Friday, February 27, 2009

White Hair

Yesterday, while I sat with Cecibel waiting for her to start her chores (which she attempts to put off by attaching herself to me in a persistent and irritating fashion) she saw a white hair on my head. I asked her to remove it, which she did.

It was not very long, maybe a month old, a little less. As Cecibel taunted me for being old I told her it wasn´t a very long white hair and that it must have started growing after I met her. She did not find this very funny, but I got her to laugh anyway. I thought it was funny - and probably accurate too. :) Shortly after that she left to do her chores.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

My Name

Usually, when ordering out and I have to leave my name, I find it easier to leave my middle name - Elizabeth - because people understand this name and can spell it, whereas my first name results in a confused stare.

One time while here in El Salvador, Solidea and I ordered pizza and had to leave a name. Since Solidea was ordering for both of us, she said her name and received the confused stare I am used to. I jumped in and said, why don´t you use my name, Karina. The girl smiled and quickly wrote my name. So that´s how it feels!

My name is common here. Even the spelling. I haven´t counted how many Karina´s I have in my classes, but I´ve been making seating charts and have come across about 15 so far.

Accustomed

I´ve been told not to talk about the weather here, and I´m not going to. I´m simply going to say that I´ve become accustomed to the weather. It took about a week and a half, but now, at night when it drops down to 78 degrees, it´s cool enough that I wear pajama pants and curl up with a blanket on my bed. In my current bedroom it gets down to 75 during the night, which is nice and cool for sleeping.

That´s all I´m going to say about that.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

First Day Alone

Today has been my first day teaching classes alone. Conveniently, the two classes I am most worried about (8th and 9th grade) had tests today, so that went really well.

There is one student in 9th grade who clearly does not like that we require everyone to write the homework in their notebooks, whether or not they have a book. (not all the students have books) Every day she has some argument or other and today was no different. Today, she also took it upon herself to approach me while I had started the review of the test and explain a "better" way to do the review. I am very proud of myself because I responded very patiently and showed her quickly that the next section of the test I had planned on reviewing in the manner she suggested. She seemed a bit annoyed that I was not going to change what I was doing at the time, but then, I need help translating, not teaching.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Too Funny

I found this on Fail blog. Too funny, Oh Yeah!

fail owned pwned pictures
see more pwn and owned pictures

Sunday, February 22, 2009

People I´ve Met

I´ve been here 5 weeks, so who have I met? Well, I don´t have any good pictures of the sisters, so let me introduce some other people first.
Here we have myself, Eneyda (I thought it was spelled like this: Aneda, if that helps your pronunciation), and Solidea. Eneyda is about the average height of women here in El Salvador, 5 ft. I´m the average height of a man, 5´5¨. Solidea is just tall. I think she is 5´9¨.



Here are my American volunteer friends. I´m on the left with my new, nifty Vides shirt from El Salvador. Sydney is in the middle, she is also tall and has blond hair, stands out in a crowd here. On the right is Molly, she is volunteering in Honduras, which is where she left her Vides shirt. Shame, shame. I love them. We are a support group, although both of them have been here for 1 year already, so really it´s a support Karina group. :)


This is a cat that lives at the House. I can´t remember the cat´s name, but she is pregnant and when she wants attention meows a lot. She scares us by sneaking into the kitchen when we are eating and rubs against our legs. Every so often around the dinner table you see someone give a start and then look under the table. Then we all shoo the cat out. (don´t want her to get used to being fed from the kitchen table) Rather enjoyable.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Things That Bite

Yesterday the sisters and I made a discovery about the bites I’ve been receiving – they are not from mosquitos. New found evidence made the theory of mosquitos highly unlikely. What new found evidence you might ask? Enormous bites on my arm. First, like any good investigation, we should review the history.

When I went to bed Wednesday night, there were no bites on my arm. When I woke up, there were three along the forearm. They were biggish, but not overly alarming. I assumed they were bites from the Evil mosquitos. To document the effects of the Evil mosquitos, I took this picture.

Over the course of the next two days, the area affected by the bites grew to a rather alarming size. Observe.

I found that scratching them also increases their size. Go figure.

Since they are on the side of my arm I don’t usually look at, it wasn’t until lunch on Friday that one of the Sister’s pointed it out to me. At dinner, another Sister, who saw the bites for the first time, said they were from Pulgas. Fleas. Perdon? Fleas. After a lengthy discussion about various bugs that could have bitten me I stripped my bed and immediately washed all the bedding. I had showered before dinner, so I didn’t repeat that. That night, I did not receive a bite. Apparently, I was not bitten by Chinches (bed bugs), and thank goodness, because apparently those bites hurt a lot. Mine don´t hurt, just itch on occassion. Sister Marg. Guillen drew me a picture of one and it has a big set of pinchers. Eeeeh!
I know, my first photos. Not so pretty. Let me see if I can get more loaded on here somewhere.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Observations 2

In case you don´t want to read about my grumblings, here are some more observations I´ve made about El Salvador (as a warning, I grumble a bit in #2)

1) Having a propperly zipped zipper is not so important here. The first day of school I told a girl that the zipper on her skirt was not zipped. She appropriately turned and zipped it up. I noticed the same thing on a few other girls. I didn´t mention anything since some of them were using safety pins, their zippers apparently broken. I realized after a few days of observing both the girls, the Sisters, and people outside the school, that there must be an epidemic of broken flys and zippers in El Salvador. Better not to mention it to them, could be a sensitive issue.
2) There are mosquitos here - and they love me. I have learned there are 2 types. 1) I call the normal ones, they bite, it itches for a day, it goes away. 2) I call the evil ones, they bite, it turns into a welt, it itches enough to wake me up at night, and sticks around for a week. These are also the ones that carry Denghui Fever. I have made plans and discussed them with the sisters what will be done when I get Denghui Fever. (I´m averaging 3 bites a day and that´s using bug spray - and it´s not the rainy season yet. I´m doomed to get Denghui Fever.)
3) If Scrapbooking were a hobby down here I would say every girl at this school has scrapbooking for a hobby. One girl had 5 of those punch things that make different shapes in paper! At school! I like taking notes from students now because they´re so pretty to look at - and of course, they shouldn´t be passing them. :)
4) They love: Winnie the Pooh, Pucca (Japanese Cartoon), Tinker Bell, Hannah Montana, The Jonas Brothers, Carebears, and any other cutesy thing that comes along. Their notebooks are a testament to this love and I have to admit, I like it! It´s fun. Tigger is my favorite.
5) They love Stickers. If it has adhesive, it´s worth keeping.
6) There are no tourists in El Salvador. I ran into some other American´s in another town and we stopped to say hi since we obviously stood out as not from El Salvador. Volunteers with Peace Corp. They hadn´t seen any tourists either.
7) People chew with their mouth open. And talk while chewing. I´ve had more food spit on me than I care to mention.
8) Most everyone I talk to is very willing to talk to me and help me with my Spanish. Amazing!

That´s all for now.

Bad Day

This is probably not a good day to leave a post as I´m rather angry and very frustrated today, which means if anything else comes at me today I´m going to start crying. All I asked for before and since I´ve been here is for something written that explains everything I need to do. This is a school, I am a teacher, usually these institutions have pretty clear guidelines on what is expected from their employees. Not so much here. Well, that´s not accurate. There are guidelines, there are requirements, there are deadlines - but none of them are written down. Oftentimes, they are not even spoken of, until the day or the hour before they are needed. Apparently, everyone who lives in El Salvador just knows them. I am liking El Salvador less and less - and I´ve only been here a month. Not that I´m counting. (1 month, 5 days)

sigh. Solidea leaves on Monday to return to Italy for 3 weeks. I think she´ll come back. I´m not so sure she´ll come back to this school. She´ll do what she needs to do for herself. That´s one thing I´ve learned about her, not afraid to voice her opinions and express her concerns. This has been good for me in that she gets the information we need to teach. It has been bad since we often butt heads as to how to teach the classes. That´s a bit frustrating since I want to implement the teaching techniques I´ve learned but often have to convince her it´s the best thing to do. This gets tiring when we´re not speaking the same language and go through the same arguments every planning session.

Right, so she´ll be gone for 3 weeks and part of me is really scared and part of me is really excited. The scared part is for the classes, because I´m going to have to work a lot harder making sure I know as much as possible about the grammar and how to translate examples and what not. The excited part is that now my Spanish should really improve. Not to always look at the negative, but working with Solidea has hampered my Spanish. We plan in English (she wants to practice) and since most of each day is spent together, my Spanish is not being used all that much, other than in the classes and at meals . We spent one day with local VIDES volunteers and they insisted I don´t speak English to any of the other English speakers (there were 3 others), so I didn´t, and I was surprised when the next day I started speaking Spanish in the morning with a familiarity I hadn´t experienced before. It wasn´t that I knew everything I wanted to say, but using the language and having to search for words to explain things makes a huge difference in the learning curve.

Solidea has become something of crutch for both myself and everyone else. When they want to communicate with me, they turn to Solidea. This is also becoming rather frustrating. I´ve started talking mostly in Spanish to Solidea, but it´s too easy to use English when I don´t know a word. It´s better for me to talk to the Sister´s or the Interna´s who don´t know any English.

Oh yeah, the major frustration of today is learning about something we are supposed to turn in to the Ministry tomorrow (Ministry is the government education department) and something else we need to prepare for all the classes by the end of March. Swell timing. Solidea has a bunch of stuff to prepare for her trip home in 3 days and I´ll be adjusting to a heavier work load as it is, so why not add a few more items now, since I´m collecting work? Yeah, a bit irritated.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Rumbling

Maybe there´s something to be said about those little clouds floating around in the sky - that they really do indicate earthquakes. Last night, at 3:30 in the morning, I woke up to an earthquake. It was big enough to wake me up, but it then stopped, I quickly fell back asleep and completely forgot about it until this morning when the sisters asked me if I felt the earthquake. Then I remembered.

Maybe those little clouds are actually puffs of smoke from a volcano and hence a frontrunner to the rumbling coming. I don´t know, it´s a thought, I can´t figure how clouds are connected to earthquakes. I´ll have to look that up.

At any rate, today the sisters, Solidea, and I are heading out to a house by the ocean for a retreat day. There should be a pool and hammocks which S. Olinda said we can utilize after lunch, when the retreat is done. Sounds good to me. I could use a day of reflection - and I made a point not to bring anything related to lesson planning. (I almost packed it, but then decided not to.)

Friday, February 6, 2009

Observations

Since I´ve come to El Salvador I´ve noticed some things and I would like to share them with you.

First, the birds. There are a variety here. When I sleep in the room at the dormitory I am usually awakened by two distinct bird calls. The first sounds like someone talking slowly into a fan. I can´t discern what is being said, but I´ll try to figure that out when I move back to that room at the end of February. The other bird sounds like the horn off of a child´s bike. Both are a little odd to wake up to and I can´t sleep through either.

Of course, if the birds don´t wake me up the traffic does. Horns are a hot commodity here and every vehicle has one. And the motto in El Salavodor is If you have it, use it. And everyone does, in a variety of ways, from short staccotto beeps to indicate a person can walk or a vehicle can enter, to long, held our horns indicating much frustration and anger, to the random combination of beeps which could indicate boredom or happiness or a need to pee, hard to say. Horns are a whole other language here.

Busses are particularly fond of the horn. There are roughly 10 million busses in San Salvador. I think they have the most extensive bussing system I´ve ever seen. And they´re exciting. Busses in El Salvador don´t just take you where you need to go, they race each other to get there first! Perhaps the final destinations of each bus are not the same, but stopping points along the way are the same(which can be pretty random), and it´s a game to see who can collect the most people and get them to their destination first. What this means is that the more people on the bus the better - no matter the number of seats. It also means that you have to hang on as soon as you put one foot on the bus because you don´t know when the bus driver will hit the gas. Same goes for exiting, get off quick or the bus might take off with one of your feet.

Oh, and don´t get me started on passing! I first thought every street in San Salvador was one way because busses pass all the time - and so close sometimes I wouldn´t be able to stick my fist between them. This is not true, some streets are one way, but not all. And just like in the States, you don´t want to ride the short bus. These are the scariest and for heaven´s sake, don´t sit in the front! Yeah, learned my lesson there. The drivers take more risks and hit the brakes faster and are just angrier in general which is obvious by their use of the long, drawn out horn.

At any rate, more observations. People don´t really travel in El Salvador. At least, it´s not the norm here in the city. They don´t go to the beach for the weekend, or anywhere else. From what I can determine, they just can´t afford to. Most that I´ve talked to don´t like to swim and are afraid of the sea. But who can blame them since they have the most dangerous coast of Central America with very strong currents and the Red Tide 2x a year. I´m scared of it too.

There are not a lot of tourists to San Salvador, and quite frankly there isn´t a lot to see here. It is a rather ugly city. I´ve only seen one park where they actually had grass and lamp posts and people! It looked so much like a park from back home that I wanted to jump right off the bus and run down and around the park leaping with joy in the dappled sunlight streaming through the palm trees. I´m pretty sure no one would have been surprised if I jumped off a bus while it was still moving.

Oh, and one last observation: yesterday their were clouds in teh sky of an odd dappled nature and one of our students told us this meant there would be a strong earthquake soon. I don´t know if it´s true, but I´ll let you know if happens. How exciting!

Monday, February 2, 2009

Background Info.

This keyboard rocks, it has all the buttons for accents and punctuation in Español!

This last weekend has been a busy one, but I had Saturday free from work - Solidea and I made sure that at least one day remained free. Our schedule from Monday - Friday is English classes in the morning, somedays until 3:30, then we have a few hours free, then at 5 it is over to watch the Interna´s (girls living here during the week) until dinner. At dinner, one of us stays with the girls, the other eats, then we switch. Then S. Margarita Róman comes and stays with the girls. Usually it is 8 by this time and has been dark for 2 hours. Every day, it gets dark here at 6pm, no matter the season. The sun rises at 6am and sets at 6pm.

Sundays start with Mass (it´s always a surprise when and where this will be, which is why I missed it yesterday) then Solidea and I teach English for 3 hours to ladies from the community. At the same time many of the other sisters are teaching other various classes as well. After the classes can be time for chores, or if there is a local VIDES meeting Solidea and I run off to that. I might not do this so much since I have plenty of other stuff to do to keep me busy and day I´m not riding for hours on those painfully hot buses is a good day.

There are 24 or so Interna´s ranging in age from junior high to high school. Interna´s are the girls who dorm here during the week while their parents work. I don´t know if the parents can´t afford to feed them all week long or if they work odd hours, but whatever the case, the girls board here for the week and go home on the weekends.

Most of the teachers here this year are new, which is why S. Margarita Guillen(the principle) is having headaches. The school switched from a private school to a public school (I had thought it was the other way around before I got here). Because of this, most of the teachers left and the government provided a bunch of new ones. I was not provided by the government, but there is definitely a need for an English teacher, and if last years teacher is any indicator, they were in need of a good English teacher. To sum up last years teacher, let me just say that I will actually introduce my students to English grammar and words, and not just make them pray all hour long while predicting who will pass the test because Jesus told me. Yeah, apparently this is not normal and please don´t judge all the teachers in El Salvador by this one example. All the teachers I´ve met are pretty normal and capable of teaching.

I am very lucky Solidea is here. I think the Sisters would take more time to explain things to me if she wasn´t, but I know they wouldn´t think of everything - which is evident because we are frequently told things shortly before they happen. For example: the teachers are having a meeting right now in such and such a room(often a student tells us this); 7th grade is your homeroom and you need to prepare them for the pep rally tomorrow - right now; ¨why aren´t you walking around checking on the interna´s?¨ ¨It´s not 5 o´clock.¨ ¨No, today you need to watch them from 4.¨ ¨Okay.¨
Many times they discuss school related things at dinner - all of which I would miss if not for Solidea. And we´re the only two volunteers here, we´re the same age, and appreciate a lot of the same things. Her companionship has been so important to me here - and she has said the same of me. And she speaks English! So very nice.

Okay, that´s the background information on my location for now!