Final Week of Training

November 21, 2007

yummy.
Well, my Spanish classes have been suspended indefinitely. Wahoo, I took advantage of it today and went to San V early to run errands and set up the blog more. I tried to set up a slideshow from Flickr on this thing where I am slowly adding all my pictures, but it hasn’t decided to work yet….oh well…eventually.
I spent all day at the center, first to do that, then I met with the directora and the other girl helping organize thanksgiving and we went shopping in the mercado to get some crack. Haha, thought that was funny.
Naaaa…. A bunch of random crud…everything from garlic to green beans, potatoes, carrots etc. We spent the rest of the day making breads, eating raw batter, and then finally receiving mail and packages. I got like 7 letters from mother, two from cari, and then the Systematic Theology book from Boss….aka Mr. Musgrave for the non family members. This was good and all, but it ate up my 2.50 on credit at the office so they are holding the package with the flashdrive until I make it there to pay another 2.50. Scavengers.

Tonight the previous volunteer that lived with my fam is visiting….we had a good time making funnies.

Leave it to our group to make the national paper after going to a concert in the capital.

Since I have still not started Lord of the Flies, I send off with a quote from the newest book sent my way:

“The precise determination of the extent of the canon of Scripture is therefore of the utmost importance. If we are to trust and obey God absolutely we must have a collection of words that we are certain are God’s own words to us. If there are any sections of Scripture about which we have doubts whether they are God’s words or not, we will not consider them to have absolute divine authority and we will not trust them as much as we would trust God himself.” (emphasis added by me)

Systematic Theology, by Wayne Grudem, p. 54

*since this is my blog, I have the right to critique things that are sometimes…..not to my liking J But to the history nerds, the problem with this line of thinking should be quite obvious.*
This quote would open many doors to discussion (of which I find this canon topic very intriguing), but I will limit my comment to one door. If the last sentence is taking into consideration the first 5 centuries of Christendom, instead of just the last 5, Protestants would have an even shorter Bible, because I can think of five books right off the bat that were…vehemently….contested in the East and West, in different centuries. Even after the fifth century there was dissension at times as different council decrees spread throughout the known world. So how would those in 3rd century who rejected Revelation, Hebrews, and John/Peter’s Epistles be wrong, according to the aforementioned ‘doctrine’ of rejecting that which was once questioned? After reading the above rule can we really disagree with those who discarded these books because they knew there was many who doubted? Or…to dangerously continue this line of thought, can we even deem these books today as containing God’s truth within them since they were once doubted by large portions of Christendom? For me, this puts too many forks along what could be more or less a straight road. It seems only practical J.

November 23, 2007

Whew. This last week and the next one have been and will be crazy. I went to San Salvador yesterday morning early before preparation for our Thanksgiving hoorah and soccer game to buy a present for my family. I found a really cheap DVD player in a store there that pretty much matched what I wanted to give back to them. I think they will get a lot of use out of it…well as long at the little terror doesn’t break it. I gave it to them tonight, and had to mess with it to get it to work because it was only in black and white. They are very excited.

Anyways, once that was done, I went straight back to San Vicente to keep up the work on the Thanksgiving prep. At 2:30pm we left and went to a field in one of the trainee communities to play the annual staff versus trainees game. Our group was ghetto, but we had a bunch that could play somewhat. But only one or two girls that were really….ok….haha. Of course, I hadn’t played in quite a while, but it came back here and there. Although, I was like the only one without cleats, crazy right? But that became obvious soon when I was falling left and right all over the place. My previous volunteer said he left some cleats and shinguards, and I hope they both fit, cause if not that’s gonna cost a good 30 dolla at the very least…if I can find my size.
We were getting murdered 6-1, when we came back 6-6 when we had most of the guys in there to keep battling. Then with a few minutes left they scored 2 more. However, in our defense, they were using natives, and we had a girl in goal, who played really well, but there were at least 3 goals that should have been blocked.

Anyways, a group of us sat in the parking lot for a while at night waiting for someone to pick us up because the keys were lost, but once we got back, we got to take showers in the actual training center and then finish the cooking. The actual dinner was glorious. In two days we had made, two turkeys, with stuffing, gravy, green beans, gizzards (from yours truly), a ton of mashed potatoes, and a small thing of sweet potatoes, of which we couldn’t find much. It was hilarious though, the heads and necks and feet came inside the turkeys when we opened them, so I put them on a separate plate with the rest of the food. No one else tried the gizzards I cooked other than one person. I ate a ridiculous amount. Then, for desert we had made two pumpkin pies, an apple pie, and a bunch of breads, as well as bought two things of ice cream. That was killer, I couldn’t move I had eaten so much.

Wow.

Which was a good transition into us sitting around and saying what we were thankful for, to the group superlatives to which each of us more or less got one, and then to the talent show. Wow, the talent show….there’s a reason our training class already has a reputation among the volunteers in this country, and this show just proved it. Craziness.

We stayed in San V that where I got to sleep in the lobby of the hotel on an air mattress (I am really beginning to love sleeping outside), and then had to wakeup and go to class the next day. I had a Salvadoran bfast there with fried plantains, beans, eggs, bread, and choco café and then returned back to the center before class to finish off the last two pieces of pumpkin pie, one of apple pie, and two plates of ice cream for bfast. Haha, I can see Megan cringing in Greenville right now. Don’t worry megan, I didn’t eat a formal lunch. Just grazed throughout the day on oranges, chips, and then pancake mix I found and ate the rest of with milk. We had some leftover milk from the day before and man it was good drinking today…I missed that.

Today we went and visited an orphanage/home for those children taken from their parents, and it was really really nice. Apparently its funded by an organization that is out of Austria, but is based all over the world. Some big rich guy’s trust fund from Austria is mainly supporting it. They live as a community in separate houses etc etc. We played with them for a while before being presented with an opportunity to buy Christmas cards they make. I bought some for the fam….you’ll be receiving them for Christmas.

The last part of the day we had our final exit interviews for Spanish, after which they said I have jumped 2 ½ levels to Advanced Medium/Low. There are three levels of beginner, three for intermediate, three for advanced, and then a Superior, and then Native ranking. Whatever that means. I can communicate, that’s what matters. After two years they said I should be superior….better be, I will be disgruntled if not. After that I spent the rest of the day in the center planning for the Family Fiesta tomorrow for all the host fams. Fun stuff.

The next week is going to be so full. Tomorrow is the fiesta which I have to get there early to set up, then after I’m shopping with the fam in the afternoon and making bread, and then Im making them dinner at night. Tomorrow, we have the hike up the volcano…Chichontepec. Its only a 6 hour hike up, and then whatever down. Wonderful. Mon-Wed, we spend every waking minute in orientation, and then we leave Thurs morning for San Sal and our Swearing In. Word is the Ambassador isn’t even coming to swear us in, but one of his assistants….ahahaha this whole thing keeps getting better and better. No crazy food, fam, embassy, ambassador etc. I heard that the budget for next year is getting cut by 2/3 for El Sal. Crazy stuff going on in the world these days.

“I’m thankful for free will, its not by fate that I’m here today, but by the fact that I made the choice to come.”

PCT Nick Jaramillo, during Thanksgiving toast….very unique

November 24

Angie at our raffle table.

Entonces, vamos a ver. Haha. Today, got up early and went to the center to work on preparations for the family fiesta. I pretty much ran around all morning trying to get ready in time with Matt and Liliana, two other trainees that were helping with me. Peace Corps gave us $320 to have a party for 120 people. And that was the number after we got rid of our Spanish teachers….sad. They gave up their plates to give us more money to work with. So if you do the math that’s less than three dollars a person. Then there’s you know, plates, tables, some kind of dessert, some to serve it in, and then buying all the stuff to make it a party instead of a sorry meal. Lol. Oh well. So I spent the morning with the other two arranging how to make the most of the money and we did pretty well I’d say. We put together a bunch of games: egg races, bowl on top of head races, donut hanging from string eating races, but we didn’t get to the bobbing for apples or balloon pooping contests before the food came. After food, we had piñatas that people in the group had made, and then we had a free raffle of items that I had gotten donated from around San Vicente. Some of them we had to buy too, but not much. All in all it went ok.

Me running the donut game at the Family Fiesta.

Afterwards, I cleaned up, then the fam and I grabbed some meat and stuff to make fajitas for a celebration dinner. It was actually pretty good. With the exception that the meat here is chewy and the Mexican tortillas they sell are crap and fall apart in your hands. Grrr. Other than that they were tasty.
The cops ran by our patio tonight chasing someone, then they came back and chatted it up with my mom and grandma and later me. Apparently they were chasing some bolo (drunkard) who had called them a bad name. HAH. This place cracks me up.

Full moon tonight. Did I mention the power was out yesterday?

The neighbors killed a huge pig tonight. It was going apenuts for like 20 mins while they were trying to catch it and tie it. I didn’t get to see the actual kill though, they took it somewhere else to do it.
Tomorrow we climb the volcano at 6:15am. We’re supposed to get back about the same time in the evening. Wonderful. It’ll either be fun or terrible.

From the written account of Mark Shea during his rationalization of the Christian Canon.
“I concluded that, left to my own resources, I would never have seen Ecclesiastes as a scriptural book. Rather, I accepted it because I had been taught to by the church I belonged to. The same goes for Esther….” (p. 65)

To conclude that chapter Shea remarks, “Therefore, I realized, one of the two things necessarily followed, either as modernism said, the canon of Scripture was a merely human tradition or else God must have ordained some sort of revelation outside of Scripture as the means by which we could know what Scripture was. There was no third option.”

Mark Shea, By What Authority

November 25

I climbed a dormant volcano today.

My body hates me for it.

Not sure what we were thinking.

Us before the hike.

Although, I guess it makes for a good story. We actually started walking at like 8 in the morning and my group (the slower one) got back at like 5pm. I was with the first group for the first part, but for the second we had a few people that wanted to quit, so I became Coach Rhett. Haha. We eventually arrived to the top, but man was that thing a beast. I brought daddy’s gps thing, and it said we were at 7,160ft at the summit. There is a small base that is kept on top from the civil war because it is such a key spot for spotting what’s going on around the area. It has a cement helipad, and once they actually let us in at the gate, we set up shop on the helicopter pad. I was worn out and starving and apparently I’m a camel cause there and back I only drank a liter and half and for some reason that amazed everyone. Oh well. Anyways, we could see everyone from there, and I stuffed my face with what I had and after I ate everyone else’s leftovers. We set our shirts out on the cement to let them dry from being soaked with sweat, but the earlier group soon wanted to leave, and off we went again. Once again we split into the slower and faster group and I stayed once again. Oh well. It was fun, my group was goofy and hilarious all at the same time…aren’t we all. We eventually made it down, around 5pm. I returned home to have to deal with the fam who wanted to see the pictures, and generally annoy me when I am in no mood to be bothered haha. Im pooped. Tomorrow, the crazy week continues with the first day of orientation all day in San V.

He cracks me up

Almost forgot. Got one of the ugliest haircuts of my life two days ago. The Peace Corps family has been giving me a hard time about it, but now I think its growing on them. It was either keep it or shave it all. I’m giving it some time to see how it’ll do. Its kind of what Hagar did when he shaved under the sides, but with a Salvadoran twist. The natives all think its normal and like it…although some people have asked if I’m in a gang, haha. We’ll see. You can see it in some of the pics I’m going to put up from the fiesta and volcano.

Im bout to beat down this volcano

Im losing.

Am I there yet?

In your face Charlie Murphy!

Im gonna cut you boy.

“Ben Franklin is the devil. I invented electricity!”
-The Waterboy’s mom

Still no mail

November 20, 2007

Still no mail today….bunch of slackers in charge of peace corps haha. Its been like 3 weeks since anyone got letters, or boxes. The main thing is that we are waiting on a box that has stuff in it for our thanksgiving meal. We’ll see. Today we did a bunch of random stuff in San Vicente and planted some vegetables in some random guys field. Nothing extremely crazy…although I didn’t get the chance to talk with med.
I had to bring the letter home today that the fams were not invited to the swearing in for the first time ever. They put a bunch of excuses in it for them, but told us that in the past it used to be in the embassy and catered with a ton of food etc. Oh well. Peace Corps itself is now living at the standard of mercados here. Haha.
Im off to San V. tomorrow to get some internet work done and shop in the market for the meal we are going to have Thursday for thanksgiving.

My meal upon returning from San Sal....soo good. Egg, beans, avocado, bread.

The mom is yelling at the kid to get off my bed right now….he’s such a punk.

I have marked a million things in this book that I could quote, but these will be the last, I’m sure people are tired of him…poor dead old fart. I start Lord of the Flies tomorrow.

“Like all heresies, Mohammedanism lived by the Catholic truths which it had retained. Its insistence on personal immortality, on the Unity and Infinite Majesty of God, on His Justice and Mercy, its insistence on the equality of human souls in the sight of their Creator—these are its strength.
But it has survived for other reasons than these; all the other great heresies has their truths as well as their falsehoods and vagaries, yet they have died one after the other. The Catholic Church has seen them pass, and though their evil consequences are still with us the heresies themselves are dead.
The strength of Calvinism was the truth on which it insisted, the Omnipotence of God, the dependence and insufficiency of man; but its error, which was the negation of free-will, also killed it. For men could not permanently accept so monstrous a denial of common sense and common experience. Arianism lived by the truth that was in it, to wit, the fact that the reason could not directly reconcile the opposite aspects of a great mystery—that of the Incarnation. But Arianism died because it added to this truth a falsehood, to wit, that the apparent contradiction could be solved by denying the full Divinity of Our Lord.
And so on with the other heresies. But Mohammedanism, though it also contained errors side by ide with those great truths, flourished continually, and as a body of doctrine flourishing still, though thirteen hundred years have passed since its first great victories in Syria.” (p. 74)
And a final quote on one of the characteristics of the Reformation:
“Thirdly (and this is much the most important character) there appear among the revolutionaries an increasing number who are not so much concerned to set right the evils which have grown up in the thing to be reformed, as filled with passionate hatred of the thing itself….” (p.111)

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.”

Visit to my REAL SITE

Oh, man where to start. I just got back to San Isidro from my future new site and after the trip it was actually good to get back, I have a cool family. I actually smiled when I was walking down the street and heard Alejandro yelling. She fed me a meal of kings when I got back too….A fresh avocado, beans, an egg and pan frances. I hate five pieces of bread…I never do that. I was so excited afterwards, that I bought the fam all Choco bananas to celebrate (they are 6 cents each so my Jewish side didn’t react too much).

Lets see… my trip. The trip there was actually not stellar, I didn’t fit in the bus seat…big surprise there… I got ripped off come to find out….out of 40 cents, and it took like an 1hr and a half to go 35 miles for one of the legs. Dirty Buggers. We send out cruddy buses down here, so that they can get cruddier haha. When I got to the big town, San Pedro Nonualco, I was supposed to meet my guy there at 1030. The way the municipalities work here is basically as a combination of what we would call the country and city governments. There is one head over it all, the Alcalde, or Mayor. So about 1130 they come out and bring me into their building behind the bars and all and I meet the alcalde and they gave me coffee and offered bottled water yadda yadda yadda. It was all very nice….they had worked with my predecessor a lot. They know that any money a volunteer can bring in from the outside frees them up to use their money for other things and still look good to the populace. I will hand it over to them though, a bunch of times a year, they call a meeting in the towns and present what they are doing and how they are spending their entire budget. I had the opportunity to sit in on it, and then had the privilege to be unexpectedly pulled in front of the community to introduce myself, jerk. Good thing I can speak Spanish, it would have been too soon for some of the people in the group.

A pic of most of the inside of the City/County hall.

The family that I will be living with is that of Don Raul Lopez, whom has a wife Amalia, and 11 kids whom they are all very proud of. Clearly a very catholic family…but I’ll come back to that. They are a very sarcastic witty family as well, haha…gooooooooood (in a sinister Kim Jung Il voice). That night while they were at a church meeting, I spent the time cleaning the house and especially the fridge. The setup I’m going to have there is actually really sweet as far as volunteers go. I have a latrine that’s decently close, although somewhat unstable, a covered pila (water basin), also he is leaving a small fridge, juicer, crock pot, rice cooker, and blender. There is also a desk and chair and bed. There is also a bunch of random crud as well as some books. He is also leaving a hammock outside. This all comes at a price of course…. About 2/3 of what peace corps is giving us to find shelter and food and settling in etc. I don’t mind though, hes done a ton of really good things in this community, so yeah.

I also attended a scholarship program event where I was thrown in to actually announcing names and giving out the scholarships in front of like 400 people with a mic and all…..ahhhh life is good. Later the next day I got to meet up with what I would think would be an NGO that Annie would like to work for. Its called ASPS (Assoc of Salvadoran Promoters of Salud/Health). In my community its represented by a few women who live there and run a dispensario from 1-5 everyday except Sunday, and spend the rest of the time fundraising and going house to house to get people to come to events they plan and to check on the health of the fams. It’s a realllly cool group of ladies, and apparently one doctor that I haven’t met. In their dispensary the community can come and get checked out for minor things and they have an array of meds on sale for really cheap. I took a pic to send to megan and annie, I figured they might get a kick out of seeing whats there. That day they were giving a lecture on HIV and then served pupusas…..sweet. I got a sneaky idea for funding for them, but that’s a while away.

*I’ll throw in a note here that anyone who knows of groups or NGOs or whoever that donate medicines or acquire medicines to donate to organizations in the developing world (Medical Bridges I think is one, but they use expired medicine a lot and that becomes difficult) please bring it to my attention.*

So, later that day, I was on the bus leaving and it stopped for a while, and then I realized they were all outside. I went out to find that a priest from the neighboring city had locked his keys in his truck while visiting a ‘daycare’, to which a guy had proceeded to rip the entire locking mechanism out of the automatic passenger side door to try and get it to open….annnnnd no. He ended up having to leave the truck and take the bus. Sad.
Then I got lost in Zacatecoluca on the way back, only to ask everyone in the city who give a different answer, avoid the beggars, get some lovin from a bus of latina girls and then luckily happen upon my bus.

All up in the jungle.

The surprise of the weekend though came in the form of the new book I started while I was there. The Great Heresies by Hilaire Belloc. He is now number three behind Francis de Sales and Cardinal Newman, however I think he is in an entirely different category. His vast knowledge of history is incredible, which thus allows him to synthesis theories and ideas that span across thousands of years down to the micro level, not just the macro level that some historians can only sit on. If I could even approach a fraction of his level one day, I could die a happy man. For example in the discussion of the Arian heresy, he went into great depth of how the Roman army worked first and how it fit into society of that time, and then intertwined that with the Catholic populace of the empire/regions at that point, blah blah change in source of Imperial power blah blah later creating interesting theories as to the reasons for the death of the Arian heresy….YET at the same time drawing its similarities and differences with the later heresies of Muhammed, Albigensians, and Calvin. Although Im not through with the Protestant section totally, the part that intrigued me the most was his fifth on Islam. In it he presented interesting theories on why Islam is unique in that it is still alive materially and doctrinally and even still attracting converts with more or less the same simple message. He presents reasons why he thinks Islam is likely to rise again to combat Christian culture (this was written between 1936 and 1938), why the world would have to deal with the Nazis and Russians, and why there would be turmoil in Palestine in the future. All which were astute, even though some parts what should be obvious, predictions.
After seeing how some of the religions have run their course in the US and now seeing how the rural areas, for the most part, are thriving Catholic areas, different from the cities, and now in the light of some different theories on the process of Arianism and Albigensianism and later Calvinism and its doctrinal death compared to the social spirit it imparted, my hopes are somewhat up that all the religious commotion could be a bigger step for unity in the future…..the very distant future.

Anyways, enough of my nerdiness on this subject, he just has a unique talent of bringing history full circle, both religious and secular.

My watch alarm broke a few weeks ago. D’oh.

I sucked on a piece of ice this weekend. Very nice…..how much?

It’s not who you are inside that counts Bruce, it’s what you do that defines you.
-Katie Holmes in Batman Begins

Testing it out

So I am going to start a blog on here that people can check without me sending out mass emails. Whether this is good or bad, I'm not sure, but this is the way its going to be for a while haha. My new final cell number here in El Salvador is 75142432....the country code is 503. If your phone has international calling enabled, you can dial 011 503 7514 2432, if not you'll have to follow the instructions on whatever calling card you pick up. I have officially switched companies to TIGO, so now I will be saving my minutes when I can. All incoming calls are free though.

For those of you that don't know, I have received my official site for the next two years, and it will be in the Department of La Paz, the municipality of San Pedro Nonualco, and in the town of La Comunidad. I will live in La Comunidad, replacing the previous volunteer.

I dont think that I am going to post all the previous entries that I had been sending out in mass emails, but I will put a link up to it and keep it here for people to download. I'll continue to add to it, the same thing that is posted here, so that people can download it and keep it as a .doc file on their computer if they want to read it later (that has been requested haha).

This pic is from a little hike we did in the town where I live. Think I can enter that contest? haha no.

Hasta luego