Muchas Cosas

First of all, I'd like to start this blog post out with a SHOUT OUT to Tish the Dish! THANKS SO MUCH for the shipment of shampoo and conditioner!! My community can definitely use it and I'm going to meet with my counterpart this week about how we are going to go about distributing in the community! MUCHISIMAS GRACIAS! I know people here are going to appreciate it.

Lot's of things are going on around here right now. I went to a parent teacher meeting at the school here on Monday and let me just tell you how big of a DISASTER things are there...At the end of the month, we are going to lose one of our teachers. It's the teacher that teaches 7, 8 and 9th grade. She has about 80 students in one class right now but the ministry of education won't even pay her salary let alone the salary of the two other teachers those grades are in desperate need of. For the past couple of years an organization in Iowa was paying her salary, but their commitment to the school is up this month. Apparently, our ADESCO has asked for help from the Mayor and has also solicited the Ministry of Education for funding for the current teacher, plus 2 more, but have been waiting on a positive response for months (and really, years). The current teacher is willing to work for 1/2 the salary in the mean time, but the community can't even come up with the $240 for the month to pay her, so it looks like she's out soon and we're going to be without a teacher for 80 students.

Looks like I'm either going to have to figure out how to get some funds to pay this teacher in the meantime, but really that's not sustainable and not the ideal solution to the problem. I'm looking into soliciting the Ministry of Education myself to try to get some answers. I currently do not know how to go about doing either of these things but I guess I'll figure something out. It's shocking to me that the Ministry of Education is now requiring all students to wear school uniforms, and is willing to pay for those, but most schools are lacking funds to pay for enough teachers. So backwards.

The other main thing that's going on over here is my living situation. I've definitely got to get out of where I'm currently living. I will never make it here if I continue to live with these people. They play music at 5am (and I'm starting to think it's just being done to wake me up because as soon as I open my door the music cuts off), one of my host brothers seriously gives me the creeps and Tomas is insane and is driving me nuts. I've had an offer from my host dad's mom (she's 85 and loves me) to live at her house, and also with my neighbors who are currently in the process of building a concrete house on their property, and have assured me it will be done within the month and that they'd love to have me. So we'll see.

What else? I finally got to the Evangelical part of town this week. I went out censusing with my counterpart and saw a completely different side of my community. The area where they live is much poorer and women have kids even earlier in that part of the community. I saw a 16 year old with a toddler. Her husband was in his 30's. Statutory rape laws do not exist in this country, but still, there's something seriously wrong with that... The discrepancy between living conditions between the Catholics and the Evangelicals is also pretty wide. Most houses I saw this week during my census were sticks and mud, and a lot of times, just tarps for walls. It was a little shocking.

I fell down a very rocky hill on Sunday playing soccer. I have a pretty serious cut on my knee and it's black and blue all over. It's been four days and it still hurts as bad as it did when it first happened, so I'm a little worried I might have done some serious damage to it. I can barely walk, so life has been a challenge the last couple of days (getting in and out of pick up trucks and climbing hills has been excruciating...) I'm so desperate for a cure that I let my counterpart rub a concoction of boiled water and herbs on it last night. She assured me it would be better by morning. The scab looks a little better than it did last night, but the herbs didn't help the bruise at all, so it's still pretty painful to walk. So that's been pretty discouraging.

On a more positive note, I had beef yesterday and I'm looking to head to San Salvador next weekend with some friends. THANK THE LORD. I was trying desperately to stay in site for as long as possible without leaving overnight, and I think that 5 weeks will be long enough! Most of the PCVs in my group have left their sites overnight already so whatever. I'm also looking to go back to my San Vicente host community for 2 nights mid-may for the fiestas the community is having. I'm hoping May will be a better month for me than April was, mainly because I'll have some things to look forward too!

I miss you all! Wish me luck!

xoxo