Time's a Closing In

Well, I officially have a little over a month left in my Peace Corps service.  My last day as a volunteer will be December 17, 2010 and it looks like I'll be flying back to the states on the 22nd.  The month is beginning to fill up and I am having to decide which things I am going to attend and which ones I won't.  The last few weeks, I'll be reserving for my community, hopefully.  Any who.... lets recap lots of stuff thats happened the past while.

First off, my scholarship nursing student finally graduated!!  I accompanied him and his mom to the graduation ceremony in San Salvador, and then I treated them to lunch at Chilis in celebration.  He has persevered and I'm glad its all over.  A thank you to all those who helped out here and there throughout the years with his education.

David's Mom, David, and me just before the graduation

A nurse!

Next, here are the final pictures from the mural project inside the Community House. All is finished and that project is wrapped up now, although I would like to patch up some spots outside that haved scratched and put some better letters on the entrance, but for all intensive purposes, this project is done.  Thank you to Kids to Kids and the Caja de Credito and some private donors for helping these murals and the art classes for the kids come to fruition.

Next, are a few photos of an ongoing project that we've been pushing the past few years.  We have been gathering information and applying for grants for almost two years now for our potable water system here in our community.  You might remember that we barely lost a grant proposal to Spain back a year ago, but now we've partnered with an NGO called Madre Cria who is now working with the Municipality to get a grant from the embassy of Japan.  It is a super difficult project because our water system is located in three different communities and 2 different municipalities.  Each community wants certain things, but the money is not enough to go around.  My hope is if we win this opportunity to better the system, that it will open the door with Japan to continue working in the future.  Another huge problem that we have had is that when the communities first started the potable water system, certain landowners donated pieces of land to make the system a reality.  They did not, however, make written legal documents marking the transfer of ownership.  Fastfoward to 25 years later, land has been sold, or inherited, and even though there are numerous witnesses to the donations, everything is trying to get money in return for officially signing over their (already donated) terrain.  Projects all over the municipality have fallen through due to this, and our almost caved as well, because FIRST, international organizations refuse to work on private land, and SECOND, nobody has money to go around buying (or rebuying) pieces of land for every circumstance.  At the end of the day though, it looks like we will fulfill all of Japan's pre-requisites in time to win the project, and that our years of work will have paid off.  They have come and looked at everything and have given it the OK to proceed to the next step.  The project will be well over 100k. 

Here are some pics from our lawyers visit to mark of the land and search for it in the National registry.

Inside of these "tanks" on the hillside, are where the water is gobbled up and sent to our communities.

The pipes coming in are from the captation tanks from the pic above and the water you see is the overflow that our system can't handle

The 21 years old US Motors vertical water pump

I also got a chance to burn some of my vacation days that Peace corps has given me over the years.  I actually have had quite a few, but have been unable to really take advantage of them for moneysake!  We can't travel in the last three months of service, so I ended up losing about 20 days of vacation!!!!!  Craziness.  Anyways, I got a chance to go to Honduras for a few days in bus and we checked out the Mayan Ruins at Copan, and then shot up to the coast at Tela where we saw the 2nd largest Botanical Garden in the world.  It was left behind by the United Fruit Company (remember the Banana Republic like places where all the naners used to come from?).  The last day we passed through San Pedro Sula, which was just another big city.  The ruins were my favorite part.

Large bamboo....not native (this kind)

I didn't know cork was from a tree!

My first time seeing a coca plant

The place we stayed at Tela, Honduras at the beach

Irma is our registered nurse at Peace Corps that takes care of us vols

Underneath Copan Ruins

The 16 kings of Copan

Dunno who he is.

Looking down on the plaza...specifically the ball court

In other big news... I had my first visitors here to El Salvador!!!  My parents came down for a few days to check out my situation, and they did VERY well for not speaking the language.  We basically just hung out in my community, and by the last dinner, they were telling jokes (through me of course) to the rest of my neighbor's family.

Welcome!...my moms and me haha

Checking out my lemon tree

My archnemesis

On top of the church by the bells

The parish house ladies! They are so nice!

Dinner with the fam... Mother telling her super pickle joke.

I pretty much have to walk like that in most houses haha.

A random guy showing up on my porch selling armadillos and crabs.

Me and the "maestro" Alex

 

Finally, I've been in the capital the past few days in my final Med Checkups for Peace Corps to let me out of El Salvador.  I finished today with a clean bill of health.  Now all the paperwork will begin with my final reports and investigating more on grad schools.  Also, I have my regional convention coming up to plan, so that will be a lot of work as well.

In the next post, I'll sum up two more projects that we are finishing up as we speak.... The system of metal bars for security in our Medical dispensary and the revamping of our natural spring that was affected by some landslides.

Ciao.

  "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Matthew 6:34

The Pneumonia didn't kill me!

No, it didn't get the best of me, I just have been a slacker.  I was only in the hospital 2 days and then I was kept for shots 4 days in the capital, and then they let me go!  But man, do I have a TON of pictures to get around, and they are almost all from other people!  I really havent carried my camera around much lately.  These rechargeable batteries have really lost their usefulness and I've yet to buy new ones. 

Man, where to start... get ready for a random succession of picture stories.  Starting with SOFTBALL.  Enough said.  We went out to a friends community on the West side of the country to play in a tourney with some of the National team players, not too shabby!

Looks whos catching.

oops.

Yep, next is the trip to Nicaragua that I went on with two fellow volunteers.  It was my first time in Nicaragua... we left here at 530am and got to Managua at 4pm.  From there we grabbed a micro down to Granada and stayed the night.  Granada was cool, lots of history and people bouncing around.  It is one of the oldest cities in Central America and boasts one of the oldest Christian churches in America as well.  I didn't know that America was so intertwined in Nica's history.  Apparently some rogue military guys even took it over for a while (William Walker... google him sometime).  From there we went to check out San Juan del Sur.  Its a coastal surfer town thats got a nice little nightlife as well.  We met some pretty cool Salvadorans there, go figure, and hung out with them.  The worst part about it was that it was pretty bad rain the whole time we were there so we couldn't get out much after Granada. Overall, we were there 4 days, and it was a good time. 

San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.... its a cool little town

smelling the tobacco in Granada, Nicaragua

This cracked me up because its a grinding stone that they have in the museum in Granada.  Yet, we still use it in the countryside here!

My travel mates....in front of one of the oldest churches in America.

The third travel companion.

Welcome.

Our bus!

Next, we had our Fruit Festival here in our main town not too long ago.  Each year they name it after somebody and invite that person to speak, and this year it was named after Mr. Robert Blau, the Deputy Chief of Mission and right now Charge d' affair of the US Embassy.  So, he came out to San Pedro and we met with him, and he passed through the special fruit market that comes out that day, and then there was a ceremony in the main "square".  It was actually kind of nice because it was basically him and our mayor talking about the accomplishments of Peace Corps in the municipality in the past 10 years.  Good stuff.

There's actually lots of people in this photo.  Me, 3 other volunteers, my boss, my mayor, my kind of ambassador, and the guy that is awesome with his little wooden flute.

The "Charge" rocking his awesome US National Soccer Team jersey for the Fruit Festival in San Pedro.

The customary fight between the Christian and Moorish kings.... :)

The festival sign.

The table of honor.

Folkdance!

These guys were really great, honestly.  It was a great surprise.

Next were our Patron Festivals in my community that we celebrated in August.  Matt and Helen, the neighboring volunteers, came by and stayed for the few days to see what it was all about.  It wasn't as big as the past few years, but it was good fun. 

Bicycle contests!!!  Thats my neighbor there reffin'

The youngins after catching the greased pig.  If you can catch it, you can keep it!

The twins next door are getting so big!

A lovely dame I found on the street.

And then she found Matt.

And then we laughed about it.

Looks whos on bottom.  I'm pretty sure my back has been thrown out of wack permanently from that day.

Thats not a booger.

We definitely never made it to the top, some kid had to climb to the top of the greased pole with a lasso to grab the prize.  It was too tall this year!

Hug anyone?

At the end of the festivals, I put on a pupusa eating contest in the Community House, check out the youtube video below and more pictures at http://sanpedrononualco.blogspot.com/2010/08/concluyeron-fiestas-en-la-comunidad.html.

Next we have some pics from a birthday part that we had for a fellow volunteer.  Her parents came in town and rented a really awesome beach house place and she declared the entry fee a costume that began with the letter "R."  I was Raiden :)

I hadn't slept in 48 hours.

Me shooting electricity through the Riddler.

Flawless Victory.

Hiyah!

Needless to say, I didn't win ANY of the prizes that the volunteer's parents gave out, but I blame that on the fact that they had never heard of Raiden :) 

What else What else.....hmmmm.  Well we did finish the murals and I have them saved here.  But I'll save that for another post so as not to make this one too long.  But before I finish, here is an onslaught of random pictures.

I definitely don't fit on these covered trucks.  The wee one there is Liliana, and she's on the equivalent of Dancing with the Stars here in El Salvador right now.

Me fat.



I invited Matt and Helen over to give a talk on how to take soil samples.

Playing soccer on the steepest ridge ever.

Thank you Wendy's.

AWESOMEST picture EVER.... this was the antwar on my window.  These large leaf cutter ants chased the smaller ants all over the house until they caught them here on the window.  It got ugly.

I take it back, this is the best picture.  This is one of the cutest babies I've seen around.  Don Raul's newest grandchild Mayra.

Me giving a report to the Development Committee on all my projects.  This was during the final report of the outgoing Board and before the election of the incoming Board Members.  Check out more pics at http://www.sanpedrononualco.org/vrgalrias.php?ig=eleccadesco_22_08_10

Random pic of us dancing it up somewhere.  That was definitely a borrowed shirt.

My program at the July 4th soccer tournament.

I was hungry....but too cheap to buy something else at Wendy's.



Be afraid.  Be very afraid.


So thats the short story.  This week we have the new group of volunteers swearing in so I will going out to support them.  Also, this Saturday is my 3 year mark in this country!!!  Wahoo.  The next post I'll put up pics of the finished murals and fill yall in some on the current craziness in country right now with the gangs.

"Be not afraid"

First message as Pope......John Paul II