El Salvador

Well I´ve been putting this off for a while. I keep goining back and forth about what to write so I´ll just start.

I got dropped off at a hotel in DC last week and meet all the other volunteers. I was very suprised when I saw the range of places where everyone was from within the States, I guess I secretly thought everybody would be from New England. Of all the things I speculated that I would learn, learning about Americans was not one of them (at least not until I returned).

We checked into the hotel at 2pm and checkedout at 2am, and were in El Salvador by 2pm. My assignent is Rural Health Facilitator by the way. As the plane was landing I was looking out at the country I was panicing a little and kept asking myself what the heck I was doing, and what did I hope to accomplish. That was definitly my lowest point so far, but when we arrived at the Peace Corps compound in San Salvador there was the entire staff cheering to welcome us and I felt much better.

There was a lot of flip chart paper, eating, and shots the first two days. Those first two days we (the trainees) stayed in a hotel in San Vincente, and got to know each other. And by Friday we were with our host families in smaller towns within a hald hour drive to San Vicente, whom we will stay with for 8 weeks. My family is great, I will learn Spanish very quickly there. They love to grill me when I make mistakes, but they don´t do it too often and when they do it´s in a loving way. Their food is super good! The chicken and eggs are the best, but everything else is really good too.

I made a bet with an other volunteer that I would kill and eat chicken before him at the hotel in DC-I think I will win tomorrow.

The town takes about 10 minutes to walk all the way across so it´s pretty big. There is a nice park in the center where the dogs hang out-oh yeah. There are sooo many dogs here the live in the street and howl terribly at night. There are lots of vistas where I can see for miles. Most of the stores here are in the front part of someones house so their living room might be the same as the store. All the houses have electricity and many nice things, and there running water one day a week.

The average day is 4 hours of language training, lunch, comunitty activities/language, then home for dinner and to talk to the family.

All in all everything here is great. The other trainees are awsome, and El Salvador had the lowest drop out rate of any of the 70 countries Peace Corps is in two years ago, and was in the lowest five last year.

Ciao for now,
Mateo

the only thing i would like is a splle chek!