No, I don't speak English either

Of all the things that can get lost in translation, some of the most confusing interactions I’ve had here in El Salvador have been in English. Well, sort of.

Every once in a while, a Salvadoran will see me, the 6'3", blonde haired, blue eyed stereotype of an American and decide to practice their English. Now I’m not one to judge, because my Spanish is just a step up from unintelligible, but Salvadorans have pretty wicked accents when they speak English. Combine the pronunciation problems with my limited Spanish vocabulary, and most of the time I assume they are speaking Spanish and saying something I don’t know. Something like "Where are you from" comes out of someone’s mouth and I hear Hueraufan and I’m trying to figure out the third person plural form of "to orphan" in my head and cursing myself for leaving my 333 Spanish verbs book at home. This goes on for a couple minutes until they decide I’m either European or just stupid and walk away.

My Spanish knowledge seemed to grow exponentially the first week and not at all since. There’s so much going on that I’ve had a hard time summoning the energy to study at the end of the day.

Anyways, my brain is tired and I don’t feel like writing much today. My site is in Usulutan, one of the hottest parts of the country, but some of my favorite volunteers are relatively close by and a Salvadoran friend of mine promises me I’m not far from the most beautiful beach in the country. Headed into the capital this weekend to watch the Peace Corps team play soccer in the National Stadium. I was hoping to play some goalie but the team is already pretty full at that position. Plenty of time for that in the next two years though.

Hasta la proxima.

Better and worse

Things I miss the most about the USA: Wellington’s and crew, family, Kansas bball, Thai Siam, friends I’ve had since Deerfield, downtown Lawrence, throwing an American football, Free State beer, having a car, being able to wear shorts around town when it’s 90 degrees, not having to think so hard to have a conversation, sleeping in past 6:30 am, staying up past 10 pm, carelessless of living in a city with little to no serious crime.

Things I love about El Salvador: Hammocks everywhere, living on a few dollars a day, hitchhiking rides in the back of pickup trucks, double meanings and dirty jokes, dumping cold buckets of water over my head in the middle of the afternoon to shower, chambre in the campo, the comfortable predictability of buenos dias, buenas tardes or buenas noches everytime I walk by someone, kids yelling Key-Lay and hugging my leg when I get home every day, watching cheesy telenovelas with my family at night and asking them a million questions during commercials.

After six weeks here, my skin is bronze and my hair is sun bleached, I’ve spent a few nights and days sick in the latrines, I’ve been harassed a few times by drunks, eaten more tortillas than I care to count, learned a lot of Spanish and realized how much farther I have to go, made a lot of good friends and met a few people people I’d rather not know, smiled and nodded my way through quite a few conversations, and confirmed the fact that this is where I belong for the next two years.

I’ve heard a few people in the training group say that these first few months are going to be the hardest as we’re adjusting, but I don’t quite agree. Other than getting sick, the language has been the only truly difficult adjustment for me. Training isn’t hard; it’s just boring and monotonous. We’re receiving our official site assignments on Thursday, and through some investigative work I already have a good idea of where I’m going. My site is where I’ll be living and working for the two years after training is over. I’m going to be the third and final volunteer in my village, which means I’m assuming a lot of responsibility in terms of tying things together and completing projects that have been in the works for a few years. I’m ready to be done with training and get started for real, but I’m going to miss my host family and community in San Isidro, and especially the other volunteers living here with me in this village.

The real test will be handling the isolation of being the only volunteer, the only American, the only English speaker, and a lot of other only’s in my village. Instead of sitting in a plastic chair all day feeling a mix of boredom and anxiousness, surrounded by 35 other Americans with a lot in common, I’ll be the tall whiteboy sticking out head and shoulders above everyone else, trying to organize a water accessibility project and English language classes, teaching about AIDS and condoms, all the while trying to master a new language and make friends with people without fully understanding who they are or what they’re saying a lot of times. I've done a lot of learning and adjusting the past six weeks, but in actuality I haven’t even really gotten started yet.

Oddities and ends

Just a few quick observations on Salvadoran culture.

I’m going to watch "Who wants to be a Millionaire El Salvador" tonight with my family. We watched it last week and as a team we successfully answered every question correctly with one exception. They got all the Salvadoran culture questions and I nailed a few of the more general questions. El Salvador’s national currency is also the US dollar, but the maximum that someone can win on the show is $200,000. Now, that is a ton of money here, but why they still call it "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," I have no idea.

Tommy Hilfiger clothes seem to be very popular here. I don’t really have any commentary on that other than that I think it is odd. Same with the Black Eyed Peas and 80's music.

Cell phone etiquette is non-existent. Our Spanish teacher (who is awesome) regularly answers her phone in the middle of class. Staff at the training center also will stop a lecture to pick up a call. So will a school director, a health promoter or just about anyone with a phone. I’ve not yet been able to identify a time when it is not appropriate for a cell phone to ring. Even in the schools, students are told to avoid using cell phones during class, not that they are prohibited.

Trash is everywhere, unfortunately. What is such a naturally beautiful country is overrun by trash in a lot of places because there is no organized trash pick-up for many of the rural areas. People regularly burn their trash here because there is no other option besides letting it sit in the yard, which a lot of it does anyways. A lot of people don’t understand the difference between organic waste and plastic trash. For example, there is trash all over the rural village I live in, and no one really seems to care. However, someone saw me throw an apple core into a field and gave me a weird look. "What if one of the kids saw you throwing trash?" she asked me. I explained that it would decompose and it was okay to throw apples into the field, but she insisted that next time I put my apple core in the trash can so that it could be burned with the other trash. We went through the same song and dance two other times after that and she still doesn’t believe me that it is better to throw fruit cores into a field than it is to burn them.

The methodology in the schools here could use some work. Students do almost nothing other than copy sentences from the blackboard and don’t seem to retain any of it. I taught an English class to a group of students last week who were in their third year of studying the language. We spent 45 minutes trying to learn the alphabet and the majority of the students had a terrible time just doing that. Kids here only spend 5 hours a day in school and they get a 20 minute recess for every 45 minutes in class. Pretty much all of their homework consists of copying things word for word from a textbook or practicing handwriting by writing the same letter over and over again hundreds of times. This is the same for students all the way up to 9th grade. Most kids in my village don’t go to school after 9th grade because they have to travel to go to a high school.