Swearing In and Moving In

This scorpion was a worthy adversary, but we got the better of him.


A heartfelt send-off to Kelly and Brush


One last dance party


Celebrating the patron saint of our canton, San Diego


A great speech from a friend at the U.S. Embassy


Torta


Kelly, Bruce, another Volunteer, U.S. Ambassador, and our host family

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We are writing, for the first time, from our permanent site. We live in a beautiful pueblo in the department of San Miguel--in the east of the country. Also for the first time, we are writing as Peace Corps Volunteers (Trainees no longer).

Training ended well. We both joined leadership committees. Kelly is now a member of WYD (Women in Youth Development, they give out scholarships for girls to attend high school). Bruce is on PAC (Program Advisory Committee). We found and killed a scorpion in our bedroom. Christmas decorations started to appear. Our training host family threw us a surprise going-away party our last night in town: Dinner. Dancing with little kids. A sign to wish farewell to ¨Kelly y Brush¨. The night coincided with a procession to mark the feast day of San Diego. A truck with religious statues and a disco ball made its way down the street, surrounded by musicians and a crowd that let off small-time fireworks.

We spent two nights in San Salvador. That Friday (14th), the majority of our training group´s counterparts (folks who will help us get situated in our sites) came out to meet us at a hotel and to attend an orientation. Very nice people. They left and took our luggage to our new site. We then arrived at the embassy for Swearing-In. It is the second-largest U.S. Embassy in the world, second only to the one in Baghdad. A friend of ours gave an excellent speech about the challenges faced by the Salvadoran youth. We met the ambassador and enjoyed a great dinner. Afterwards, there was a hotel party hosted by last year´s crew of Volunteers with ¨most likely to...¨ awards and so on. Kelly is most likely to appear in a Peace Corps poster. Bruce is most likely to appear in a Salvadoran music video.

We said goodbye to the other twenty Volunteers in our group, who are now spread out across the country. When we got off the bus and arrived in our site, the two men we had met the previous day picked us up and gave us a quick tour. We saw the environmental foundation where they work. We opened coconuts with machetes (new hobby) and drank the water. We moved in.

We are living with a widow of ¨la tercera edad¨ (the third age, a polite way of referring to someone between 60 and 90. Our living situation has changed drastically. There are tile floors and high ceilings. There is a courtyard in the middle of the house with beautiful flowers and three turtles. Three of the woman´s four children live in New York. We will definitely stay in this house at least until February (after the second phase of training in San Vicente). Perhaps we will stay for the two years.

Our first night in town, we had dinner with the director of the Cultural House (also a widow) and her daughter. Dinners at their house have become a tradition. Through them, we have visited said Cultural House (reading, arts, crafts, guitar lessons), the church (we met the priest and bought a songbook--now we´ll be able to understand something after the Sign of the Cross), and the Lions´ Club (shout-out to Bruce´s childhood Lions´ Club baseball team!). We had a great dinner at the Lions´ Club in spite of the bat (great word: murcielago) that kept flying just above our heads. Last night, we accompanied them to a special prayer service that is held nine years after someone´s death. A picture of the deceased woman was the centerpiece of a large scene depicting Jesus´s miraculously successful catch of fish. There were many candles, snacks, and relatives from LA.

There are several schools in town in which we´ll be working. We have visited them several times, but not much is going on on account of summer vacation. We are helping referee a soccer tournament held to give the kids something to do.

Instead of launching into projects right off the bat, we will be meeting as many people in town as possible. We will conduct at least 40 house visits to learn about the community´s needs. We will interview the local mayor, police, health officials, Red Cross, Ministry of Education, kindergarten, high school, university, NGOs. We will present the findings from our diagnostic during a general assembly with local leaders and our Peace Corps bosses in mid-December.

We have big shoes to fill. The Peace Corps Volunteer we are replacing accomplished a great deal.

It´s a change moving from our rural training community to this pueblo (town). The residents actually refer to it as a small ciudad (city). At least to us, it doesn´t feel like a city. Figures vary, but there are about 10,000 people in the town. There is a sometimes-bustling market, an attractive park in which folks sit and talk or peruse the $1 pirated DVDs. The pace of life is not quite as slow. There are advantages (great computer labs, more resources for projects) and disadvantages (more expensive, can´t know everyone). But there are still women selling French bread and delicious pastries from the guacals (think large buckets) on their heads. There are still cows running down the streets. There are still geckos in our room. It is still El Salvador and we are excited to integrate into the community.

We mentioned before that our first two months in El Salvador were an emotional roller-coaster. We don´t expect the next two years to be smooth sailing. However, now that we´re in our town and getting acclimated, there are fewer unknowns and we´re feeling more confident and excited about our decision to come here. Everything´s coming up Kelly and Bruce.