Swearing In

Hi everyone,

I have successfully completed my training. Today I will be sworn in and become an official volunteer. My Spanish level has gotten much better and I am excited to see how much it will improve in the near future. Tomorrow I will meet my counterpart in my community and move to my site where I will be for the next two years. The site I am going to has around 800 people and I is supposed to need a lot of work in youth involvement. Of course, I do not know that much since I am not there yet, but I will do my best to keep everyone posted. Since I will be a lot more isolated at this new site, I do not know how much access I will have to Internet. But I will update you as frequently as possible. I hope everyone is doing well back home!

The contents of this Web site are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government or the Peace Corps.

Immersion Weekend

This Thursday, I left on what was called Immersion Weekend. It is a weekend where we live with a current volunteer for 3 nights to see what their daily lifestyle is like. We are also challenged lingually by needing to use public transportation across the country by ourselves. I was successful in the sense that I did not get lost. It was about 3 hours worth of bus rides.

When I arrived, I met up with Daniel who has been in country for about a year. We then went to translate for a group of Canadians who are in El Salvador for the week to build homes for the less fortunate. My Spanish is still not great, but I was able to translate alright. The rest of the weekend he showed me around his village. There are about 1200 people and Daniel is currently working on a project involving chickens. He is helping a group of about 15 raise over 150 chickens for economic development. He is currently helping them get permits so the project can grow. I helped him cut bamboo to make structures for his organic farm that he grows food at to feed the chickens. He seems to be a successful volunteer.

This upcoming week I will be teaching English to a group of kids at a local school. We will see how that goes. I hope everyone is doing well back home. I miss you all!

My Visit to a Current Volunteer

Yesterday, me along with the rest of the training class took a trip to visit a current volunteer. He lived about an hour and a half away from us. He lived on a river and we took a boat tour around the area. It was extremely beautiful. He proved to be a very successful volunteer helping the village establish a fishing business. It was a very positive experience. I am going to the Capitol San Salvador on Wednesday, so I will keep you posted.

My Training Family

We arrived in El Salvador on Wednesday. Me along with the other Trainees stayed in a hotel the first two nights and attended seminars in the office in San Vicente. I really like my training class. Everybody is very kind and friendly.

Yesterday, Friday the 21st I moved in with the host family I will be staying with for the next two months. I am about a ten minute bus ride from San Vicente. My host family is very kind. There is only a husband and wife. They have two dogs and two baby kitten. There are four other volunteers living in my community. We have language classes in the mornings, then in the afternoon we will be working on small projects to improve our community during the next eight weeks. It is going to give us good hands on training before we are sent out on our own as volunteers in March. Also, twice a week the trainees in my community will meet with the other trainees in my class and attend more seminars in San Vicente. We also have some field trips coming up.

Everyday has new challenges. It is difficult living in a commnity where I can not communicate with the people perfectly. I want to make more conversation with my host family, but my spanish level is pretty low. I am studying in the evenings after dinner to try and learn as much as I can. I miss everyone. I´ll talk to you soon.

Last week in the US

Thank you for looking at my blog. I will be departing for my assignment on Monday, January 17th. This is my first blog post to make sure I can get the hang of things before I am actually in El Salvador. I am spending my last week saying goodbye to friends and family. I do not know how much time I will have to write to everyone individually, so I wanted to make this blog for everyone to read. Hope to keep in touch with everyone. Thanks for all the support and kindness you have shown me over the years.