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.