Making Dinner for Fam

November 16, 2007

Well, the highlight of today was more budget cuts for Peace Corps that most likely will cause all our host families to be uninvited to the swearing in ceremony. They had reduced the numbers invited from the families in the past, and now, it looks like they won’t be invited at all. Sad, however, the group is putting on a family fiesta, and I am going to broach the idea tomorrow of maybe having some raffles at it to raise some money for them to come or something.

Can you tell which ones are the Peace Corps volunteers and which are the directors?

Sad news aside, today we began with each person briefly describing their site and experience, it was nice. I made notes of all the cool places, to be sure to visit in the next four months….and it came out to about 3 places. One was a volcano climb, one with prehistoric caves, and another one that I can’t remember.
We actually have big plans this weekend. Tomorrow we are going to visit the newest and largest archaeological dig in the western part of the country of the Mayan ruins. I am very excited needless to say. The fam is in here distracting me with Spanish, they want to watch Shrek 2. Anyways….after the dig tour, we are going to have them drop us off in San Sal to watch the Michigan Ohio State game…of which OSU better win because I have a bag of cookies and a bag of chips riding on it. We are going to hang out there that evening while a bunch of them go to a Whalers (?) which I will not be attending cause its 15-20 dollars, instead I will hang out and watch football haha……sweeeeet. We are all gonna hang out that night and return Sunday.
Also, here is my final address for my site. Do not send anything to this address until ohhhh, November 24. Given the travel time of the letters and packages, I should be there by then.

Rhett Williams—Cantón La Comunidad—San Pedro Nonualco—Departamento de La Paz—El Salvador, C.A.—Recomendada a Raúl López

I’m off to give in to the runts and let them watch this movie while I read.

“What we do in life echoes in eternity.”

Maximus Decimus Meridius

November 18, 2007

My Mayan ruins postcard pic.

The ruins were stellar. Although I must admit, there wasn’t much there to see. Upwards of 95% of the site is still underground, or covered by 30 feet of volcanic ash. Apparently the big lake of the country, Ilopango, used to be a volcano, and when it exploded in the 5th century AD or so, it covered an insanely huge radius in over 3 meters of crud (on average). Anyways, I got some cool pictures, and we got to see and learn quite a bit at San Andres Archaeological Site. It kind of reminded me of Ephesus where the majority of it was still underground…..however……much more of Ephesus had been excavated than this site. Give me a shovel, some Reese’s, and 2 years and I’d have it done.

Not quite what im doing.

In other news, haha Michigan, go OSU. I won two Reese’s off of that game and it they were unbelievably stellar once we found them. We had Peace Corps let us off in San Sal after the ruins tour, and we checked into the little 6 dolla hostel that is the PC hangout so that we could watch the game in their living room.

We have a lot of Michigan and Ohio people in the group. These are just the ones who dressed up...and also decorated the vans for our trip with Michigan and OSU stuff....like people even know here.

I ate a whole large pizza during halftime for 3 dollars. Mmm.

That night we went to Tony Roma’s and hung out and watched TV and ate again. It was glorious. The prices there are kind of American though, so that stinks, but its nice to get away from our sites every once in a while. That was our last free outing I think…the only thing we have left is swearing in…. where we are supposed to wear a shirt and tie and nice shoes.

This is us respecting the ancestral grounds of the Mayans by proving that we can do it better...Worldpower...haha

My clothes plight continues here. Luckily I put in a shirt and tie at the last minute, but I don’t have anything near nice shoes. Only sandals and tennis shoes for me. I’ve looked around and the biggest sizes in shoes I have found are 11, which just isn’t going to work. I also need soccer cleats…cause they want me to play on the team in my site, but I asked today in San Sal and the biggest I found was 9½. “Stupid El Salvador and their miniature country.” That was a quote that I remember being made from today.

My GIT has been weird for a few weeks now, so I guess on Tuesday I’ll try and get them to check it out. Its been slightly getting more…..fun and excitable.

Overall, life isn’t terrible. Although, I did finish the Great Heresies book this morning. Very, very different book. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I would recommend it to anyone looking for the roots in history of the modernist attack on “Christianity” today. He of course bases all the heresies from the point of Catholicism, but even if people were to skip everything and just read the chapter on “The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed,” I think it’d be worth it.

The only book I have left is Dante, which I want to save for my sight. Luckily though, I did see someone finishing Lord of the Flies today, so I might try and bum that from Gabriel. He likes religion stuff too, so I might trade him books.

This was part of Hilaire Belloc’s opening.

“What we are concerned with is the highly interesting truth that heresy originates a new life of its own and vitally affects the society it attacks. The reason that men combat heresy is not only, or principally, conservatism—a devotion to routine, a dislike of disturbance in their habits of thought—it is much more a perception that the heresy, insofar as it gains ground, will produce a way of living and a social character at issue with, irritating, and perhaps mortal to, the way of living and the social character produced by the old orthodox scheme.
….
For instance, that religion has for one essential part (though it is only a part) the statement that the individual soul is immortal—that personal conscience survives physical death. Now if people believe that, they look at the world and themselves in a certain way and go on in a certain way and are people of a certain sort. If they except, that is cut out, this one doctrine, they may continue to hold all the others, but the scheme is changed, the type of life and character and the rest become quite other. The man who is certain that he is going to die for good and all may believe that Jesus of Nazareth was Very God of Very God, that God is Triune, that the Incarnation was accompanied by a Virgin Birth, that bread and wine are transformed by a particular formula; he may recite a great number of Christian prayers and admire and copy chosen Christian exemplars, but he will be quite a different man from the man who takes immortality for granted…
Because heresy, in this particular sense (the denial of accepted Christian doctrine) thus affects the individual, it affects all society, and when you are examining a society formed to a particular religion you necessarily concern yourself to the utmost with the warping or diminishing of that religion. That is the historical interest of heresy. That is why anyone who wants to understand how Europe came to be, and how its changes have been caused, cannot afford to treat heresy as unimportant.”

Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies, p. 4-5

November 19, 2007

I spit out a paragraph today like a native speaker….and afterwards I realized it…it was glorious. As you can tell that rarely happens. I was in a conversation with my Spanish teacher over immigration to the US etc etc….she gave me some articles to read from the paper here about whats going on in Prince William, Virginia? I think. Where they are deporting those that aren’t legal residents. Of course, from the American standpoint, we are like duh….but here the media is playing the other side that we are immigrant hating etc etc. It’s funny. We discussed it for a while, but she never really said too much, just gave anecdotes here and there about people she knows. I think I finally broke through a little bit with one of my own in which I asked her to imagine 30,000 chinese people coming into El Salvador each year, how their market and system of government would deal with that kind of influx of non Spanish speakers as far as schools are concerned, and how their economy would react to the cheaper labor, illegal labor etc etc. It’s a scary scenario for them, mainly because they can’t even support their own population to an extent.

Tonight, we made tacos and macaroni and cheese for all the adults in our host families (with a brownie desert and mango drink). It turned out really well, with the exception of the mac and cheese. It was ready 45 mins before they got there, so the cheese thickened up and turned into batter, and there was nothing we could do about it. Oops. Oh well…it served for a bunch of good jokes. Overall, it went well and after we thanked them for everything, they thanked us and told us we were the first group to ever have made them dinner. We took that to be a grand compliment.

A dark pic of the meal that night before everyone got there.

Tomorrow is going to be a very long day. We have a bunch of presentations to do in San Vicente, I have to run by the med office and do that biz, I have to get my American debit card out of lock down and get money (Peace Corps didn’t give us extra dinero the second part of the month for some reason that they tried to explain away)….or maybe its just that this month seems to have the most expenses. Haha, I have 4 dollars and change in the PC account. They were selling Peace Corps shirts though and I felt like I should buy some…maybe that’s what it was.

Found a battery in the bottom of the pila today all rusted up. Ha.

The pup was going psycho this morning and foaming at the mouth. Then it would just whimper the rest of the time. Rabies? I thought so this morning, but she seemed ok this afternoon.

Oh well, more from Sr. Belloc

“From the day of Pentecost (some time between A.D. 29 and A.D. 33) onwards there has been a body of doctrine affirmed—for instance, at the very outset, the Resurrection. And the organism by which that body of doctrine has been affirmed has been from the outset a body of men bound by a certain tradition through which they claimed to have the authority in question.
Here we distinguish between two conceptions totally different, which are nevertheless often confused. One is the historical fact that the claim to Divine authority and Infallible doctrine was and is still made; the other the credibility of that claim.

Whether the claim by true or false has nothing whatever to do with its historical origin and continuity; it may have arison as an illusion or an imposture; it may have been continued in ignorance; but that does not affect its historical existence. The claim has been made and continues to be made, and those who made it are in unbroken continuity with those who made it in the beginning. They form, collectively, the organism which called itself and still calls itself 'The Church.'

Now against this authoritative organism, its claim, character and doctrines, there have been throughout the whole period of its existence continued assaults. There have been denials of its claim. There have been denials of this or that section of its doctrines. There has been the attempted replacing of these by other doctrines. Even attempted destruction of the organism, the Church, has repeatedly taken place.
I propose to select five main attacks of this kind from the whole of the very great—the almost unlimited—number of efforts, major and minor, to bring down the edifice of unity and authority.”