So things are starting to be more on a schedule here, and the vacation/honeymoon stage is starting to wear off. I'm still completely loving it, but I can see why they say training (these next 2 months) will be crazy. Learning spanish for 8 hours a day straight is not my cup of tea. I see where they are going with this full immersion thing and boy is it difficult. But its something that will completely pay off in the end.

Let me quick do a day in the life:
- 530: wake up with the roosters
- 630: finally get out of bed
- 630-633: work up the courage to do the first pour over my head with my freezing cold bucket bath :)
- 700-730: get ready, eat breakfast; mainly scrambled eggs, bread, beans, and cafe con leche
-800-1200: spanish class - there are only 3 of us in this class with a wonderful, patient teacher. There are 5 volunteers total living in the same community as me, Apastepeque. The 33 people in my training group are now broken down into 7 different villages around the San Vicente area
-1200-1:00: my lunch break- I go back to my house to eat (since our class is at another volunteers house, in which we literally share a backyard) For lunch I've been having some chicken, rice, beans, tuna fish sandwiches, and just recently some fish (the whole fish)
-1:00-400: the 3 of us meet with the other 2 members of our group (who are fluent spanish speakers) and work on our community projects. This week it was just some meetings; Wednesday we went to a school, and had alittle meeting and did some observing. On Thursday, we met with the mayor to discuss possible ideas for our upcoming community projects. I will let you know in an upcoming blog what our projects will be (once I find out more)
- 4:00-4:30: debrief with the group about our day, and other stuff. Its just so nice to have that time chatting with great people and in ENGLISH again. It certainly helps with the headaches (learning many new things at once on top of learning how to speak again can be really hard on the brain) My group is wonderful, and we all seem to get along well together. Not to mention, we live in Apastapeque, which is one of the higher end communities in the area. I mean, I have wireless internet and a maid at my house. This could potentially be a bad thing when its time to go into my new community, with less luxuries and more animals and bugs roaming through my house. (Will worry about that when the time comes)... But for now, I'm enjoying being completely spoiled by my family and how clean and safe this town really is.
- 4:30- 5:00 have a little "me" time and play on my slack line.
- 5:00 - 10:00 : dinner (usually more chicken, rice, beans, and pupusas (the speciality here in El Salvador), read in the hammock, watch a movie in spanish/study spanish (depending on how much motivation I have), or just watch endless episodes of Lost, or another American movie

That's pretty much how things go 4 days a week. 1 day we have off (Sundays), 1 day we go on a field trip (Saturday), and 1 day we go into San Vicente to our training center with our WHOLE group. My commute to work on Tuesday involves standing on the back of a pickup truck with anywhere from 20-40 people, holding on for dear life.

I realize learning spanish is just like a game... How much am I going to understand today? How many times will I have to repeat myself to people? And how frustrated am I going to feel at the end of the day? It's a fun game I play with myself... It's like the saying goes, "when life throws you lemons, make lemonade", right? It's inspiring meeting other PCV who were at the same level as me, and are now completely fluent. Remember in 4th grade when I had that speech impediment and couldn't say my "R's". Well now its back, and learning how to roll my R's is the hardest thing ever. Even words like "Quiero" and "trabajar" have been proven very difficult for me.

I realize it's all about the simple things in life to El Salvadorians (reason number 3,434 why I wanted to join the peace corps.) Like standing on your door step for hours on end just watching the people pass by, sitting with me at dinner even if they already ate and not many words being exchanged, and spending alot of time in the hammock! Mainly, I enjoy how family oriented they are. My house shares a backyard with 3 other houses (all family) so throughout the day, family just passes in and out. It took me a couple days to finally get who actually lives in my house, which is a grandmother, Mila, her daughter Idulia (who is 34), her husband Jorge and their beautiful baby Jose. They all have been really helpful in teaching me spanish, and don't judge no matter how ridicolous I may sound to them.

Today we took a "field trip" to Morazan (which is about 3 hours away from here), just another reminder on how beautiful this country really is. In Morazan we visited a PC volunteer at his site, and then went to the school where he works. We played with all the little kids there, and did many ice breakers. It gave me a small dose of the next 2 years of my life, and I am getting completely stoked.

Unfortunately on the way there, I saw an awful site; a dead dog in the street with its alive puppy lying next to him. It's still very hard for me to see all the dogs roaming the streets in search of food and love. I went to the gym tonight and there was an adorable puppy there in which I couldn't help but sit and pet him, before the owner proceeded to tell me that that dog was a street dog and probably not a good idea to pet him. Oops.

Well thats it for now....
Buenas Noches!

So I made it to El Salvador!! Yipeeeee! Have spent the last 4 days in a training center and a hotel, so I haven't felt like I have been experiencing too much. Today is my first day within my community, APASTAPEQUE, which is 10 minutes outside San Vicente. What a FUN day I had today - just totally over stimulated the whole day. I kept thinking to myself ... this is so f'n crazy (but in a fun way) just kind of a surreal experience, maybe because it was my first day of "freedom" away from the office and not on a schedule, and first day to really experience and see their culture and community. I got to meet my host family today, whom I will be staying with for the next 2 months. My host family consists of a sweet grandmother, Mila. However, someone new passes by my door every 10 minutes. I must have met about 15 of the family members. Even saw another Peace Corps volunteer come through my house, whose family is somehow related to mine. But then again everyone in this community knows everyone else somehow... Pretty crazy... Another volunteer has joining backyards with me, and his host family are relatives of my host family as well.

It's crazy how I'm beginning to feel my character building alittle bit. As the days go by, I realize more and more just how daring a move I really made here. This is going to be a challenge, but yet a VERY FUN challenge. Peace Corps is really what you make it. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. For example, the language barrier is probably the hardest thing here... I could easily sit in my room and watch movies, but no I'm going to step outside my comfort zone and challenge myself to learn new vocabulary, even though there is nothing more frustrating in the world then not knowing what is going on. I'm finding I'm picking up more words then I thought, but still only understand less then 25 percent of what is said. Its funny how creative the human can be with nonverbal gestures when trying to express what they are trying to say... I was talking to a guy here at the house about how I can get the password for the internet... Conversation went on about 5 minutes, but didn't go anywhere. All we could do was laugh. Their 14 year old nephew and I chatted for about 40 minutes or so tonight. It's nice because he is trying to learn english and is pretty good at it. He did call me muy bonita, so he is already high up in my book. The kids here love to teach you spanish and are great!! It's like their chance to teach a 2 year old how to speak, and are just so estatic when you say something right. I had a 4 year old just come up to me right now and sit next to me, with the look of "you look so strange, now please speak.." we talked for about 2 minutes, before I told her, I don't understand much spanish, but she still continued to sit next to me for another 10 minutes just staring and smiling at me without saying a word.

Everyone here is sooo nice, and do what they can to help you out... and definitely patient with me when I try to get my words out. I love how family oriented they are. There was a family baptism today and we partied afterward for about 5 hours to celebrate. Since I never understand when my grandmother talks (grandmothers are harder to understand) she will just grab my hand and nonverbally let me know "It's okay, you don't get it now, but you will. Just hang in there". I can't wait to learn more about what is going on here, and how all these people in this house know each other and how they are related. I will learn it one day.. But for now, its just smiles.

My training group consists of about 34 of us, most being incredible individuals. It's just so nice to be around so many like minded people. However, it was a sad day today when we all went our separate ways. We have been together since Monday, but certainly has felt like at least a month.

I did get to see alittle country side today on the back of a truck with standing room only (on the way to my community). It really is a beautiful country, (with volcanoes, palm trees, and animals everywhere) I just can't believe how trashed it is - garbage everywhere!!! , and those poor chu chos (dogs). Every time you turn a corner you see at least 3 dogs roaming the streets digging in the trash. Don't be surprised if I have adopted 40 of these street dogs by the time I'm done here... It's so sad. It was pretty neat to see people riding their donkeys around today, as well as some long horned sheep and goats roaming the streets.

Did I mention how freakin FUN this place is!!?

Everything just looks so neat... All fun psychedelic colored buildings and buses.. So today while walking around we saw a funeral going on, and tomorrow I am going to church. It's neat to experience these different things about this culture. There was also this festival going on with a parade and fireworks. What a day... What a ride this is going to be... Just gotta sit back and enjoy it, and I know I will...

As soon as I get used to not throwing toilet paper in the toilet, showering out of a bucket with water that is muy frio!, handwashing my clothes, the humidity (and it is "cold" here right now according to the people), getting used to having diarrhea 3 times a week, and learning the language alittle, I think I will be just fine. There are 5 of us youth development volunteers in this community living relatively close (within 5-10 min walk) and we have to work on a youth development project together in our community over these next 2 months. I'll have to tell you more about it, when we learn and discuss it more. But that's whats going on so far.

Well I'm going to crawl into my mosquito net bed, and listen to fireworks (they have honestly been going off for over an hour now) and music at the fiesta that is going on until 3 in the morning...