 9:30 AM) Alright! Let’s get started!’

Even though the Distance Learning Classes were at capacity, Don Roberto did me, did us, this huge favor and stuck his neck out to allow our 11 students into Leiva. He made an extra trip to the capital, San Salvador, to meet with the Director of Education there and bring all the necessary documents from our students out of the goodness of his heart. He did us an enormous favor and it is because of kindness from people like this that we were able to start this project.

So there you have it, damas y caballeros. The first 11 high school students ever out of La Peña.

That is not the end of this fable, though. I forgot to tell you that this was all just a really poorly written solicitude to you, my incredibly unfaithful audience, to help me raise some money.

This whole process would not have been possible without the help of two very generous donations from family friends. With these donations I have paid for uniforms, lesson plans, notebooks, classes, food, and transportation for the first few months. Unfortunately, these students won’t graduate within the next few months so I will need to continually fundraise to keep this project going. All in all it costs about $225 a month for these 11 students to graduate from high school but the future possibilities are astounding. One of my best friends, and one of the most intelligent and dedicated English students I have, Antonio, never graduated from high school here in La Peña. I asked him why and he said because you don’t really learn anything between 6th and 9th grade and his hard work was more valuable in the fields. What a shame, really, that they had such a glass ceiling. This sentiment isn’t felt by just Antonio, its felt by everyone in the community. Last year only three students graduated from 9th grade in La Peña, all girls, because people do not see any importance of graduating from the 9th grade when papi needs two extra hands to plant corn. What could they have really done past 9th grade before this? Nothing. It’s a damn shame that kids like Antonio have to cut themselves so short. I am hoping this project not only boosts the graduation rate because students can look forward to going to high school every year, but maybe even puts pressure on La Peña’s terrible school director to better teach these kids in order to better prepare them for high school. We will see.

So what I am asking is this: If you are feeling overly generous, slightly altruistic, deep pocketed, thirsty, kind, funny in the tummy, light headed, in love, cold, tired, buzzed, or just want to donate please, please, please contact me at gregcormier17@gmail.com. The amount doesn’t matter. You could send a check for a million dollars or use the US Postal Service to mail down a jar of pennies; anything and everything will be a huge help.

This is the first real project that I have done that I am genuinely, head over heels in love with. I want nothing more than to see La Peña’s future in the hands of the educated youth. I have already created a bank account for all the funds and within a short time will be appointing a Directive from this group of 11 students. Hopefully within the next year and a half I will have a new bank account created where one or two members of the community can be in charge of the monthly fees and can take care of the bill paying after I am gone.

So what do you say? Can you help me out? Can you spread the word? This donation will absolutely not be tax deductable, and it probably won’t turn bad karma around (if you’ve got any) but any little tiny donation will help immensely. Please keep us in mind and the begger in me is asking that you do not be shy, feel free to pass this information on to anyone you think may be interested. Yeah, just go ahead and do that.

On top of that, my application for a new $1300 project was approved by USAID to replace my very porous school roof with a much more durable, longer lasting, and sexier metal roof. Maybe now my students will stop coming to class with shampoo and towels.

Story time.

My buddy Gabe asked me ‘Who goes on vacation just to continue working?’

So for the past two and a half weeks I have been in Nicaragua helping and hindering a group of doctors and Tufts medical students run clinics in rural communities.

Here are some very true stories (with some not-so-true exaggerations) that made me realize I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

In the two and a half weeks that I was in Nicaragua I ate approximately 5 tortillas.

-----Here in El Salvador I eat at least 5 tortillas per meal. I never, ever, ever (ever) thought that I would miss these little flavorless disks of lovin’ but I sincerely did. The 5 that I ate in Nicaragua I had to specifically ask for. Nicaraguans apparently prefer to eat things with an upside to them, like rice, fruits, and vegetables. Those damn quacks.

People and dogs alike laughed themselves into convulsions when I fleetingly yelled ‘Shhhhh, chucho’ to get the mutts out of the kitchen. I didn’t understand why all the women left the kitchen blushing while the dogs stared at me blankly.

-----The Spanish word for dog is ‘perro.’ I have not called a dog a ‘perro’ in the 13 months that I have been pretending to know Spanish. That word is foreign to me and absolutely does not exist in my lexicon. Here in El Salvador, we lovingly refer to dogs as ‘chuchos.’ Well, I learned the hard way that in Nicaragua ‘perro’ is the word for dog and that ‘chucho’ is a vulgar word for vagina. I was never really allowed back in the kitchen after Day 1.

On our way out to Rosa Grande from Siuna I was chitting and chatting with Don Margarito and Albita about traveling and telling them about how I hadn’t brought much for this trip. Albita almost threw up into the box of eggs she was carrying and Don Margarito damn near drove off the rode in raucous, over-the-top laughter when I said ‘Yo no cargo mucho.’

-----Before figuring out what was so funny, we decided to take advantage of Margarito crashing into a ravine by washing off all the eggs that Albita has thrown up on in the crook that we ended up in. After all 250 eggs were sparkling clean, the two Nicaraguans explained to me that they heard me say ‘Yo no cago mucho.’ Apparently they did not understand my use of the verb ‘cargar’ which means to carry. They thought I used the verb ‘cagar’ which means to take a shit.

Most confusing of all, though, was how Harry threw his arms to the sky as if to thank dios for his most incredible bendición yet when I told him that I didn’t want to bother him: ‘No te quiero chingar, hombre.’

-----Long story short, Harry is a wise-ass from Bluefields and one of the most animated people you could ever meet. He did not waste the opportunity to make fun of me when I told him that I didn’t want to have sex with him. Chingar in El Salvador: To Bother. Chingar in Nicaragua: To Bang.

Those are just a few examples of how I made a complete ass of myself in my short time in Nicaragua.

These laughers aside, Nicaragua was a truly unbelievable experience. A close family friend, Brian Lisse, invited me to work with him and his 10 medical students running clinics in rural Northern Nicaragua. In those two weeks I met some of the most ridiculous, inspiring, and beautiful people I could have possibly hoped for. And the med students were alright, too.

Clinics were great. I spent from 730 AM til about 4 PM every day pretending to speak Spanish. The students’ job was to diagnose each patient that came into the clinic. My job was to act very confident being an intermediary between the patient and the student/soon to be doctor. I learned a lot of unbelievable things about PanDolor, Wei Wei taught me how to stitch people, Sharad taught me how to talk to mothers about their pandolorian babies, Sarah definitely taught me that headaches, kidney pain, and lazy eyes are all signs of Raging Cervicitus and that I should immediately ask all women if they are sexually active and to please remove their clothes, Cho taught me that kids gummy vitamins are an incredible way to avoid scurvy in the campo, and Rebecca taught me what a good ear drum looks like and then what a bad, shrapnel filled ear drum looks like and then proceeded to up the excitement by allowing me to clean out his compacted earwax into a sandwich baggy. The students were unbelievable.

One Friday we decided that we wanted to eat pig. Enough of this rice and beans bologna (or is it bolonie?, balony?). Lets eat some meat!

So Harry and I wrestled a pig away from some local man, brought him back to the house and decided, with a really intense look in our eyes, that it was time, as Harry would say, ‘to slice up this haaaag.’ We had a problem, though. Both Sharad and I wanted to kill the pig. Only one person can kill a pig at a time (I learned that from Don Luis, the Sandista) so Sharad and I settled the argument the civilized way: Rock, Papers, Scissors, best two out of three. After a lengthy battle, a series of 5 straight where no one threw anything but scissors, we found ourselves tied at one. 10 battles down, and we were only tied 1 to 1. I started to feel the pressure. I was up big, 1-0, and I let the lead slip away. I had to get my head back in the game. I did a couple jumping jacks, stretched out my hammies, and gave the pig a quick glance. He seemed to look at me as if to say ‘Buen provecho, Goyo. It’s time to eat’ and I knew that he was mine. Sharad and I gave each other a nod, it was on…

‘Rock!!!! Paper!!!! Scissors!!!!....’ time seems to stand still, everything moving in slow motion. My body starts to relax, my mind goes blank, I think about how funny it was that I told Harry I didn’t want to bang him and instinctively I throw old reliable…

‘SHOOOOOOOT!!!’

I stand upright and wave to the crowd (of two). Sharad leans back against the kitchen wall, defeated. I’m in shock. They tell me to grab the knife, that it’s time, but I can’t…my fingers seem to be permanently stuck in the shape of old reliable…

Needless to say the trip was amazing and I owe at least my first 13 children to Brian and Cindy for making it possible. I met some really great people, got a taste of home, killed a pig, cliff jumped, caught my first wave, drank pandolorian blood, learned how to stitch up serious cuts (I am doing my own stitches from here on in), learned some English Creole, danced my ass off, diagnosed at least 100 patients with kidney cancer, swung from vines, and cured one patient with a serious cup of smokey tea.

And although I spent about 42 hours in clinic in a 6 day span, those loonies sure didn’t make it feel like work at all. My words could hardly do any justice to how great of a trip that one was. Most important of all I learned that I will never trust my future children in the hands of a Tufts educated doctor.

Christmas 2010

Last Monday I left home with a duffle bag, about 80 bucks, and a pretty girl. By the time I got back this past Monday I was broke, alone, and carrying nothing but a bag full of clothes almost as dirty as the ones I was wearing. I was exhausted and I was a mess. Thankfully I left my door unlocked for the week, the dirty dishes all over the place, the bed unmade, and found the inside of my house to be absolutely swamped in dead leaves that crept in through the holes in my roof. It was good to be home.

Its been a rough week over here in the brick house in La Peña, but thanks to some Puppy Chow and a few melted Snickers from America I have been weathering the storm.

For the week that I have been home there have been doing nightly posadas at different houses within the community. A posada is essentially a church service performed in a new house within the community every night and they play and sing songs for the La Navidad. Here is a video of Alfredo y los Chamaquitos.

Christmas is, for all intents and purposes, celebrated on the 24th of December here in La Peña. This is the story of Christmas 2010.

I crawled out of bed on Christmas Eve, still very aware of the obvious lack of levity within my four brick walls, with a poorly thought up list of distractions. I skipped coffee and breakfast and by 7 AM I was cursing every ant that has ever been hungry in its life. I haven’t got a very large wardrobe down here so I was extremely perturbed to find that some rogue insects found their way to my Biggs AP Chemistry T Shirt and chowed down. Gluttons. By 7:13 AM I was cursing mold for finally pounding my Amherst Rotary Club T Shirt into submission. RIP to two of my favorites. You’ve both served me well. To be honest I wouldn’t be terribly upset to be haunted by T Shirts of Christmas Past at this point. I’m running low on my stock from the Amherst Salvation Army. (That was not a plug. Please do not send me T Shirts. Seriously. I don’t care how many Target gift cards you got this holiday season.)

Niña Chepa had invited me to eat Christmas dinner at her house around ‘la hora de almuerzo’ so I showed up a little after the point of starvation. I didn’t really know what to expect so I dressed up nicely (it was Christmas after all), and strolled up her little dirt hill ready to eat whatever was to be put in front of me. I had totally forgotten about the pig. Man, you should have seen this damn pig.

I guess the story is that Niña Chepa and Don Andres have six kids still living with them in their house. Every single day you would see a different combination of the six kids going door to door in the community looking for suero by the gallon to give to their pig.

Side Note: For those fortunate enough not to know what suero is, it is the very last liquid form that a cows milk can have. First they leave the cows milk out for a day and the cream will rise to the top. Then they skim all the cream off and store it. That cream is delectable. Next they put a combination of entirely too much salt and a little pill inside the remaining milk so that the milk will curd. After about 12 hours that milk will have curded and you can sift out all the curded cheese with a dirty rag and squeeze all the juices out. That cheese is delectable, too, believe it or not. What’s left at the bottom of the bucket of milk is suero, a thoroughly abused liquid meant only for ruthless teenage pranks and fattening up pigs.

With the help of hundreds of gallons of said suero the pig, at 7 months old, was about 170 pounds of the fattest, most agile animal-athlete you could ever possibly imagine. Like a swine version of Chris Farley.

When I walked up there was an enormous pot of boiling pig fat over an open flame, father and son tending it nicely, both pretending like they were being useful. The first thing I was offered was a half full cup of clear liquid and I didn’t turn it down. We talked shit about Barcelona, coached Real Madrid through the rest of the Champions League, smoked a cigarette or two, and played guitar for a few hours before it was time to eat.

Around 3 Christmas dinner was served as a very tall glass of the bitterest vodka on the market, two tortillas, a few very tasty pieces of pork meat, and as much fried pig fat as I could fit in my stomach. We took it all down with a glass of Salva Cola and laid back to talk more shit about Barcelona.

We set off fireworks for about 36 straight hours in Jesus’ honor and I went to bed happy.

Now that’s the way to celebrate the holidays.

Other noteworthy volados.

It’s the dry season. It hasn’t rained in about a two months and it won’t rain again until about April.

I have lost two of my beautiful chickens to disappearance. I think maybe a ‘gato de monte’ or a snake may have selected them as the weakest of the pack. Either way, I have put them on milk cartons from here to Zacatecaluca in hopes of getting a phone call.

Halloween was an absolute blast. We had bobbing for apples, pan dulce on a string, three legged races, all sorts of candy, and a water balloon toss. These are some of the photos.

I went to help translate for a group of engineers from University of Minnesota and I hope to never ever meet such incompetent people again in my life.

Nora and I spent Thanksgiving with an Embassy family in the capital. We drank beer, had spiced wine, ate turkey (turkey with bacon on it, by the way), mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, gravy, and had real cheese for an appetizer. What a damn treat. Good people, too. Who woulda thunk that the United States Embassy could produce genuinely good people?

La Peña and myself have been very, very fortunate. About a month after submitting our Engineers Without Borders application for latrines and a running water project we were adopted by George Washington University. This is incredible for a litany of reasons. Most volunteers have to wait for about 6 to 12 months to be adopted by a chapter and we, very luckily, only had to wait one month. On top of that we were accepted by a chapter that has experience here in El Salvador doing water projects. Just last year they raised close to $100,000 dollars with the help of Rotary International to put toward an enormous water project in my friend Sean Cox’s site in Santa Clara, San Miguel. They are an experienced chapter, they are from DC, and they are apparently very, very good at raising money to help us out. Our community is significantly smaller than Santa Clara (there are only 33 houses in my community) so we shouldn’t need that much money or be that much of a pain in the ass (pardon my French).

If all goes as planned the engineers and their professional mentors should be here in March to get things under way.

Rotary Club is an incredible institution. You may know that the Rotary Club of Hudson donated close to $600 dollars to help me provide efficient stoves for my community back in the summer. Well, Rotary Club International has an incredible Matching Gift policy that states they will match any and all single donations above $10,000 by a local Rotary Club.

So how can you help? If you know an extremely rich Rotary Club (anywhere in the country is fine) that has the ability to help out a lowly Peace Corps Volunteer with some larger than life projects to benefit some very humble people here in El Salvador please send me an e-mail at gregcormier17@gmail.com.

Well, well, well.

It's always real awkward trying to start off one of these fancy blog things, I never really know how to do it. Do I need to start off with something really catching, funny, or inspiring? Like perhaps 'The 5 AM sunrise seemed to scream purples, pinks, and blues so brightly that you could taste each hue sweetening Nora's best effort at coffee making.'

Or maybe I should start out with a good old fashioned Thesis Statement that would make even Professor Indiana Jones proud? Maybe 'Although not entirely sure how great of a job they were doing, our aimless protaganist Greg and his dashing girlfriend used their youthful charm, a pinch of luck, and an incredible lack of shame to win over the hearts, minds, and confianza of a community looking to learn how many times a day they should wash their hands.'

Or maybe just start it off with something really senseless like 'Where did I leave my dust pan, Gerald?' would get you guys in the mood.

Well, now that the awkward 'starting the blog' part is over with, lets get down to business.

I felt like you readers needed to see the sunrise this morning. Its a sunrise just like any other morning, but I thought since I was coming into town, why not give you a taste, too? This is the view from my front door.

Nora has picked up the pace of our women's group and is now teaching yoga every Friday evening from 5 PM to about 630. We started a walking group, too, but unfortunately they chose days that I like to play soccer in the campo. They have decided that they don't need my supervision to put one foot in front of the other, nor need me to lead them in putting said feet in front of other said feet to make large circles, so I have been freed of those guidance responibilities. They walked once or twice, but the numbers fell very, very quickly. Maybe I need to attend in order to inspire animo. we'll see. I am trying my hardest to win the good fight over Vericose Veins.

I have got a garden and we just ate the first cucumber of the year. Here is proof that it exists.

I have got a tomato plant that is literally taller than Nora and has about 15 tomatoes growing on it now. With the amount of plants that we have, we are going to have a years worth of salsa and ketchup stores within weeks. You are jealous and you know it. I have watermelons on the up and up, too, but they seem to take a long time.

Side note: Nora and I get in weekly fights about the immense amounts of cow shit I throw all over the yard trying to help these things put some damn food on our plate. Its for the good of everyone that our house smells like this, Nora. Don't you get it? Free tomatoes!

This is my host sister, Jamileth, and the rest of our camión filled with the people of La Peña on our way into Metapàn last Friday morning.

This is my new bathroom that we just built. It is still without a door and will continue to stay that way because we have the beautiful view of the mountains while on the John. It's a gorgeous view; it really is.

This is a picture of my house, again. Most call it disgusting. I call it quaint.

Here are the ten new ladies in my life. Beautiful, beautiful bichas. I will have free eggs, and free vegetables sooner than you can say 'Toy boat, toy boat, toy boat' correctly.

This weekend we are throwing a Halloween bash in my community. Only the few men that have gone to the United States and come back have ever even heard of this fantasti-excuse-to-drink-an-unhealthy-amount-of-beer-day that we like to call a 'Holiday.'

No, but seriously, I have been loaned the projector from the Metapán mayor's office and will commence Halloween weekend with a showing of a very scary American movie in Spanish tonight for the entire town. We will have one scary movie each night for the whole weekend and celebrate Halloween in the best costumes we can muster at a party we are throwing for the children tomorrow afternoon. It should be a blast. Most people in town say that they have never seen a scary movie, so let's see how these 68 year old farmers react when oversized (from the projector) Chucky goes wild with a baby sized chainsaw. This could be the best Halloween ever considering how I spent last year's, right Wilcox?

Anyway, thats all I got for you today, a lot of photos, hardly any stories, and a really uncomfortable beginning to a blog. I hope you liked it.

Tune in next time for just as few (maybe less) significant stories. Happiest of Halloweens you goons.

Rotary Club of Hudson, Massachusetts turned me down when I asked her to marry me and I do not know why. If anyone sees her around town, please put in the good word. Tell her I know we don't know each other too well but we have plenty of time. Tell her I'll never forget about what she did for me and how much she means to me.

Nora arrived here on the 8th of September during a capital-wide bus strike due to bus burnings. Let me tell you right now...bus strikes are the most debilitating thing in the world to a man who cannot afford to take taxi's and I found myself swearing at old ladies who told me for the 25th time that the #44 wasn't coming. I want to let you knowright now that I hate the capital. I hate it more than I hate people who have lived in Massachusetts their whole lives and say they love the Lakers, Yankees, Cowboys, and Twinkies. All those people and the city of San Salvador can go play in traffic.

Back to Norena...All the falling on her ass considered (and then put aside), she's acclimatizing well. She speaks better Spanish than I do (she talks shit about me behind my back) and gets along great with the women of town. The men of town won't even look the poor girl in the eye. It's a change for sure, but I think she really is looking forward to not having even one male friend over the age of 12, washing a lot of dirty clothes by hand, and socializing over the sound of slapping hands forming perfect tortillas. That said' the lives of women here in El Salvador (for the thirteenth time) is not even remotely similar to those of the women of central Massachusetts.

No, but seriously, La Peña gets a little freaked out by our very gringo relationship. Someone looked on in horror after I picked her up and pretended to put her into a bucket of water when she challenged me to a fight in front of everyone. They think its weird when we tell them that I cooked food and not her, and she looks like a god damn alien in a head band, shorts, sneakers, and carrying a yoga mat running up to the top of the mountain to get herself some alone time from me.

She's been a fantastic addition to the life. Just last week we taught women about menopause and she valiently stood up in front of about 15 strange women and proceeded to touch herself in extraordinarily inappropriate ways in an effort to teach them how to self breast exam.

What a gal, huh?

The Women's Group is great, too. We have started a micro business making Shampoo from scratch and selling it at a dollar a piece in order to do other small projects for the women's group. We've sold about 120 bottles so far leaving us with about 80 dollars profit and we are going to put that toward a cooking class next week. Any suggestions of something extraordinarily tasty that can be cooked over an open flame? Something that does not involve corn, beans, or coffee? Text me at 503 7675-8283 They are really such a phenomenal bag of laughs, these ladies.

I just bought ten tiny Hy-Line chickens. Give me a few months and I am gonna be eating so many eggs. I have named them all Fabricio.

With the help of Rotary Club Hudson I finally completed a project to bring more energy efficient stoves to La Peña. 26 Eco friendly stoves to use less wood to burn and less smoke emitted to cut down on deforestation and cost of wood, as well as better the work environment of the women of La Peña. This is a project that a lot of Peace Corps volunteers do, so its far from anything special, but I need to stress the importance of my good friend Rotary Club Hudson.

Stove Team International (stoveteam.org) provides this 'ecocina' for $52. The government of El Salvador provides a $10 subsidy making it $42. In the past Rotary Clubs from the West Coast have provided a $10 subsidy as well to help with the cost of stoves because most are being sold to poorer communities. Well, that subsidy stopped and put a serious strangle hold on my community's ability to buy these stoves. Long story short I asked Rotary Club Hudson to help with the project and they very generously, graciously, and brilliantly provided myself and La Peña with half of the $1092 bill making each stove in the community only $21. They altruistically helped a relative stranger help a group of complete strangers with an incredible donation of $546 dollars.

So like I said, if you see her around, please tell her I said thanks and that she means a lot to me. If she is thinking about changing her mind and marrying me, make sure she knows she's still going to have to take my last name. I love her so much and I think her new name has a serious ring to it...Rotary Club of Cormier.

I hope I don’t disappoint anyone with this announcement; however, the last post marks an end to a pretty feeble run by yours truly. I cannot justify filling your well-groomed heads with any more overly dramatic stories about Gregory Allen Cormier. Its fun to write, don’t get me wrong, and writing is slowly becoming a passion, but for the love of Larry who wants to hear anything more about me, really?

Bear with me... (You can bare with me, too, if you’d like. I am not in the least morally opposed.)

I do not have the faintest idea when it started or why it started but for years I have had a monkey on my back whose influence on me seems only to snowball with each passing Tour de France. (Not a real monkey, mind you. That is a figure of speech, but we’ll cover ‘Figures of Speech’ in the next blog.)(1) This monkey has, without a shadow of a doubt, hindered me in the past with relationships, friendships, and in Catholic confession. It is entirely her fault (the monkey’s) that I am not going to Heaven. Well, at some point tengo que quitármela. This monkey has got to go. Here is the problem:

I tell people nothing. Or, more concisely put, I tell nobody anything. Wait, that’s not right either (write?...man, I am really starting to confuse myself). Or maybe I just don’t tell people things. That sounds better.

I don’t tell people anything.

When something has popped into my life I always, always keep it to myself. I hide secrets behind apparently unwarranted smiles and leave people so far out of my loop that my own grandmother didn’t know I wrestled until she found my name in Worcester Telegram Sports Section for being pinned in 7 seconds by one armed 15 year old girl back in 2004.(2)

Take the Peace Corps for instance. It has been my dream to be doing what I am doing for years. Since July 15th of 2007 I have thought of no future plans besides this. I spent so much time in my recruiter’s, Paul Frisolli’s, office, that our official Peace Corps interview in February 2009 started with him falling back into his chair and exhaustedly screaming ¨Christ almighty, what do you want this time?¨ For me it was Peace Corps or bust.(3)

When I read my acceptance letter on a cold Wednesday afternoon last November I almost put six holes in the walls from all my extremities. (Was that a little lewd?) To celebrate I attempted to do four straight back flips, slipped on a beer can trying to keep my balance, kicked myself in the eye with my heel, found a 41 cents under the piano after I fell hard to the floor, scrambled to my phone, and called three very, very important people to share the news. After speaking to them I picked Barber up from class, went to Amherst Brewing Company to play foosball, and hid all excitement behind said ostensibly unwarranted smiles. If you weren’t within eyesight of me, I probably didn’t tell you a thing. I have never been able to figure out why I hide these things from people, we know it’s not from overwhelming humility, but I do it religiously. It’s so bad that over Christmas I was lying to people I didn’t even know telling them ¨You know, I really don’t know what I am going to do with a History degree but my only plans for the future are to visit this fine lass down in Panama for a few weeks and hope something falls in my lap, ¨ as I reached for a crab cake and wished them the best on their upcoming Doctorate in Accounting at the University of Maine – Orono.

Upon further self-examination(4) I have decided that along with a litany of other not so desirable titles I also occupy the ¨Most Selfish Person in the World Whose Name Starts with G-r-e¨ Award for Literature and General Livelihood. Somewhere along the line I decided that my moments of accomplishment, my overwhelming excitement, my good times, and my flashes of humility are treasures to be kept as secret as your favorite hiding spot as a child; to be shared only with the people I trust the most, if at all. These moments are mine, and absolutely not yours. To me, sharing your excitement, accomplishments, or opportunities with casual company is like the Mitch Hedburg joke about waving at strangers; it can be seen as bragging if that stranger doesn’t have a hand.(5) Look what I got!

You still with me?

That said, this blog has been nothing but Prime Time Gregory and its time to put a stop to it.

Listen, I am not Sir Peace Corps. I am not the number one proponent of the program, I won’t tell you that it is saving the world (because it isn’t), I won’t tell you that you have to join, and I won’t tell you that volunteers have a god damn clue what we are even doing (at least I don’t). When I say this, please understand that I am not trying to be ‘Promotor del Cuerpo de Paz;’ I actually genuinely believe that this aspect is important.

There are three laughably vague goals to the Peace Corps mission. The third reads as such:

‘The mission of the Peace Corps is to promote world peace and friendship by: 3) Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.’

While down here I have received numerous facebook posts, text messages, e-mails, letters (Gee, ain’t I just so dang popular?!), et cetera about the dangers of El Salvador - gangs burning buses, landslides and hurricanes killing dozens, explosions in hospitals, the killing of gringos in the capital, and so on. Granted, this is the fourth most dangerous Peace Corps post in the world, and most of the messages were being facetious, but I have been doing an incredible injustice to the people I have met by not sharing with you the generosity that they have shown me daily and discrediting all the stereotypes that the world has of El Salvador.

(We’ve gone over this. This generosity, the beauty of these families, the laughs, the good times, and the developing of relationships are mine, not yours. Starting to get it? We’ve come full circle. I don’t write about them because I, for some reason or another, feel that I’ve earned the right to keep them to myself.)

I sit at the computer and write about pine trees, snakes, and the most recent trip I’ve made to the hospital because they are funny and I am not creative enough to think of anything genuinely insightful. This, at times, has left me feeling a little bit like Alfalfa hanging a “No Girls (or boys) Allowed” sign outside my house and hogging all the real fruits of El Salvador, la gente, to myself.

Well, it just ain’t right.

The truth is, ladies and gentlemen (that’s assuming that anyone is actually reading this thing), I have been showered, absolutely doused in generosity by people who have not much else to offer than corn, beans, and smiles beautifully riddled with metal dentistry.

One Saturday while pretending to help prepare pupusas (they are impossible) with Niña Chepa (Josephina), Niña Marta, y Niña Miriam, I started blabbing on about how coffee mugs cost a dollar in Metapán and how I told the woman selling them to eat her shoe and take a hike because that was just too expensive. They all thought that this was a riot, even if they knew I was making it all up just for the fun of it.(6) We shared a laugh, a few slapped knees, and a resounding ‘Ayyyee, Gregorio!’ and went on talking about the celebration in San Juan the next day.

That evening Niña Josephina returned to Don Santos’ house bearing a plastic bag bursting with volados: a yellow plastic cup, a tea cup and matching plate, a small glass, and a coffee mug depicting two little children surprised to see that Santa has fallen down the chimney.(7) I couldn’t thank her enough as she smiled and told me I couldn’t move into my house without something to drink coffee out of. Within an hour of that, Niña Miriam showed up at the entrance to my bedroom with a glass and matching glass bowl, wearing a humble smile and the kind of outstretched arms that universally say ‘this is for you and I hope you like it.’

Niña Josephina lives in an adobe house with her husband and six children. Their house is two rooms, one of which is a kitchen, without even one proper door. The floor of the house is uneven dirt, the same soil as outside, stomped until it was hard enough to pass as little more than a garden. None of the eight family members have paying jobs, but they’ve got land that, with a lot of hard work, feeds them corn and beans. They don’t have much, but apparently that is enough to share.

Niña Miriam has five children and lives without her husband in an adobe house, as well. If she is not at home cooking for the family you can, and often will, find her in the milpa working as hard as any man I’ve seen swing a machete, bringing home enough elote to put something different on their plates during the rainy season. She raises five children, works the corn fields to bring home the food, cooks the food, and still to this very day stops by my house at least once a week to bring food to me whether it be eggs, fried corn concoctions, or just ears of corn. She is a saint, seguramente.

Two Sundays ago after church(8) Don Santos, Carlos, Pedro, Alejandro, Santos, Alfredo, and Chamba all helped dig over 250 yards of trench to put poliducto from the nearest quebrada to my house so that I could have ‘running’ water. One by one people began to show up at Alfredo’s corral despite the threatening rain(9) and just got to it with nothing more than four pickaxes, a shovel, and eight machetes. With only 100 yards of tubing we didn’t even come close to reaching my house, so naturally(10) Santos disappeared to his house before anyone could notice his absence and brought 100 more yards of poliducto to try to finish the job. That’s $8 dollars worth of poliducto, at least. That is more than one person’s daily wage here. Imagine spending your day’s wage on something like 100 yards of tubing for a house that isn’t even yours. Seriously, go ahead and spend whatever your day’s wage is - $100, $200, $300 – on 100 yards of 1 inch tubing for a relative stranger. You know you wouldn’t, and to be honest, I wouldn’t have either before this. I still don’t know if I could even after the fact, really.

But he did, and although even that amount didn’t quite reach my house and we had to find about 50 more yards, he has never once made mention of it.

Even after all this time

The sun never says to the Earth

“You owe me”

Look what happens with a love like that…

It lights up the whole sky

- Hafiz

Because of their giving of time and materials I now have river water running into my bathroom that I built about a month ago and no longer have to lug water from another river in order to bathe. That may not sound like much, but living without water is much more of a pain than you can imagine.

This is becoming a rant and I know that I must sound like a certifiable lunatic, but it doesn’t end there.

There was a woman that lives here in La Peña that had always baffled me. She’s relatively young at 34, never dressed down, has two kids, and always seems like she’s waiting very patiently for the internet to get back up and running so she can watch Real Housewives of Orange County.(11) She has the air about her that she’s either really shy or that she’s better than everyone around her. Her best friend seems to be her daughter, and my history with fine dames has left me loathing the type – both the daughter and the mother. In the scope of La Peña, described as the equivalent of “backwoods Kentucky” to me by a Salvadoran friend named Carlos(12) who lives outside of Metapán, she seems guarded and right plum out of place.

During the census, Niña Reina (that’s her name, by the way) sent me for a damn loop. My theories about her being shy were blown away almost as soon as I sat down. She, and I applaud her infinitely for this, began asking me questions! Qué brava élla! She didn’t just lie to me about how she brushes her teeth three times a day and then send me on my merry gringo way. She pretty much asked me ¨What the hell are you doing here?¨ Without ever looking me in the eye. During the entire census she avoided eye contact and stomped out any confidence I equipped with this little dandy of a look she seems to have patented. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this look, but she’s a master at it: while you’re talking trying to get your feet under you and shake out the nerves she is looking somewhere around your feet. Midway through a fragmented sentence she raises both eyebrows in seemingly fake surprise, still looking at your feet, and lets out a seriously unconvincing, poorly acted “Vaaaya” as if you had just told her that she can’t stop you from crowning half a pancake Duke of her underwear drawer, or something of that oddity. Like the look you give when the Professor calls you out in front of the entire lecture hall and says that he would like to speak with you after Communications 101. That look. Okaaaaaay, Don Gregorio. I get it. Now leave me alone.

Shy? Not quite. Disinterested in anything I had to say even though she just asked me the question…that’s the one. Every time that I saw her from then on I was convinced that she hated me.

Then English classes started and she, the only real adult who attends, goes every time! She is the ONLY adult who goes. I am not afraid to admit my own shortcomings. I wouldn’t even go to a party at my own house if I didn’t know for sure that all the coolest people from UMass were going. I am an incessant follower. One time in 5th grade I told a Forest Avenue Elementary School survey that French Fries were my favorite style of potato to eat just because everyone else said it.(13) This woman attends the same class as her 16 and 15 year old children and it blows me away. She has a really hard time with it, but she comes every time and pays absolutely perfect attention to some really goofy white guy who acts like an idiot. What I am saying is in a culture of pena it takes some serious brass to attend classes with teenagers your childrens age.

After that I started a Women’s Group. She hasn’t missed a meeting and has been very, very adamant about hearing charlas on women’s health from yours truly. Imagine that, she actually wants to hear about the Regla, the woman’s period, from some guy who learned all about it in a book somewhere and never once had a cramp in his life. She’s so damn on top of things that she has twice been to meetings before I even get there! Well, long story short, she has started to grow on me and apparently I on her, as well, because she sends her son Dimas to my house with warm meals for absolutely no reason at all. Pure generosity. And although she still doesn’t meet my eyes, we’ve become compañeros to the fullest. When Niña Reina started to go out of her way to work with me in my projects, accepted a nomination as Treasurer of the Women’s Group, work her fingers to the bone taking notes in English, and brought me sopa de crema con pollo I started to realize that these people are, as a whole, simply the nicest people I’ve ever had the privilege to spend time with. If even she is incredibly generous to me, there can’t e a bad seed in the bunch. To be honest, we´ve become really good friends, her and I, and we work together almost daily.

(If you work for the Peace Corps, this story is not true and I made it all up to entertain my friends and family back home. This blog is the work of fiction as well as fact and does not necessarily reflect any semblance of truth or honesty. But since it didn’t actually happen it was not in any way a security risk.)

(If you do not work for the Peace Corps, please enjoy the intentionally vague ‘story’ about something that may or may not have happened.)

One day I had a dream…a really vivid dream. The kind of dream that you are convinced was real. It was so real that you actually are 100% sure that it all actually transpired in real life exactly as you remember it. That kind of dream.

This was my dream:

One weekend I was going to stay at my friend’s site just outside the pueblo and was running late from San Salvador. My bus arrived to its destination much later than it should have and I was stuck in the pueblo without a ride in the rain at night. I had a backpack full of stuff, two full hands, and had to pedir for a ride. (Remember, this is all a dream and probably didn’t really happen) Long story made extremely short, I was standing in the rain getting soaked and for about 10 -15 minutes and not one person showed any interest in picking me up. In fact, more than half sped up going past me.

All of a sudden a man going in the opposite direction rolled down his window and asked where I was going. I told him where I intended to end up and he leaned into the passenger seat to discuss it.

“Really, really shady,” I thought as all the street lamps went out. “And that guy talking to his passenger about this is pretty out of place, too.”

He didn’t actually know the name of the spot in particular so I told him a more general location. He nodded his head with a “Ya, lo conozco” and said he could help me out. As the man did the awkward reach from the driver’s seat to the back to unlock the door I took a peak into the passenger seat and saw a woman about his age bouncing a shiny new baby boy on her lap.

“If I’m going down, the baby’s comin’ with me,” I mused as I slipped into the backseat. The driver pulled a U-turn that even Jeff Gordan would have envied and we were off.

(Please remember this is all a dream and did not actually happen.)

It was pitch black and raining leaving both the driver and myself very unable to see exactly what we were looking for, so we drove extremely slowly for about 15-20 minutes debating whether we had passed it or not. I spoke with them both about their 3 month old baby, discovered that they lived in the pueblo, listened to their reggaeton, and thanked them endlessly for their incredible generosity. He lived in the exact pueblo we were just in and now driving away from.

Finally I recognized where it was exactly that I needed to get out, and he politely pulled over. I asked him how much for the ride and his response was “Nada. Ya sé lo que se siente cuándo se pide un ride y nadie ayuda.” Nothing. This man, Daniel was his name, with his wife and newborn child, was going in the opposite direction, literally minutes from his house, pulled over on the opposite side of the road and offered to help me out for absolutely no reason. He was going the other way and nearly home!

I broke the record for amount of times “Muchísimas Gracias” can be said in a departure from a 4-door coup, left three dollars in his back seat, and counted my blessings as I walked toward my friend’s house.

The next morning I was telling a Salvadoran friend, the president of his local ADESCO, about this incredibly real dream and he, in all his brass, made an extremely generalized statement: “I mean you’re white, and I am sure that you’ve run into some people here, some drunk people, who say rude things because you’re American, but we, as Salvadorans, we take care of our foreigners.”

He’s right.

This generosity has me reeling. Whether it’s pineapples from Niña Antolina, a drunk guy gifting me a jersey at the Metapán championship game, the endless gifts brought to my house, or a dream about someone going extraordinarily out of his way to help me out when I needed it most, I have been consistently blown away by the altruism and kindheartedness of Salvadorans. I will try my hardest to keep from getting too political or too deep on you but I think that it goes without saying that this is such an incredible contrast to the way that foreigners are treated in the United States. Legal or illegal, people who are different from ourselves are treated like garbage on the surface and subconsciously.

My whole life I have been surrounded by foreigners being stigmatized. Mexicans are lazy. Brazilians haven’t brought anything to the table since that brilliant idea of what we can accomplish with hot wax. Salvadorans are all gang members. Who wants a doctor whose last name cannot be pronounced and has a Punjabi accent? We’re in America, god damn it, speak English.

Here in El Salvador people want to help me because I am a foreigner. They help me because I am different. Or maybe they just help me because I look like I need a hand everyonce in a while. They know nothing about me except that I was not born here. They do not know if I am here legally or just looking for drugs. They don’t know I am a volunteer. They don’t know if I am a backpacker. They don’t know if I am rich or poor. They don’t know whether I speak Spanish or not. Furthermore, when I speak English in public no one, absolutely no one gets angry about it. They don’t know where I am from, but I am sure they can guess. They make no assumptions. When offered money, not once has a man or woman (who was not a taxi-driver) taken it in exchange for their efforts or gifts. Help without pretense.

This country is so giving that the phrase “you’re welcome” is not even in the lexicon any longer. “De nada” has been replaced by “Vaya” or “Va” and good deeds are nodded off without need for exaltation. You are simply expected to help and to give to every person who comes your way, regardless of circumstance. A culture that simply expects kindness rather than putting kindness on a pedestal seems like a fantastic idea to me, but leaves me very conscious of yet another one of my cultural shortcomings.

You don’t have to believe a word I have written, you really don’t, but it would be a shame if I didn’t start being more forward with why I am so in love with being here. It’s not the snakes, it’s not the pine trees, it’s not fresh coffee or large bowls of beans, and it’s not the hammocks or Niña Bonita. La gente have enchanted me at every single turn; strangers and virtual family alike. People may not show up to meetings on time, people may doubt my ability to swing a machete, but if you’ll allow me to be your witness, I can attest that Salvadorans will drop everything, even pull a U-turn in their own driveway, to help out someone in need, even if he is a complete stranger.

So that’s my bit about Other Peoples on the part of Americans. I’ve shared with you my secret, my good times, and hopefully one of these days I can serve Salvadorans some justice in better describing the relentless kindness of this country. Just be sure that I am being taken care of in every way possible down here in Other People’s country.

Can Other People say the same about where I come from?

“I’ve never had a time like that since, when what I wanted to be doing with my life and the life I was living were so utterly intertwined. And I’m old enough now to understand that most people never get anything close to that in the course of their lives. Nor have I ever cared so much about what I was doing.”

- Aidan Hartley The Zanzibar Chest

Endnotes:

1) We will not be talking about figures of speech next blog.

2) The 15 year old girl was a fraud. She actually did have two arms and no one ever picked up on it.

3) By bust I mean that I’d be living on Latzka’s couch trying to do the Will Hunting thing and become absolutely brilliant reading his medical school books without paying either the tuition fees or the $1.50 in late fees at the public library. In other words, my fall back to the Peace Corps was becoming a doctor.

4) I am going to be a doctor, remember?

5) Replace ‘hand’ with ‘accomplishment’ or ‘opportunity’ and you’ll be right back on track with the rest of us.

6) Well the mugs really did cost a dollar and it really was just too expensive.

7) Every mug in this country has either a picture of Old Saint Nick on it or something in Spanish declaring the mugs adoration for a mother.

8) I still do not attend church. Their acceptance of that alone is enough to write a book.

9) Even the threat of rain is enough to stop Congress in El Salvador. They say it was the reason for the end of the Salvadoran Civil War…people are petrified of rain in this country.

10) This isn’t really natural. This is what I like to call altruism. This, at least where I come from, is not in the least bit natural.

11) There is neither internet nor Orange Counties here in La Peña.

12) Carlos has lived in the States and can speak extraordinarily mediocre English.

13) My favorite way to eat potatoes is Mashed, in case you were wondering. With entirely too much butter and even more gravy. I can’t believe I lied about that shit, haha.

So I got him to the ground and as Kid Cement and Witzie can attest, that is just where I want him. Mano y mano, as it were, except he had no hands and in mine I held a really large stick and a machete...what´s worse is I couldn´t throw legs in.

Recap:

Two weeks ago I was fumigating my house for the second time. I have more spiders and scorpions in one room than you can possibly imagine. While fumigating my roof, the very, very humble abode of my undesireable roommates, three scorpions fell; one of them on my back. Feeling a little skiddish after this twenty minutes that would have put the Weather Girls to shame I decided it was probably a good idea to use my mosquito net when I moved into my new brick house.

Last Thursday, 22 July, I decided, what the hell? Let´s make fumigating a regular thing. So I busted out the bomba, a large spraying mechanism that makes me look not even the slightest bit dissimilar to Dr. Peter Venkman, filled it with water and some pesticide to kill me some scorpions.

Llegué a la casa mia with the ladder to maximize my ass-kicking ability, put my left (and arguably my least favorite) foot on the bottom rung and froze...got a little nervous. I mean, for Christ´s sake, it was raining scorpions last time I did this. Nonetheless, and not trying to push my luck, I decided I´d start with my right foot on the bottom rung just to be safe.

Scaling the ladder I start soaking my roof from the inside. This is what my roof looks like...

Granted, that is not my roof and I have not a clue who that guy with the sideburns is trying to impress but that is what my roof looks like (as lot of clay tiles all pieced together) and I really hate that guy with the sideburns. My roof, though, is covered with mold, broken so that it leaks when it rains, and is infested with things that are so ugly even their mamas don´t love them.

While fumigating the house I did my best to try to stay dry, try to stay on the ladder, and try not to scream at the top of my lungs every time the wind blew and knocked some dust onto my shoulder. I did a good job at most of those...only screaming thrice.

After I completed 4 Sections of 10 and not a scorpion or ugly spider to be seen I start going nuts with the pesticide. At this point my house is soaked worse than the Waterfalls video by TLC and I´m oddly feeling a little like T-Boz, getting all my ganas up to finish this job when I see something moving around in the rafters. Long story short. It´s a god damned snake. Mosquito nets can go to hell.

So by Sunday night I have tried to hunt this snake in my roof for days...only taking Friday off to take a 2 hour nap in the middle of the afternoon after a trip to Metapan. By Saturday there is a large full skin of the snake dangling from the rafters of my house. He´s taunting me....

Sunday afternoon arrives and I am sick of thinking about it so I go to my house to work on my garden (I have a garden...esta fregado). On my way out of the huge front door of my house I look up to my left and see the cocky bastard curled up in a ball on my rafters. He thinks he can take a break from hiding on my watch. No way in hell was I letting that happen.

I cut down a really long stick with my machete and when I returned he was still descansando. From about 10 feet away I poked him (i think poke is an understatement, I nervously tapped him), lifted him into the air with the stick and he fell the 8 feet to the ground like that´s where he wanted to be. Calm.

We looked at each other for what seemed like a fortnight and I can imagine he was thinking something along the lines of ¨What the hell, dude? Don´t you know I am a snake?¨ slithered (what other word would you use to describe the way a snake moves? Anyone?) in the direction of some lamina i had in the corner of my house. So you know what I did while his back(?) was turned? I stabbed him with my machete in the tail! UH!

That´s when he got pissed...

So I am standing there, and since the initial drop I had somehow (and I really don´t remember how) changed my large, long stick for a fucking broom - aren´t I a gladiator?, and I start to realize ¨Holy hell, Greg! This is a god damned snake in closed quarters and you have a broom in your hand! Wake up, moron!¨

Recap numero dos: This is not my first snake experience in La Peña. The first one involved a snake longer than I am tall but I took no part in its killing. I just watched a 40 year old with a really large pointy stick, a 16 year old with a pistol, and a 15 year old with a machete beat the piss out of it until they threw it in the woods. I was scared then and I was watching. This time I had to change my ropa interior.

So I changed the broom for a shovel, trapped the snakes head under the shovel when it lunged at me (for the tenth time) and cut its head off with the backside of my machete. If only I could have had a shovel and a machete I probably would have won Nationals senior year, right?

This is the result:

He was really only just over 3 feet long at 92 centemeters but it was the biggest adreneline rush I have had in a long, long time.

And now my town wont stop talking about how ¨Gregorio se la mató!¨ which I think is infinitely cooler than winning Nationals if only because my praise is in Spanish.

Other strange things about my town!

Virgen

There is a man named Virgen (pronounced Beer-hen). How much pressure do you think comes with a name like this when you´re Catholic? I´d be bullshit with my parents if they named me this. Talk about false advertising...the guys got 3 kids. He was really embarassed when he asked me how to say his name in English and I said ¨Pollo baracho.¨

Santos y Santos

There is a man named Santos and he is married to a woman named Santos. That´s weird. You can justify it by saying ¨Well, Greg, I am sure that a Jamie has married a Jaimie somewhere along the line.¨ Well that´s true. But no man named Gregory has ever married a woman named Gregory...and if they have, poor choice.

Marvin

My host parents, Santos y Marta (thank Dios), were married over 30 years ago. They have had 7 little babies since then, all of which are no longer babies. That, though, is besides the point. After they were married and already commenced having babies the sister of my host father (Miriam) had a baby (they named him Marvin) with the brother of my host mother (I have no idea what his name is. He lives in the capital of the United States. Miami.) That one is hard to explain in words but I think that his parents are also his uncle and aunt... I think.

8 días

I don´t know why, and I really sincerely cannot figure it out, but when something is a week away everyone in this country says ¨Ocho días.¨ Today is Monday. If I had a meeting next Monday I would be incorrect if I said in ¨7 días¨ or in ¨una semana.¨ What is a week or seven days in English is EIGHT DAYS in El Salvador. I don´t get it. Eff them. DOn´t they know I am American and I am always right?! I have white skin!

Tío Chepe´s kids and Don Santos

Don Santos has an uncle. His name is Tio Chepe. Tio Chepe is the brother of Don Santos´ mother. That makes Tio Chepe his uncle, right? Well, Tio Chepe has 14 kids. The youngest of which is like 5 years old. Don Santos, my host father, is 54. Tio Chepe is 77. Technically, Don Santos has a cousin who is 5 years old. That´s 49 years difference. That is strange enough. It gets weirder.

Don Santos does not think that these children are his cousins. He has explained to me that somehow (and maybe it was lost in campo translation) he is the second uncle of these kids and they are NOT cousins. If anyone can explain this in whatever language you can muster please e-mail me at GregCormier17@gmail.com. I would sincerely appreciate it.

Don David

Don David lives across the path from us. He has a molino. He´s an old man. While censusing, and I don´t remember if I already wrote about this, I found out he was 67 years old. When I asked him what his wife´s name was he had his eldest son Carlos (8 years old) run and ask her ¨Mama, cómo se llama usted?¨ This means a litany of things. One of which is that he doesn´t know his wife´s name. That´s ludacris. Ludacris is an understatement. That´s the most fucking absurd thing I have ever heard. Secondly, and all three of his children were present, the children do not know the name of their mother. Try that one on for size. Mother´s Day. Eff you, Mother´s Day. Mother´s Day is a national holiday and they close every business in the entire countryin appreciation of Mothers in El Salvador. These little children don´t know their mother´s name!

After that I asked her how old she was. She is 27 years old. Go nuts with that one.

Sorry for the delay between blogs, and sorry I wasn´t too funny this time I am kind of in a hurry. Maybe one of these days I will actually tell you about what I am doing down here as far as working goes, but for now you´ll have to settle with Strange Stories from Greg Cormier. I think I should have a BET special, don´t you?

I´ll leave you with some pictures from my life

These are photos of my family back in San Vicente.

This is Mama Gladys. I´ve been challenged, doubted, damn near insulted after I called her the sweetest woman in the world. I´ve weathered that storm, stood by my guns, and still hold firmly that this woman could make the Tin Man´s heart melt (Chiasson).

She´s unbelievable. After spending the first two nights of training in a hotel in San Vicente we were shipped to our host families around the district. I was so air headed that I didn´t even think to be nervous until after we drove the 45 minutes, got off the bus, walked all the way through Molineros, and walked up to the first house where Tyler was to be living. When I saw his family emerge from their house, all 3 million of them, I damn near swallowed my whole elbow in an attempt to relieve the discomfort I felt. ¨Hay-zeus Kreestow, I can´t speak Spanish,¨ I realized. Looking around I saw absolutely no way out; no bathrooms, no cell phone to pretend to have a call on, and no taxis to manejar me back to Fitchburg, MA. I was so nervous and inept at Spanish that I couldn´t say even a word. Imagine that, though...Greg Cormier, yours truly, full of more hot air than your local brothel, once accused of actually talking a doorknob off a door...I couldn´t speak. Listen. When I say I couldn´t speak, I mean it. There were 36 of us new volunteers that arrived in the beginning of February from all around the United States. When I arrived and took my placement test I tested so poorly that by the second week the upper management had pulled me in to explain that they were so concerned with my Spanish level that if I had any problems in my host community I could tell them and they could work it out because they were afraid I couldn´t do it myself .

(Like what? Having a hard time explaining to someone that you don´t want to eat crema? All you gotta do it wag your finger at them and pretend to vomit, right? Doesn´t that essentially get the point across without language? Who needs Spanish anyway?)

Then we stepped up to the next house, my house, and a woman no taller than a Chia Pet with the face of a really tan angel walked up to us with a smile that made me blush. Instantaneously this beautiful woman put me at ease with her infectious laugh; both eyes closed, using her left hand to pretend to hold herself up as she doubles over in laughter and her right to grasp at what I assume to be a splitting gut. ¨Ayeee, Gregorio!¨ became her usual response to my absurd stories and awful miscommunications in Spanish. All was right in the world and I knew that she would be my anchor for the next two months.

This is a photo of Don Orlando, my host father, with his granddaughter, Katia. She is 8 he is not. She has hair, he is without. He is the former Mayor of Verapaz. Ya, you´re telling me, I couldn´t effin believe it either. He´s a funny guy in the same way that trying to share a house with a total stranger is funny. A total stranger with a really, really, really strong accent to a language you do not know. That´s what kind of funny he is. For the first month and a half I understood less than 6% of the words that fought valiently through his dentures to escape his mouth.

He was my gauge of how far along Spanish is coming. Upon returning to Molineros for Capacitacción dos I had hours of fluid conversation with the campesino. He really opened up a lot to me once he realized I could understand him.

He really is a great guy, though. He is 16 years sober, a former abusive alcoholic, and attends Alcoholics Anonymous 7 days a week for 2 hours every single day, and twice a day every other Sunday. That is a lot of hours dedicated to AA, and a serious commitment. I could not be more impressed by a man living in a society where men can do no wrong to pull himself up by the bootstraps, put his machismo pride in his back pocket, and walk down dirt roads every day for two hours to show to himself, his family, and his friends that he no longer wants a part of that life.

Que chivo.

A brief glimps of Mama Gladys laughter. I don´t know what it is about her but within 29 minutes of knowing her I naturally started calling her Mama Gladys instead of Niña Gladys. She took great care of me and never spared me how much she adored that I eat everything in front of me because she has hosten vegetarians and voluntarios delicados in the past. I´ve never been so immediately comfortable in front of someone, making me feel like I could do no wrong despite my shortcomings in language and culture. And how could you not fall head over high heels for a smile and laugh like this...

This is Esteben. Pronounced Est-EEEE-ben.

Nine year old rocketship, I swear to god. Kid is always moving a million miles an hour. He was always with Tyler and I for some soccer or softball during the first training session. Although too busy to hang out much in Molineros during our second training, we did to get our ´queondas?´ in passing every once in a while.

I took this photo as I sat at the bus stuff with my three week bag packed waiting for the 178 to pass. Esteben, living right next to the bus stop, walked up to be and asked through the fence: ¨ya sale?¨ ¨Sí, hombre. estoy yendo por sitio mio, pero my voy a regresar otro rato.¨ I didn´t realize anything was wrong until midway through my answer he couldn´t look up at me anymore and was hiding behind his red cachucha. The next time he looked up he was crying...

There have been a lot of volunteers in Molineros, I was the 14th at my house with Mama Gladys, and Tyler was the 15th at his house. I don´t know the general coming and going of volunteers but when I looked back at his mother relaxing in the hammock she gave me the look like she knew exactly what we were talking about with her eyebrows slightly raised and lips in a pout. I guess I never thought about it but we spent almost 5 days a week running around with Esteben and his sisters. The 9 year olds got a way with words... so I kidnapped him and brought him to La Peña.

No, really, I told him I´d be back in August, he could play short stop, I´d play first, and we´d put his sisters to shame, and we played marbles until the bus came.

15 minutes late.

I wouldn´t have wanted it any other way.

I have been on the move, in one way or another, for what seems like too long.

I met Nora at the airport right before an enormous storm named Agatha decided to tear her pretty little way through western El Salvador and Guatamala. We arrived in Playa Tunco and never came close to stepping foot in the swollen ocean because of the storm. The waves were enormous and there were slim to no moments without rain. We made due with what we had, however, which was Jon Michael, KC, two Dans, and a Jessica, some pasta, a Police coverband, and the new word plorgan. Despite the rain it was the best weekend I could have ever been surprised with in my life even though I spent the weekend piggy-backing Nora through the flooded streets of Tunco because she didn´t want to get wet.

-Let´s take a vote... Does chivalry die with me? Yes ( ) No ( )-

I am going to say, in my very humble opinion, that chivalry does in fact die with me because technically I saved her life. Hurricane Agatha killed 11 people in El Salvador, over 80 in Guatemala, and 4 in Honduras. It could have been 12 if it wasn´t for my quick thinking heroics and amphibious footwear.

I think I owed her the piggy-backs, though. An off-the-cuff 3 day visit from Panama was unbelievable. It kinda sucked when all my Peace Corps friends said they liked her more and wished that she was in our group, but I think thats the response I get everytime I introduce her to my friends.

But now back to the whole volunteer thing going on down here.

I am currently in the midsts of my technical training back in San Vicente learning about worm composting, rabbit projects, latrines, making your own shampoo and cologne to start a microbusiness, gardening, NGO´s in the area, Stove Projects, and all sorts of resources in order to make me the best volunteer I can be.

By the time I left La Peña I had held meetings with the ADESCO, the women of the community, and the men of the community to scope out the ideas for projects when I get back in late June. Holding separate meetings in essential in Latin American communities where women are culturally subjugated to men and often have too much pena to even speak in front of their husbands. Knowing that women´s and men´s interests are vastly different, I insisted on having all three meetings entirely separate. The lives of the two genders could not possibly be more contrasting so naturally their loyalties to projects will be very, very unique.

Allowing the community to speak first is always genuinely breathtaking, and since I´ve become such a big fan of writing out dialogues between myself and the community I guess I´ll just stick with what works.

I present to you The Taming of the Shrewd Men of La Peña.

Greg: Good afternoon, horseriders.

(or knights or gentlemen, but I like to think of the word caballero very literally)

Generic La Peña Man: Goodday, mate!

Greg: (Skipping the small talk) So now that I have met all of the people here in La Peña, finished the census, and spoken with every family about what projects are most important to the community and should be approached first, what do you guys think?

GLPM: The cancha is far and away the most important thing. Every winter more and more of our precious stomping grounds is washed away by the heavy rains that get caught in these here mountains.

(Unison, if not a bunch of incoherent mumblings, ensues agreeing that the cancha is the be all, end all of La Peña´s issues)

Character Greg allows this verbal hot potato to go on for the better part of 25 minutes before he says, to the shock and awe of all men at the meeting:

Greg: As you all know, during the census I discovered that out of 33 houses here in La Peña only 7 have latrines. The rest of your families hacer pupu behind some other family´s mango tree or in the favorite grazing area of your largest cow, Negrita. On top of this, not one house in this community has potable water and the last time I asked where the water does come from the answer I received was ¨de las nubes.¨ Now do not get me wrong, I drink the same yellow water that falls off Don Santos´ roof into the guacal but don´t you think that maybe we should think of those long stretches of summer when it doesn´t rain for months? Furthermore, as a Rural Health and Sanitation Volunteer, I have to say that tackling these tasks are of some importance to the general salud of the community.

GLPM: You´re absolutely right. It is not healthy to drink rain water off the roof like we have been doing, and I think I am getting pretty sick of the Battle Shits competitions I have been losing to Negrita. It´s not healthy to live this way, especially when the cancha is eroding away...

Cut

And so it goes. We speak in circles of the cancha for as long as they can manage to prolong it, and then I try my hardests to make them realize that the taste of the rain water isn´t necessarily a good thing and that it does matter whether we are stepping on human shit or cow shit or chicken shit. We should not be stepping on human shit, is pretty much what it comes down to.

Now to my community´s full credit they have been living their entire lives this way - drinking rain water and pooping in the quebrada - and are probably thinking that they can do it for few more years without running into any serious issues. They are also right that with every rainy season the cancha at the top of the mountain erodes poco a poco. I get it. Fútbol or bust, right? But isn´t potable, if not dependable, water a natural human right? They would prefer to talk about the lack of space for their corner kicks than their children being able to build houses with running water. To each their own...maybe?

The next day I had a meeting with the women...myself and about 50 of La Peña´s best. The women did a significantly better job of being practical in the large scheme of things. Actually, they not only surprised me but infused in me such excitement about working with the women in the community that I felt like I was wasting time coming back to San Vicente for training. I wanted so badly to just start right in and spend every day working with the women of La Peña. They brought up that water and latrines are without question the most important projects and should be started in on immediately. Their next project was cocinas. This is a whole different beast unto itself. I mean absolutely no jokes in writing this out, rather, this is literally the horario of my host mother, Niña Marta, every single day.

5 AM. Wake up to make sure that all the food is cooked for the men before they go out to work the fields at 6. Tortillar, calentar los frijolles y cafe.

6 AM. Ordeñar the cows.

7 AM. Get the little kids to school.

8 AM. Get those cranky kids to school, finally.

9 AM. Tortillar y cocinar lunch for the men that are working in the fields.

10:30 AM. Hop on the mule, fully equipped with the lunch you have been cooking for the past two hours, and bring the men their lunches in the fields. This could take hours.

12 or 1. Return home, clean all the plates you brought to the men. Eat.

2 PM. Begin cooking dinner.

5 PM. Set dinner for all the men, making sure to bring them everything they demand while eating. Mamí, traigame una cuchilla. Mamí, café. Mamí, deme un tomate. Traígamela. Deme eso.

7 PM. Eat and clean up.

8 PM. Get the little kids to bed.

9 PM. Sleep.

Cocinas are the lives of these women. I think people, especially strong, independent women reading this, will have a hard time understanding that the inside of a cocina is the life of a married mother. It is the men´s duty to work their asses off all day in the fields and to bring home food. It is the woman´s duty to prepare it. Women make upwards of 200 tortillas a day. 8 people in my house. 3 meals a day. 6 or 7 tortillas per meal. Plus the dogs only eat tortillas. Imagine making 200 tortillas a day working over an open campfire.

If you can grasp that that schedule is a 7 day a week, 52 week a year horario then you will understand how important it is to women to have a more efficient, healthier place in which to do their work. That is what the cocina project is. The stoves we will hopefully raise enough money to buy for the families of the town burn the firewood more efficiently and cut down smoke by like 90 percent. This will greatly improve the quality of living of the women who have the opportunities to cook with it. We will still be burning wood, but a lot less of it and the women will be enhaling 90% less smoke.

The really catching part of the meeting was toward the end when I asked if they had any other ideas for projects and Niña Josephina responded ¨salud de la mujer.¨ With the full understanding that they could only be taught about the intracacies of women´s health by a 22 year old History major. The place exploded with ´si´ and ´uh huh´ and all women agreed it was of utter importance. The first miracle here is that these women were comfortable enough around me to speak up that this was important. The second, and infinitely more important miracle, is that they trust me, a weird new guy in town, to hold these rather taboo charlas and teach them all that I can about head to toe women´s health.

My jaw dropped. Not that women´s health is my particular specialty, or that I even have an immense interest in the subject, but the fact that these women came to this meeting with ganas, me han conocido, and decided with animation that it was important blew me away. They took the initiative. They want to know. They dropped all pena and brought this to my door step and that zeal alone gets me so excited to start this weekly project that I look forward to it the most. The enthusiasm and passion alone put away all shame I had and have me reading every and all resources on the subject. I can´t wait to start.

Look, you can say that the men came to the meeting with the same ganas to do a project to save their precious cancha, and they did, but do you understand how hard it must be for a 50 year old woman with 8 children to look a 22 year old stranger in the face in front of 50 people and say ¨I would like for you to teach me what tampons are. I want you to teach me about hormones. I want to know about condoms, breast cancer, cervical cancer, HIV, and how I can protect myself because I really just do not know.¨

This blew me away and continues to make me feel a small sense of pride that either I have some of the most progressive and animated women in the country in La Peña, or that I somehow won some small amount of confianza in my two short months in site. Either way, the women put their best foot forward in the face of shame and I had better bring my A game to match.

PS.

One of these days I am going to start personal profiles for my favorite people of the community. If I do one a week with a short funny story, a photo, and some likes and dislikes (not unlike the Dating Game, I guess) I could probably do close to 100 of my community members before I am out of here. That said, there is no way I will have the ganas to do one a week for two years so please do not hold your pretty little breath. What I am saying is that you people at home can start to put faces to names, names to stories, stories to not having heard from me for months, and maybe start to get a better picture of my community.

This is sad. I'm gonna be completely honest. I think I am a geography whiz, and usually do very well (that one time) when quizzed for hours on end at Amherst Coffee by a burly man with a beard, but when I showed up at the Nut House to open my acceptance package I was genuinely confused to read El Salvador and not know a god damn thing about it. I mean, it could have said Azerbaijan and I would have known exactly where that was but El Salvador threw me for a serious loop.

Well for those of you like me who do not know anything about it, here is a map.

I live in north west El Salvador near Metapan. It's my nearest pueblo but is about an hour to an hour and a half away depending on dust or mud. My caserio is due east of Metapan but closer to the Rio Lempa than Metapan.

El Salvador is about the exact same size as Massachusetts but it takes me at least 4 hours to get from La Pena to the Capital San Salvador.

They eat a lot of pupusas here. They are wonderful and like most of the things we eat in the United States not extraordinarily health conscious. Cheese, beans, maiz.

Camiones look like this. This is what I ride into Metapan with from La Pena. An hour an a half in a dust bowl to arrive looking like Ashy Larry.

The Celtics are in the NBA Finals tonight. Let's do it.

One of these days I'll put some of my own pictures up but for the time being I don't have any.

Any questions feel free to ask. I sincerely appreciate the support, the questions, complaints, packages, and 'go fuck yourself' letters. Keep them coming.

I don't really have a great story for you guys and for that I am eternally sorry.

Instead I think I'll just go on a rant about things that happen here that will always leave me looking about as confused as Miss South Carolina.

Bear with me.

First and foremost is the mystery of the United States. Here the United States, as with most of the developing world, is seen as the land of enlightenment; a place where you learn all there is to know about the world as soon as you step foot on gringo soil. Whether you´ve been there for 3 days, 25 years, or just went for lunch at a Jack in the Box in Charlotte, N.C., you will inevitably return entirely cultured and more sophisticated than anyone you will ever meet again. Not only the travelers believe this in their heart of hearts, but more importantly all the people this person meets genuinely believes this to be la verdad, as well. People will go to the grave over things their best friends leña collector says because he once got deported from Omaha, Nebraska after a 9 week stint washing laundry at the local nursery. For this reason I run into the funniest disputes in La Peña over the silliest stuff.

For example, my host father Don Santos has been to the states a few times in his 56 years and for this reason everyone in town puts a lot of weight on what he says about the United States of ´Murica. The other day I was just minding my own business naming each and every bean in my sopero before I subjected it to my molars and I heard Don Santos say to his son Tito ´no hay aguacates en los estados.´ (which sounds a lot more like ´know eye awakataze en los estaows´) To be honest he was so convincing I almost believed him myself until I remembered Flank Steak sandwhiches at Cassina´s house and distinctly remember spilling a Double Bag in the guacamole. Don Santos fought with me for about five sixths of a minute before I put my foot down. Needless to say Tito was drop-dead stunned when I explained what Stop and Shop is. It´s hard to illustrate that we have every tangible thing on the planet...

By the way, thats what I look like when I laugh.

The next day we were cercando my yard with barbed wire fencing to keep the cow excrement of my new cement floor when it started pouring for about 20 minutes. We hid as best we could until it stopped raining and got back to work. Don Santos then made the astute observation that there was an enormous rainbow right in front of us off the mountain. He looked right at Tito and dared to say, how dare he?, that gringos don´t have rainbows in the United States. That one is self explanatory.

Let´s make a switch from micro to macro now. We´re on the national level of head scratching.

Metapan made it to the National final against San Miguel and were to play at the Estadio Cuscatlan in the Capital of San Salvador. The National Final is like the Superbowl of the United States, but I would argue a little more important because there is only one sport here in El Salvador that anyone between the ages of 2 and 61 care about. A bunch of us from Metapan had an immense amount of ganas to head to the final so we made plans to meet up and go together. The game was scheduled for Sunday the 16th of May at 7 PM. By the 13th of May the game was changed to a day game on Saturday the 15th of May. I got a call from my buddy Gabe on that Thursday the 13th saying the game was changed again to a night game on Saturday. So that Saturday, while on my way to the capital, I was skimming through the want ads of the Diario de Hoy and stumbled upon a page dedicated to how yesterday (the 14th of May) they decided to change the date of the game from the 15th to the 23rd. You may not understand how miserable this was but after getting 3 hours out of La Peña and having to hop off that random bus somewhere in Santa Ana I was pretty upset.

Last Sunday (the 23rd) I got to the game at around 2:30 after it was abruptly changed from its start time of 7 PM to 3 PM to receive my entry ticked that still read The National Final of El Salvador! Metapan vs Aguilar (San Miguel) Saturday March 15th 3 PM.

Another thing that leaves me bewildered is the idea of glasses. Just the other day Tito asked me why I wear glasses and that I am not old enough to have them. This is an observation I have made before, please do not get me wrong there, but no one has ever approached me about it. It´s the truth. No one here wears glasses until they are on the downward slope of 50 (if you take offense to this please push that little X at the top right corner of the screen and never return to this website. 50 here is different from 50 in the states.) There are just an obscene amount of glasses probably prescribed without real need in the United States starting with the little spikey haired blonde kid from Stuart Little and Jerry Mcguire. I have been racking my sorry excuse for a brain to figure out whats going on around here and there. Here´s what I´ve come up with.

1) Salvadorans have superhuman eyes and don´t need glasses until the 5,000,000 mile mark on their pupusa meter.

2) Gringos have really weak eyes and need glasses slightly before the second Harry Potter book.

3) Gringos absolutely love being prescribed things...Whats a new accessory for my seriously lacking face? Health care covers at least part of the lense, right? I´ll cover the other $450 for my Gucci frames that automatically make me sexier to anyone who can possibly get that close to my left temple to read that these are, in fact, very expensive glorified crocheting needles covering up my insecurities. ...Was that too harsh? I never know these days. I am too insecure to ever be sure.

4) When you´re poor you learn to deal with shit. ¨because in hard times everyone´s eyes get better or at least good enough.¨ The Poisonwood Bible

5) People here see just as poorly as gringos do, but because its not cool to wear glasses until 51 they make sure to hold off until its fashionable.

I am going to settle on superhuman eye sight. It´s without question the most believable.

I guess my ride into town this morning counts,too.

Nora is making the trip tomorrow from Panama to El Salvador and I couldn´t possibly be more invigorated at the idea of meeting her at the airport and losing myself in a sense of familiarity for the few days that she can stay. Thankfully my family here in La Peña knew exactly how much this meant to me.

I was woken at 5 AM with a knock at the door. Upon inviting them to come in Tito and Niña Marta explained to me that Don Alfredo was not going to Metapan today and would not be going tomorrow either because the rain keeps washing the dirt bridge away. They knew I had planned to leave Friday but they said there would be no way to go, not even from the neighboring village Cuyuiscat. They said they were leaving in 20 minutes in the pickup because Don Santos is not feeling well and needs to go be checked out at the clinic. I crawled quickly out of my mosquito net and packed 3 weeks worth of stuff (because training 2 starts on Monday in San Vicente) in the alloted minutes and left La Peña without having a chance to say goodbye to anyone.

About an hour later we arrived at said missing bridge and were met with two options, go back to La Peña with our pickup, or ditch it and cross the bridge that is currently being built by foot and hitchhike a ride to Metapan. I knew I lived in El Salvador when I was picking up my maletín out of the back of the truck and Tito was locking to door in the lot of a local lechero. Equipped with my backpack, maletín, and hunger we walked down to the bridge in the pouring rain. Llegamos a la puente and we scaled the ladder and walked across the elevated bridge beam by beam until we got to the other side.

>There are moments like these that I am reminded that life here may be acceptable and definitely enjoyable most of the time, but this was just downright funny. I literally started laughing looking at the makeshift wooden ladder that led us up to the equivilent of a rebar train track. I debated changing my footwear for the walk but decided if I was going down I was going down in style.

The river was flooded underneath us from the torrential rains that have been pommeling northern Santa Ana for the past 4 weeks and this bridge was a mere skeleton allowing me to see that if I fell not only would it really hurt, but my iPod (my only possession of value) would also be ruined and I wouldn´t be able to listen to Temperature by Sean Paul for years and years to come. It was the idea of losing that Kingston sound that had me shaking in my crocs, not the height. Pff. You know I am a tough guy, right?

So I got to town, had the chance to say goodbye to Don Santos and Tito and am now clueless with what to do with myself one day ahead of schedule.

This is El Salvador. Glasses, washed away bridges, and rainbows. Take heed.

I am gonna go find a way to get to Nora without losing fingers or getting wet. Wish me luck with the bridges.

Here are some pictures Jordan took here in El Salvador.

It´s been a while, huh, guys?

A little birdy told me that if I didn´t write something new soon I was going to lose my audience...

So here I am scrambling to throw a proverbial bone.

You´ll find out soon how hard it actually is for me to throw anything right about now.

I´ve been prescribed Sufrexal.

Sufrexal- Ketanserin

Each 100g of gel contain:

Ketanserin base - 2 g

PEG base qs - 100 g

Therapeutic Indications of Sufrexal gel is indicated as aid in the treatment of the following conditions:

-Dermal ulcers and non-neoplastic uterine cervix ulcers

-Traumatic wounds such as decubitus ulcers

-Preparation of tissue for grafts and flaps

-Uninfected burns

-Regeneration of uterine cervix

Sufrexal gel, vaginal application

Cervical ulcers: one applicator every 24 hours before bedtime for two weeks. If the patient exhibits hydrorrhea, it is recommended to wait until it has ceased to apply.

Sufrexal gel.

Ulcers in vulva and vagina: Sufrexal gel should be applied every 24 hours before bedtime for two weeks.

Precautions

In the case of Cervix lesions is recommended to take cytological vaginal study (papanicolau) for discard Neoplasic lesions.

I´m no doctor, but as well as this fantastic medicine has been helping me I think it was a serious mistake that I was prescribed it. I apparently never will be a doctor either because I clearly can´t even make a general diagnosis as to what gender classification my body currently occupies.

Jordan Grinstein made a stop over in La Peña, El Salvador last weekend. He is curently working or throwing up in Ciudad de Guatemala and gave me a call to come make a visit. So you know what we did? We met up, we chatted, and we went to the emergency room together.

Last Sunday morning (2 May) I was feeling a little anxious so we decided to go hiking. It had been pouring in La Peña for about 4 straight days but I felt that Jordan deserved a look at those beautiful, highly coveted pine trees.

My family watched me put some jeans on, grab a bandana to wear so that everyone would know immediately that I am less than reputable, grab my machete, advise Jordan to spare his clean boxers and to wear dirty ones to go hiking in the pouring rain with, and wake up Regalo for some 4 legged company.

2 hours later my family watched me come running up to the house with a Thermal wrapped around my right hand dripping so much blood that the dogs from town were chasing me to get a taste. They also watched Jordan saunter cavalierly behind me with his camera taking pictures of his own shoes and of people´s blue fences. ´God damn it´ they must have thought ´can´t leave these inept gringos alone for even a minute.´

The skinny is that I fell. Here´s how...

We were starving so we decided to make quick work of this mountain habíamos conquistado. On the way down we came across a pretty large ravine that was about 2 meters deep and wide enough that your´s truly, Gregory ´I´ve never met a canyon I couldn´t jump´ Cormier, questioned if I could make it or not. My doubt was met with a rather haughty ´I´d do it´ from over my right shoulder.

Side note: the dog can´t talk.

So I jumped, made a landing Shawn Johnson would have envied, took an adjustment hop and slipped hard enough on wet zacate that I still have a bruise on my left hip bone. I look up at Jordan and we shared a hearty laugh about how I couldn´t stick it cleanly before I realized I had let my machete best me.

This is how I strolled off the mountain: pouring a mix of sweat, mountain rain, and blood, trailed by a tail of playful chuchos, my right hand making its best attempt to immitate my incomplete left, and the new gringo in town acting as if he had never seen a fence, camera, or a parade of a bloody idiot and hungry dogs before.

The hospital of Metapan stitched me up nicely...Jordan has got the whole operation on video, and all the crude pre-operation photos as well. I got 7 stitches in my middle finger, 2 in my ring finger, and cut my dedito at such an awful angle they couldn´t stitch it. So you know what they did to fix the little pinky? You guessed it! Sufrexal! I have been putting this women´s personal cream on my open herida for the past week and it was worked wonders.

(Anyone know that Mitch Hedburg joke about birdcage glue? That applies here.)

I also found out the wasy way that Health Care here is free. 9 Stitches, some vagina cream, and a mess of antibiotics later I walked out without having to call Blue Cross Blue Shield or know the last four digits of my father´s social security number. I love this country.

I hope that helps explain why throwing bones is so hard for this gender disoriented man.

Before we get to the nitty, and eventually the gritty, I´d like to inform you about trees. Disfrútelos.

I have been organizing a project to ´reforest´ the community of La Peña for the past two weeks. All has been going well, as far as I can tell, and by this time next week vamos a sembrar around 400 trees in my community. The community has been extremely supportive of the project and considering there are only 32 families I think that 400 trees is an accomplishment. Maybe this puts a perspective on the situation: it would cost $15 to buy 100 trees, and of the 32 families in my community we have raised enough money to buy 400. The school could use some serious sombras, and we are going to plant a whole lot of them at the fútbol cancha because every year more and more of it gets washed away with the rainy season. I´ll tell you in two years if it worked.

Each palito costs $.15 with the exception of coffee and cacao. There were about 20 different trees to choose from but, for all you botonists out there, the majority bought Marañon Azucaron, Anona, Paterna, and Pinos (my darling Pinos). I am ecstatic.

During the census I found that over half of the families in my communities do not have latrines. That´s not good. Especially during the dry season when there is no foliage. We´ll have to do something about that.

I finally entered my new house yesterday!

There is a red brick house that I will be moving into in June. It´s small, about the size of an oxcart, has no windows, a dirt floor, no latrine, and is currently being cared for by an assembly of bats, scorpions, and round brown things that could easily be mistaken for cow dung. We fumigated yesterday and got rid of the bats. Lets hope by the time we are putting in the cement for the floor that the scorpions have moved into their in-laws´ basement.

The god question.

First and foremost, I´m blaming this misstep on extreme hunger and facing down a large bowl of beans and an avocado. I never stood a chance.

During Wedneday´s mass I was back home with the profa (a woman the Minestry of Education ships in for 3 days a week to teach at the school), Niña Marta, and Jamilé looking at Guanaco the same way one does a socially acceptable morsel of food, or one of those freshly baked chocolate chip cookies from Berkshire. I was simply minding my business thinking that the next person who came within 2 meters of me was losing a deltoid muscle in an effort to spurn world hunger. Then it came. A steaming bowl of fried beans, fresh queso, homemade chili water, and that damned avocado.

In an effort to spit beans everywhere I decided to ask the profa why she wasn´t attending the service at the church tonight. I actually couldn´t remember her ever going, and was curious if maybe I had in my midsts another impartial individual. Boy was I mistaken.

Act 3: Scene 16: Greg eats beans with a side of foot.

The scene: Rectangular table, profa at the short end, me on a long end, Niña Marta and Jamilé shuffling by bringing all sorts of goodies for us to eat.

ACTION!

Me: Profa, Buen Provecho. how are those beans? (I´ll translate for you)

Profa: Gracias, igual. Good. How are yours?

Me: Stupendous, thanks. You´re not gonna go to the church tonight?

P: No. I do not believe so.

Me: Oh, no? For what not?

P: It doesn´t please me. You will be going?

Me: No, it does not please me, either.

P: Did you go when you were living in the states?

Me: No, it wasn´t my culture.

P: Oh, but do you believe in God?

(Mouth full of beans and an incoming spoonful of a podiatrist´s dream)

Me: No

(Imagine a Zach Morris ´time out´ moment in the middle of the tropics. Imagine that damn scratching vinyl that brings an entire mob of people to attention. Food serving stopped, dogs hid their faces in the paws, an angel lost its wings, and my answer hung in the air in the exact same way that bricks do not.)

I spent the next hours feeling extraordinarily uncomfortable, about as uncomfortable as one can feel thousands of miles away from liberal Massachusetts, trying to explain myself in a language that I can barely tie my shoes in. From all angles and from all people who were showing up to the house after church I sweated out these answers and more...

I was never brought to church as a child and was never taught religion.

I cannot say that I would like to learn now. I think it may honestly be too late.

No, I do not thank god for a safe day before I go to sleep every night and I do not thank god for every morning that he provides me.

Yes, I think that the church is important to teach people to stay off drugs and be good people.

I was told I would have a hard time with this in El Salvador but I hope that La Peña can understand that this is an exchange in culture, not complete assimilation, and I am not trying to offend anyone.

I think that I have a good heart and have the same morals as someone who goes to church without ever having learned these lessons directly from the Bible.

Well, (backtracking to save my life) I do believe there is someone that is helping us people out but I do not know yet who it is and do not belong to a certain religion.

Please pick up your jaw, Niña Marta, I just found your tongue under my backpack.

All humour aside, I took this very seriously. Back in Washington DC before we were shipped out to San Vicente my friend Milton asked me what I would say if asked this question in my community. Naively I said I would tell them the truth: no, I do not believe in god and do not practice religion. He equated it to someone being in the United States saying that Hitler was in the right (not reich) 70 years ago. It is literally living in a community where 99.4% of people (in all of El Salvador) believe one thing and will go to the grave for it, and you being the only outcast. We agreed then, on February 2nd, that he was right, and that I must swallow my Pioneer Valley pride and avoid telling the truth at all costs for the sake of confianza.

Well, Wednesday night I thought my community was different and they are not. Granted things were only extremely awkward for about 4 hours, but I was absolutely convinced that within this extremely Catholic community I had ruined my shot. I guess the upshot is that the truth has been told, the downside is that it never had to be. I couldn´t help but feel as if I offended my overly hospitable hosts but by morning everything was back to normal, if not better.

Oh, and I just got a call from Tito. He said the brown things are, in fact, cow dung but they are going to go halfies on rent with me so I shouldn´t be worried.

I´ve been doing house visits lately.

As a Rural Health and Sanitation (I don´t know who I fooled to convince them that I could teach people how to be more sanitary) volunteer you must conduct a census of your community. This is another way in which I have been other worldy fortunate in La Peña because there are less houses in my entire community than there are on School St in Hudson, or even Hobart in Amherst... does that give you an idea?

Although the census seems like a pain in the ass, it really is a hell of a time if you just remember to not take yourself too seriously.

I find that I am walking up to adobe houses without doors, fully equiped with my trademark backpack, a hefty pachinga of water, and a runt of a dog following rather skiddishly about 3 meters behind me, making every attempt to introduce myself to people that have already heard everything I have ever said in La Peña through the grapevine.

Each interraction unfolds relatively similarly. Lets watch...

Wearing my best wrinkled khakis (with appropriate paw prints on my lap from the beggar at dinner the night before) and my $1.99 pink collared shirt from the Salvation Army (yup, that one) I stroll up to a house full of women and children who try their hardest to act surprised that I am there. I stride gingerly toward the barking dogs making zero to less quick movements until their attention turns to Guanaco and they absolutely pommel him. I´m almost in.

I often wonder if the families know that they all have the same passwords to enter into their homes. I´ve been extraordinarily lucky with ´buenas tardes´ followed by a ´con permiso´ and I´m welcomed as if I were a long lost Gringo member of the family. Even an ýankee doodle´would throw any unwanted intruders for a loop, but I have been a serious beneficiary of homogenous passwords. Either I am tricking these wonderful people or they are, in fact, wonderful people and genuinely are embracing me. I still haven´t figured it out yet, but I´ve got a team on it.

Sweating profusely I am asked to sit down in a plastic chair put at exactly the wrong angle to be able to comfortably see anything going on around me. I proceed to ask how everyone is doing, if they´ve got time to humor me, and if they´d care to take a seat themselves. Most say bien, sí, and no, respectively. I proceed with this uncomfortable conversation telling them who I am (all they hear is ´Gringo´), why I am there (to change the world), and that this information, however intrusive it is (and it really is), va a ayudarme a conocer la comunidad. Mind you that the conversation is made exponentially more uncomfortable because my chair situation has me staring the back corner of a latrine with parrot poop falling on my crocs or am straining my neck at a 176 degree angle in order to see that the woman I am speaking with is too busy throwing rocks at chickens to notice that I am, in fact, fighting through all sorts of fecal matter to inquire about how many times she has had diarrea in the past 2 months. This is about the point when I start to take myself a lot less seriously.

The census couldn´t be more fun after that moment. I ask each family (I spare no one) about remesas (awkward), hand washing, teeth brushing, breasts, trash burning, chagas and dengue, and then we get to the serious stuff. ¨How much do you know about AIDS?,¨ ¨Who here decides how many children you are going to have?¨ - this is a fun one because the mother who has birthed 14 children says ¨nosotros dos, ambos¨ - ¨when did you last have a pap smear?¨ (and for the love of god who came up with the name ´pap smear?´ Furthurmore, who has the authority to keep it after all these years of those words struggling through grimaced lips? I call for a revolution!), and ¨Señor, do you have problems getting it up?¨

This is how I get to know the community. It really is a fun time. People here are extraordinarily shy because I am the first gringo that they´ve ever worked with but I think its a lot of fun to just dive in head first. Throw every family a ¨Hey, how are you?¨ and follow it up with the knockout blow ¨Do you two have problems in the sack?¨ Granted, the answers aren´t the same that they would give a licensed professional, but to me thats not the point.

The census has been helping me do two things: with questions like these it shows that I am here to work. I am going to ask the hard questions, I am going to show up at your doorstep whether you like it or not, and I am going to write down things about you that you definitely do not want me to write down. This census is a first for the people of my community and with questions like these any other conversation we could possibly have seem natural and easy.

The second thing it helps me do is be myself. I´m strange, I say stupid things, I do stupid things, and in large groups the masses tend to ostracize people like me. But when I show up at your doorstep my strangeness isn´t amplified, its made more personal. Our funny moments or slip ups in Spanish or miscommunications aren´t public fodder, they are inside jokes. These moments are no longer gossip between everybody about how it was weird when the gringo tripped over a stone walking past the church, these moments become ¨Míre pues! Se acuera cuando Gregorio nos dijo que no le gusta llevar pantelones! Que chiste, eso hombre!¨ In the process of the census I lose my lore and I gain a name, and these mishaps become moments shared and not moments seen.

And for that I will continue to ask each grown man that I stumble upon how much trouble, if any, they are having producing baby #15.

This is the 51 seconds they devoted to the United States Peace Corps on the news here in El Salvador. I was sitting nowhere in sight and quite possibly wasn´t even there at all because I spent most of my time harassing people for hot dogs and cheese doodles.

Oh, there were cheeseburgers, too.

Later in the night everyone from our training class was given superlatives. Megan got ¨Biggest security risk,¨ Sam got ¨Most likely to receive remesas,¨ Paul got ¨Most likely to impregnate a Salvadoran girl and then leave her,¨ Jordan (our quintessential UVA girl) got ¨Most likely to wear white linen to pick up poop.¨ My problem is that I must give off a funny vibe. I got ¨Most likely to ET (Early Terminate) and become a surfer.¨ Early Termination is when someone decides to leave their community early for whatever personal reason they may have. The thing about Early Termination is that here the staff also uses it when they want to get you the hell out (for whatever reason, drugs, guns, motorcycles) and stop pretending you´re in the Peace Corps. They give you the option to Early Terminate so you can still receive your benefits (and tell your daddy that you chose to leave) but technically, dropping it´s fancy name, you´ve been fired.

The uncomfortable thing is that I´ve been told more than once by more than 7 (so, 8) people that if anyone I am going to be ETed first. The thing is I have two daunting tasks ahead of me now... I gotta get kicked out and I still don´t know how to surf.

We´ve all got songs that remind us of the good times, right? We can all relate to how the Venga Boys makes us think of doing the bunny hop in JFK Middle School. I mean who wasn´t bouncing around like a sidways rabbit when those quacks (gender, anyone?) were screaming ¨BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!¨ I can´t hear Electric Feel by MGMT, Sweet Child o Mine by GNR, or the number one club hit ¨I Love You (You Love Me)¨ by Barney ft the Purple Dinosaur Band without being immediately teleported to the times when those songs meant something to me and ruled my eardrums.

Well I´ve got a new one and I´d like to share it with you. But before I do so I will explain to you exactly how often this song invades my private space...

There have been about 12 mornings in the past 10 weeks that I haven´t woken up to ¨OOO WOWOWOWOWOWOWOW.¨ I don´t remember the last time I had a meal without singing ¨yo nací para ti y tú también para mi!¨ to a 4 year old girl while spitting enough tortillas on the ground to feed the three dogs of the house. It´s so bad that I regularly slip up and call my host mother ¨mi dulce princesa¨ (she has 7 kids and is happily married to a man that can actually speak her language fluently). So bad I once spent $4.36 saldo just looking to put the damn song as my Salvadoran cellphone backtone. (For the record I am still without. I´m just trying to share the experience.) I sleep to this song, I use the latrine to this song, I walk to this song, and am currently typing this blog to the song. If you don´t understand the lyrics, don´t sweat it... I didn´t either the first time I fell in love with it. I know you will, too. Just make sure you listen to it while you´re doing everything that you do all day and you´ll start to realize you have a theme song. Like the Jeffersons.

ENJOY...The taste of Salvadoran Radio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMknaRGpm5I

I think the full acceptance into the community has begun and I am livid... They started allowing me to retrieve the misled soccer balls that fly ever-so-woefully off the mountain side. Before yesterday I would make extraordinarily convincing attempts to start running down the mountain and under the barbed wire before someone would inevitably stop me and tell me that they would bite that bullet instead. The same old song and dance would ensue with me making very well practiced (and facetious) steps down the mountain before those quick footed buggers (accidentally) overtook me and went crashing through the zacate in pursuit of the pelota. This, as they say, was the life.

Yesterday I made three excursions down the mountain for four different balls and I have never in my life been so exhausted. It took me no less than 25 minutes to retrieve one ball and begin my off balance trip skyward when I looked up and saw another flying over the barbed wire and soaring so elegantly over my head and down the mountain to the exact same place the other had made its peace.

Long story short, I turned around, got the other ball and fell hard on my head climbing over the barbed wire to get back on the field. I still scored 4 goals, suckers. You can´t tucker me out!

HOLY HELL! No joke, this girls cell phone just started ringing next to me... Niña Bonita. I seriously hope that helps prove my point.

Naturally the conversation started like this ¨Halo. va pues!¨and ended like this ¨va. va. vaya. vaya pues. vaya. pues sí. vaya pues.¨

This place is stereotypical 1950´s in the United States. Imagine Grease with a Latin American twist. Men carry small pocket sized mirrors around and share them in public, constantly checking to make sure that their hair is in perfect position. That alone is funny enough, but they craziest part about it is this...

I live in a town of 170 people. There are no more than these 170 people without a serious walk of about 45 minutes. They see the same people all day everyday but after working their asses off in the fields, cutting trees down with machetes, they go home, shower, put at least 4 OZ of the best hair gel money can buy in their well kept black locks, stroll over to the nearest (and only) tienda in town and sit around doing pull ups, arm wrestling, and listening to Niña Bonita with the rest of the well styled boys of the town. There aren´t women around, there aren´t cameras, and there isn´t even a 1% chance of seeing someone that anyone is trying to impress but they, without fail, will sit around in small circles combing their hair in the reflections of mirrors about the size of a modest coffee table coaster.

(That said... They look infinitely better than I look at every single moment of every day. If they are looking to impress anyone I would call that a rather disappointing victory...they´ve impressed a male gringo.)

The women work entirely too hard to be concerned about their looks all day, by the way. So its a crazy reverse role here that I still not used to. The men are overly vain and concerned about their appearance and the women just work their asses off all day and probably haven´t seen since before last Sunday´s church service.

Through the help of a 17 year old aptly named Salvador and my host father Don Santos I have finally obtained my machete. It´s beautiful. Now I just gotta find some trees that need cutting down and I´ll put it to good use.

Perdimos, también. Real Madrid lost rather pathetically to Barcelona this past Saturday in the clasico. Thats a huge deal around here. The country is almost perfectly divided into Barca and Madrid camps. I swear to god these teams ruin marriages and make parents disown their children. Pick the wrong side during the clasico and you´re likely to be booed out of your own house and sleeping in the hammock.

I slept on the hammock Saturday night.

I´m craving a stupid ass story from home. Who cares to share?

These are questions that I am fielding at the very moment on our beloved (damn near Holy) Facebook chat. This installment is kinda from the horse´s mouth. Please understand that these questions are a far cry from verbatim and that I may have embelished more than my fair share of silly ass interpretations of your (rather surprisingly) valid questions.

Disclaimer: I do not often use Facebook chat, in fact I think that I frequented the circus more often, but it was, in fact, a phenomenal tool to catch up with you weirdos.

So, Greg, what are you doing in La Peña?

Well, little Jimmy, I am just hanging out. For these next few months I guess all that is really asked of me is to not only get to know my community but to let them get to know me. In this culture its all about confianza - people here have a lot of pena - and without them trusting you it is almost impossible to get anything worthwhile accomplished. So for the moment I am living with a family in a back room of the house. I´ve got a bed, my maleta, and a dog...not much else. For these few months I do exactly as the people of La Peña do. When they milk cows, I learn as quickly as I possibly can to milk cows. When they go to the Rio Lempa for some bañando, me baño, tambien, when they are playing futbol, I run my lily white ass all around that soccer field with as much zeal as I can possibly muster. My job at this moment is to gain the trust of my community. I want to share an extraorinarily corny quote, but priceless and invaluably true nonetheless, from a former volunteer: ¨Your community will not want to know what you know until they know that you know what they know.¨ My job right now is to work my ass off trying to learn what it is that they know so that when it comes time for me to share whatever knowledge or skills I can with my community they will be receptive y, tal vez, van a venir con gusto y ganas.

Why the hell can´t you spell anything correctly?

Oh, Suzy, you little jerk face. I can´t spell things correctly because for one, I am not as smart as I let on. Number two, these keyboards are just different enough from the ones in the states that I can make mistakes and not even notice. So maybe I am a little too careless on facebook chat, but give me a break, won´t you? Why don´t you try pushing ¨AltGr¨ and then the 2 button to get your fancy little @ sign, or having your ? be next to the zero and see how easy that is to grow accustomed to! I hate you!

Tell me some food things, Gregory.

Well, Cassina (as if it´d be anyone else), I eat beans. Every meal of everyday there are bowls of beans. To compliment the beans they give me tortillas. To compliment tortillas they give me rice. Those three make up my overly health concious diet. I get cheese, too, which is really nice because its made from the milk that we get in the mornings so its always really, really fresh. I do not eat beef. I eat chicken once a week. I eat fish once a month. Where is the BJ´s or Sam´s Club when you need ten dozen eggs?!

On top of that, Cassina, cooking here is very difficult because every single meal (desayuno, refrigerio, almuerzo, cena) is all cooked over open flame with real wood. Cooking in the woods is just as simple as cooking in the kitchen. Nothing is easy in the kitchen and everything takes forever.

On that note, I´ve tried making tortillas and pupusas. They are the closest things to impossible since Dan Jenks saying nice things.

So, Corm on the Cob, what do you mean by projects?

Well if it isn´t the Barnacle, doing all sorts of barnacling on the World Wide Web. AJ, projects can be anything from building a new Casa Comunal, to teaching people to wash their hands after they use the loo. I could start the worlds first backflip team and bring in Witzie as the special guest, international superstar, to hold a camp for a week if I thought that it would, in any way, help the community members of La Peña. Ultimately, my job is to find out what my people need, get them to actually say it out loud, then see who is actually interested in helping me accomplish it. I will hold meetings to feel out what are some large projects (like training and hiring a health promotor for La Peña), and will have other smaller projects as well such as teaching English and holding sanitation charlas.

If they want a backflip team, I got Witzie on speed dial, if he can´t make it I´ll settle for a handspring team and I´m bringing in the big guns for that one: Kid Cement as head coach and the Worm and Jack Barber for examples of what not to do.

I guess that´s really it as far as question fielding goes. Got bored of it really quickly.

Eventually, once I learned how to remember things, I wasn´t bored at all.

-Albert Camus The Stranger (The Outsider)

Last week my counterpart, a man by the name of Alfredo, asked me if I wanted to help him retrieve his cow from the mountains so that he could bring it to a place with better water. ¨Hell ya!¨ I said, immediately regretting saying that (because he doesn´t speak English and all my excitement was lost in the lack of translation) and followed quickly and rather sullenly with a ¨Sí, hombre.¨

At about 7 AM we set off for the mountains, he with his machete, me with a terribly goofy smile. By about 8 AM Alfredo was pointing to some trees that seemed like just a few meters up the mountain (in reality was an hour later) explaining to me that the clima was much more fresca allí and that there were a lot of pine trees. ¨Wow,¨ I thought in my immediate excitement ¨pine trees! Holy shit, I know what he just said to me!¨ (I embellish my lack of understanding of this language for you, the readers.)

I mean, let´s face it, most of you who are reading this have grown up your whole lives around pine trees. You spend literally a dozen hours of every day year round with the smell, the aura of pine trees encumbering every one of your five senses. From home there are a few things I miss besides great company and they are: Celtics, mashed potatos, memory foam mattress pad, and the last slice of pizza. Now I understand that I have not been gone for long, barely over two months, but I cannot explain the feeling of nostalgia that coursed through every vein in my body, firing every nerve in the system, pulling what some call dimples (I call wrinkles) into their rightful place to the right and left of the largest smile I´ve ever employed when the scent of pine trees swept over me. There wasn´t one single memory that I was thinking of, and yet there wasn´t one single memory that escaped me. Alfredo, if even for a second, disappeared, lost in the midst of Amherst, cold winters, Meme´s cooking, the Nut House, growing up slowly, family, friendships and relationships cultivated over the past 22 years in the presence of easily one of the most underrated yet distinct ambiences I´ve ever chanced upon. For a moment I was eating at the Bar Lunch, riding bikes around the rotary, jumping into Puffer´s Pond, and walking into Boyden as the sun set at 4 PM. Home.

Slowly but surely Alfredo, the personification of my new home, pulled me from my reverie, took strong note of my elation and flightiness, and without saying a word took two ambitous and altruistic hacks at the nearest of my stimulants with his machete and gifted me a piece Hudson, a piece of Fitchburg, of Amherst, a smell that reminds me of every person who ran through my head for what felt like hours that day. It seemed like forever, and to be honest was probably less than a second. I didn´t faint, I didn´t cry, I didn´t lose my lunch, but I did put together a few moments of clarity, a few moments of genuine comfort, and let myself get lost in whatever it was that ran rampant in my mind that day.

There are very few ´things´ I sincerely miss back home, but you can add pine trees to the list.

San Sal.

I left San Sal in the exact opposite way that I had arrived - still drunk, exhausted, and in the mood to speak to damn near no one. It was 7 am and I was in a bunk bed that wasn´t supposed to be mine, but after the night´s festivities I returned to my room at sunrise to see that a hermit had found their way to my sheets and left theirs vacant. What seemed like moments later I awoke with a start, fully dressed sin crocs, and about 72 minutes of sleep under this Nautica belt of mine. I fell off the top bunk and landed in a plate of the worst pancakes I´ve ever encountered. I gave appropriate hand gestures to the people who muttered something that resembled a goodbye in either English or Spanish, and collapsed in the cab.

By 9 AM I was back in Molineros consigiendo my dog. By noon I was back where I started: this absurd excuse for a capital they call San Salvador. Long story short, by 4 PM I was finally arriving in Metapan to take the hour and a half ride to La Peña. Exhausted, stressed, and a little looney I heard some words that my recent training helped me decipher roughly into ¨Welcome to your new home!¨

For the sake of carpal tunnel I´ll spare you the day to day details...

BUT I have been speaking with some other volunteers in otros lugares in El Salvador and they tell me what they are lookin at. Some have it bad. They´ve been crying and just can´t help it. Being this far away from home with zero chance of speaking English, less chance of eating peanut butter, no family, no running water, no possiblity to sleep past 5 am, all of it can seriously be a major downer. To those of you who aren´t diggin it right now: remember why you applied. However, there are others that want to compete about whose new canton it better. Some have balconies looking at mountains, others have waterfalls, some even have a TV! To those of you who care to challenge me...step right the hell up.

La Peña can´t possibly be real. Picture 7 Years in Tibet (I´ll play Brad Pitt), a little Spanish charm, more cows than people (just how I like it), and having Sam Sweeney just a stones throw down the mountain. Heaven, right?

The place is beautiful. My cancha, the futbol field, is literally at the very, very top of a mountain. Looking from any angle from the cancha you can see just vast, vast, unbelievable vistas. This cancha is such the real deal that they have to play with three balls because if a shot on net isn´t stopped by the keeper then it flies off the mountain and they have to send cipotes after it. This is how they keep the youth skinny...a sick form of fetch. In all seriousness, though, if you take a wide shot on goal you are the dunce of the town for what seems like weeks. Don´t miss or you´ve got quite a hike ahead of you. I don´t have a camera and I won´t take a picture of it even if I did but just for a minute picture being at the epicenter of a mountain range and to all sides there are green mountains. I don´t think I´ve got the time to describe it... From any point in my town you can see just miles and miles of untouched El Salvador from 7,000 feet. This place is a dream.

I found a reading tree. It´s this enormous, gorgeous tree that had been a siren for me since I got here on Saturday. It was about an hour hike up the mountain from my house but, having Guanaco´s company, I decided to hike it anyway. With the exception of all the cow dung under the enveloping shade of the tree, this place was like heaven. The roots sticking out of the ground were created, I´m convinced, for people to sit on . When it was hot, the tree dripped water down on me, and when it was windy it was wide enough to provide shelter for both me and the dog.

I am too cavalier. I am admitting right now that I don´t let things bother me. I act as if I can handle any situation with some semblance of grace and an almost alien calm. I genuinley believe that I can do anything that needs doing without losing a wink of sleep from worry or stress. La Peña is beautiful, my family couldn´t possibly be more amable (They have a 16 year old that looks like Cristiano Ronaldo and a 4 year old that couldn´t be cuter... They are, I´m sure of it, the perfect family), and the vistas are everything I´ve ever wanted out of my eyes. That said, I still I find that my jaw is clentched during mass, my hands are too busy when I´m having conversations, and my eyes avoid contact with the people who are studying me like a lecture. There isn´t a doubt in my mind about anything that I am doing here, but for the first time yesterday I realized that I am a little more tense than I let on. There are days when I orate like a Salvadoran Martin Luther King Jr. and then there are days that I resent myself for not wathcing more Dora back home. This place, all joking aside, is a roller coaster; each day a Russian Roulette. Will I be able to speak Spanish tomorrow morning? Will I remember what the name of that tree in Spanish or the exact process of feeding and milking these cows? Will I actually call home tomorrow? How long is it going to take me to walk this mule up to the pump to get water? Is it rude to tell him that I´m actually really hungry right now? Will I remember the name of the third kid from the left wearing blue sandals and a red Manchester United jersey who always twirls his cross around in his left hand? How, exactly, do I say ´no I cannot give you my dog. it´s mine and I actually want to keep him around.¨ when the next drunk guy finally resorts to asking me for things other than money. This place is a trip...

And I couldn´t be happier.

So I opened my G-Mail account to find an e-mail from Kid Cement waiting very patiently at the top of the list. Inside that beautiful little package was a story comprised of a smaller vocabulary than that of an upside-down marmoset, but the story was so funny I almost shit a brick. Well played, Clem, I appreciate the e-mail thoroughly.

If you aren't already, I suggest you become friends with my friends immediately. Depending on the day, they can be mighty hilarious. If you take my advice please do yourself a favor and ask about the 'weather girl.'

That's about it for the international part. Some cross-cultural sock hops from the stoop of Razzles Daytona, Florida. For the record I miss a hell out of a lot of you like you wouldn't believe. Stories like weather girl bring me back.

We have swearing into the Peace Corps this Friday at the Embassy here in El Salvador. We've got to get as dolled up as possible and stroll proudly into the embassy here in El Salvador to impress the Ambassador or whoever the hell it is that shows up. Wish me luck with that; my wardrobe consists of clothes even a damn hobo would consider strictly nightwear. The ambassador (...or whoever the hell it is that shows up...) may laugh me out of the joint - or throw up in his own lap.

This weekend was a little sideways.

Saturday morning we had our fiesta in order to properly thank our families for all the hard work they've done for us. They feed me (a seriously daunting task), a veces levan mi ropa, put up with my shit, scold me when I'm bad, me apoyan when I'm sad, and try their hardest to force a smile every time I tell a woeful, culturally insensitive joke in broken Spanish. They are the best.

The fiesta was good, but this country, and this town in particular, is relentlessly hot. If you weren't sitting in the shade se desei suerte. It was boiling. The kids loved the pinatas, the families enjoyed the games, and I personally loved the food because it was free.

Saturday night we took a bus to San Salvador, our first night in the capital. I'll skip the boring stuff and get right down to it. We ended up at a bar called La Luna. The band that night was a Red Hot Chili Peppers cover band and it was a blast. The lead singer of the band didn't know the words, but she didn't need to because enough people there did haha. Imagine rocking out to a song you grew up listening to, maybe even a song you love, and abruptly the song ends to a woman going on a rant in Spanish. A large, large slice of Americana...live American songs... and very suddenly you are given a strong reminder that you are far from Worcester County. It's utterly astonishing how many times I need to be reminded that the person I am having a conversation with does not speak English and that I am not supposed to be able to know how to speak Spanish. Reminders scare the shit out of me, to be honest, until I open my mouth and realize I do, in fact, speak a little bit of this funny, funny tongue. I live in El Salvador now...

The night ended by me showing my goofy-ass and infinitely entertaining friends how to play 'Bear, Ninja, Cowboy.' Cowboy always beats Bear, Bear always beats Ninja, and Ninja always beats Cowboy. If you think about it... it makes a whole lot of sense. What you do is stand back to back with one other person, both people scream 'Bear, Ninja, Cowboy!' and jump a 180 with the appropriate gesture of a bear, a ninja, or a cowboy. Holy shit that is the best drinking game ever. Bring that one home to all your friends, get them about 12 beverages each, and at about 3 AM peel them off the hotel floor and teach them this fantastic interpretation of Rock, Paper, Scissors, and go god damn bananas. Write here with the results. We'll have a tourney when I get back in two years. I always throw Ninja...test me.

We got to play in the Stadio Cuscatlan, which was a blast. Things were made infinitely more difficult by the Marlboros and Pilsners consumed the night before, but we successfully proved to those damn Japanese that we do not, even a little bit, know how to play soccer. Haha, only the girls beat the JICA team and (gracias a dios) they smoked them like 7-0. Way to go girls! Bringing home the gold while we men licked our wounds and made up excuses with words like 'Marlboro,' 'Pilsner,' and 'hangover.' Way to step up to the plate and get things done. I think we won by aggregate thanks to you guys. Felizidades!

I got a dog, officially. His name is Guanaco and he is fuckin lazy. He sits in my lap and doesn't move. He's a sleeper and that's all there is to it. To be honest, he doesn't even like me that much. He'll come around, though. Everyone always does (right, Nora?). He's tiny. 2 months old and he doesn't make a sound.

I also bought a handwoven hammock today and it is beautiful as well. We got to watch like 5 dudes going to town on these looms and believe me that shit is complicated. They have to dance on these pedals while pulling the loom around and around and making sure the colors are perty in some way shape or form.

Training ends in less than 3 days. Thank the high heavens. By Friday I will be an official volunteer getting silly drunk with about 100 other volunteers celebrating. After swearing in there is an open bar rented out to us so we can (finally) get to know each other on the most personal level of all... the inebrated one. I got a good feeling about this one, haha, and by Saturday I will be living in La Pena, Metapan, Santa Ana, El Salvador. I will be living in one of 35 houses in my tiny, tiny, rural community, living in a corn shed made of adobe.

Long story short this could be the last of my posts for a few weeks. I hope you've enjoyed what I have to offer so far. I certainly have.

Va

Gregorio

'"You know the best part? Walking around like this feeling good about everything. If you missed the rest of it I certainly wouldn't cry for you."

Kurt Vonnegut

Bluebeard

So today is the day that everyone gets their site assignments officially. Granted I am probably a day early in reporting this (because I won't know my exact mailing address until later today) but I can guarantee I am still a dollar short. So by about 1 PM today you can probably hear the bitching and/or celebrating from where ever it is in the world that you currently reside. You won't hear much from me, though, because I am one of the fortunate few who will not be surprised... I already know my corn shed will be in La Pena. If you stumble upon google earth at any point in the near future (I know the readers with spliffs in their hands have already been looking at towns in South East Namibia for the past three hours...you can't shit a shitter) then you can probably locate a town close to mine called Cuyuiscat. I'll be about an hour hike up the mountain from that site. If you look close enough you'll probably spot a gringo in a hammock waving back at you.

On Tuesday myself and 8 other aspirantes took a trip to a local guitar maker's homestead. Long story short I accidentally ended up buying a homemade guitar. Cost me 45 bean sacks, plays like a charm, is beautiful, and makes me look infinitely cooler holding it (because allah as my witness I do not know how to play). I guess the plus side is that I now have a guitar.

On Sunday afternoon we volunteers have an unbelievable opportunity to play JICA (the Japanese equivilent of the Peace Corps.) in a futbol game at the Stadium Cuscatlan here in San Salvador. For those who don't know (including myself up until about 12 minutes ago) the Stadio Cuscatlan is the national stadium in El Salvador that only the National Team gets to play at. For the Salvadorans I would say it would be like being born in and living in the Cask n Flaggon for 45 years and never knowing what the inside of Fenway looked like to the naked eye. It's the mecca of deportes here in El Salvador. Starting to get it? To Salvadorans they'd rather play here than Wembley. It's like being able to get a free shot to A-Rod's face from homeplate in Yankee stadium...people drool over the chance and for one reason or another a bunch of foreigners have taken over the stadium for the 21st. To those who don't like sports: It's like having the chance to.. uh... do something really sweet. So yours truly will be running around like a chicken with his head cut off, my pride slowly slipping from one hand, and a hang over in the other, trying my damndest to take down the Japanese just one more time.

No but seriously, I've met some of the JICA volunteers and not only are they extraordinarily nice but they are unspeakably more qualified than us. So, give them a damn cookie, would you? I'm trying my hardest..haha.

Oh, and for the record, the hate for crocs shows no respect to international borders. It is as alive and well here as it is in the states. It does no descriminate and it does not show mercy. Good thing they are one of two pairs of shoes I brought.

El Diario de Hoy, a national newspaper here in El Salvador, reported from the 1st of January to the 12th of March there have been 863 violent deaths here in country.

That said, and completely to the contrary, the people here in El Salvador are some of the most amiable people I've met in my life. Despite the international reputation they are sincerely wonderful people always willing to help a gringo out. Having troubles with the language? They will go mas despacio for you. Standing on a huge crowded bus? They will hold your stuff for you (without riffling through it). Need directions? Odds are they won't know what the fuck you're talking about but they will smile while they are laughing at you. All in all the Salvadoran people are unbelievably friendly and will offer you everything from tortillas to the worst coffee ever brewed (it's not their fault...the good coffee gets sent to the states).

And that's another thing... Weird shit is expensive here. Like cashews. Cashews are harvested here in El Salvador but they cost two and a half arms and leg because they sell ALL of their cashews to the states. So in order to get cashews here in El Salvador you must buy Salvadoran cashews from Planters...an American business. Fuckin whacky, huh?

Alright. That's enough out of me.

For the record, my pinky is still real ugly. Don't I just have the prettiest hands?

Humbly,

Gregorio

This will be my extraordinarily scatterbrained recap of the past 6 weeks...

Moved to a canton se llama Molineros (a molino is a place where you grind corn and rice, and all that jazz.) where there are a lot of molinos... got it?

I live with an absolutely wonderful family. Mi Mama se llama Gladys and her husband is Don Orlando. The family is complicated beyond that and do not at all feel like explaining it. She is, without a shadow of a doubt, the sweetest woman I have ever met in my life. Don't dare challenge me on that. In my house I've got a bed and tarantulas. Outside we've got two hammocks and chickens. I eat at least 3 tortillas every meal and drink water from the well. I've lucked out, though, because Molineros has potable water. Oh, and the chickens live in the latrine. Took me weeks of being concerned about the clucking noise every time I pissed to realize my penis wasn't mocking me.

Training is a perpetual bore, but an undeniable necessity...not unlike cuddling. Well not that its boring, really, there are just better things I'd like to be doing with my time. (see: cuddling) Spanish is coming along and is a whole lot of hard work. Aside from that I've learned just about everything there is to know about women's health, women's reproductive system, how women should act in public, that women get treated like dirt here, women cook clean, care for kids, and often aren't the only girlfriend or wife of men, women's personal safety, and one time they told us this thing about men's health but I don't think anyone was listening.

Myself and 5 other aspirantes (trainees) had the unbelievable privilege of releasing I think close to 250 endangered baby sea turtles into the ocean by hand in Corral de Mulas, Usulutan. You want to talk about 'what the fuck?' I'm gonna go ahead and say that was it... That was a moment, man. That was something I won't soon forget barring any serious head injuries. Those things are mighty cool and mighty endangered. I recommend trying it...suckers.

There is some really interesting stuff going on around here. Foremost there was a civil war here, a particularly brutal one, between the early years of the 80's (and according to some fanciful others the middle 70's) and the early 90's. I've met only one person who likes to talk about it (a gringo) and frankly I may have heard all I can handle from him. In my canton they were not really effected by it it was mostly the eastern part of the country.

But I digress and am boring you terribly. I am as sure of that as I am sure that I fell out of the hammock this morning. (I swear it didn't hurt.) Anyway, its really cool... believe me, won't you?

The other crazy thing about this place is the gangs...MS-13 and M 18. Look that shit up... its real, I can fuckin promise you that. Myself, 4 other volunteers, and about 40 other bus passengers were hauling along at about 80 miles an hour on the Panamerican Highway for San Salvador when we came to a screeching halt because of an immense amount of police and commotion. When I say screeching I mean like 82% of the people on that bus now have "Blue Bird" permanently etched into their frontal lobes and the others got to know what kind of shampoo the person in front of them uses.

So all of us, a little jarred, start to look out the windows and one person points out just a little ways behind us is a little boy in a school uniform sprawled in the street.

By the time we got home later that day my family told us that the local news said the boy was 12 waiting for his bus to school with his mother. The maras pulled up and told him to get in the car. He didn't and paid the ultimate price. His mother was shot in both shoulders and brought to a hospital in San Sal. The news did not make the evening news. It did not make the papers the next day. By the next day people didn't even know what I was talking about it for anymore. 440 murders in El Salvador in 2010 by February 5th 2010 more than any city in the States gets in an entire year.

voiceselsalvador.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/el-salvador-reports-440-murders-in-2010/

On a lighter note! I have successfully avoided the drug trafficking and am currently living. Things are sometimes sketchy here, but not everywhere I hope.

I found out my site. I will be living in a tiny community called La Pena near Metapan in Santa Ana, El Salvador for at least the next two years of my life. It is about a 45 minute to an hour hike up the mountains from my nearest regular bus stop. Actually, there is a pick up truck but it runs like Monday and Friday mornings at 6 am. Monday AND Friday... not Monday through Friday. If I can handle Orchard Hill for a year I can handle anything, right?

So my site is tiny and I'm really digging the idea. I'm going to be living in a corn shed for at least two months. My family has a lot of cows and makes and sells cheese. I will guarantee I'll be an udder wizard...just give me a week. I hope to be riding horses soon, too. My site requirement was natural beauty so I'm pretty lit to see what things are like up there. There are only 50 houses in my community, its in the mountains so it shouldn't be 97 degrees every day, and I'll have a dog to hang out with me... Oh wait...

I also got a dog. A two month old dog who has yet to be named. I was thinking the caliche (its a language that only people in the cantones understand... a strange sub Spanish language) for a person who doesn't wear shoes haha. I've found a few other good ones but I'll save those for his introduction to this blog. He's got some serious shyness issues which will not fly with me but once I'm the one feeding him, I think he'll come around haha. He's mighty effin cool, though.

That sums up what I've been doing, I guess. Oh and I typed all this after tearing a ligament in my left pinky finger today in a basketball tourney. That injury is undiagnosed but hell I'm gonna milk it for all I can. All I know is that my pinky looked like the sign of Zoro this morning and the opposing teams point guard was my medic. How's that for Salvadoran hospitality?

We'll see when I get time to get back here... Got questions? Come on down to Santa Ana and ask them. I will have a hammock waiting for you. There is a good chance it will have chicken shit in or around it, you may get robbed on the way, you will get extraordinarily sick from the water or the food, you may end up in the wrong place (because everything has the same name), and you will most definitely get chaggas disease, but I can try my best to answer any question you've got when I get to the hospital to collect you.

It's been fun, kids, but I am fucking starving. I'm gonna go get some pupusas and see if I can make my pinky look like Harry Potter's scar again.

Que le vaya bien.

'We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.'

-Dr. Mark Vonnegut

Last night I experienced my first earthquake ever.

'"Have a nice time," people said to me at my send-off at South Station. It was not precisely what I had hoped for. I craved a little risk, some danger, an untoward event, a vivid discomfort, an experience of my own company, and in a modest way the romance of solitude.'

-Paul Theroux

The Old Patagonian Express

I never thought I'd start one of these, and I'm sorry to those I've disappointed by caving, but to be honest, it's damn near impossible to write back to all the people I'd want to in the sparce time I spend on the internet.

Get what you can out of this, please. I'm not writing for my health.

Vaya pues.