whole lot going down

It was Ricardo’s b-day on the 25th of February – so thus it was party organizing time. I somehow got put in charge of the cake. I didn’t mind picking up the tab – I minded ordering the thing!! They just kept asking questions – like what type of fruit, what color frosting (orange or blue), what to write on it and so on and so forth. In the end I just asked them to make it pretty.

The day of the feast I chilled over at Sonia’s house to learn how to make pollo guisado. It’s a type of fried/boiled chicken that is really good. We’ll see how it goes when I cook it – it was definitely a ‘little bit of this a little bit of that’ type of recipe.

The party turned out to be a lot of fun. Adam, Sonia’s boyfriend, brought over a bottle of Jonnie Walker Red Label and the night went on from there.

Tuesday through Thursday I spent organizing things for my artisans trip on Friday. I took four of my artisans up to Guatajiagua to learn how to make black pottery and learn a little more about using a pottery wheel. We left at around 6 am Friday and arrived around 11am. I won’t go into grand detail – if you want to know more you can check out the artisan blog. http://artisansofsddg.blogspot.com But I will say that I was thrilled with how the trip went and am really happy we did it.

On the way back from Guatajiagua, I was dropped off in San Salvador since I had worked to do in the capital the following day.

Sunday I was suppose to go organize books for a donation that my school was receiving, but that got pushed to Monday, so I filled the day with other events. First of I headed to mass – I don’t think it was a Roman Catholic mass, but I figure Christianity is Christianity no matter how you split it up.

Once there I met another volunteer who was good friends with a family from the US Embassy – so I got to go chill out at the embassy pool for a few hours…I even got lunch out of the deal. It was nice and relaxing. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my bathing suite, so I borrowed someone’s shorts and just chilled pool side.

After that I headed over to the Anthropological museum. I can’t say I was that impressed. It pretty much skipped over the civil war and in the religion section failed to talk about the importance of the Church during the civil war and liberation theology. But, it did have some nice old pottery and other artifacts. Some of which I still see in use today.

Across the street from the museum was a convention center type area and it was holding an agriculture event. So, I wondered over and took a look at the cows (milk producing and meat varieties), bought a cutting board and checked out the local goods available. I wish I had had more time to go through it all, but it was starting to get dark and I had to catch a bus back to the hostel.

Monday is when we did organize the books. A volunteer down here (Megan) worked with several Rotary Clubs to organize a book donation. In total 12 schools and 1 orphanage will each receive approximately 400 books.

Unfortunately, only about 1/3 of the books had arrived by Monday. So we quickly shorted through them in preparation for the following day when the schools would come to receive training and the books.

I ran home after Monday on a number of buses (I won’t go into details, but I had to take two additional buses on account of an emergency bathroom stop) and just passed out from so much traveling.

Tuesday I got up and headed off to the Library Training. We left around 7am and got there a little before 8:30am. We would’ve gotten their earlier had the men in the front seat actually listened when I told them to turn – but I’m not bitter. The training lasted all day and was pretty through about how to set it up and explaining systems to catalog the books.

Unfortunately, again, the rest of the books hadn’t arrived and still haven’t. So, the volunteers will go in at another date to organize the books and figure out transport from there. But I must say, from the book I have seen, they look great. They have all sorts of titles, including Latin American authors, the Magic School Bus, Clifford and a whole lot more.

Wednesday was when I held another fuel-efficient stove meeting. Only two people showed, but they turned out to be the right people. They were excited about seeing the stove and how it worked. They organized meeting for their communities and have vowed to have a good turn out. I’m also hopeful about talking to one or two other community members.

Alright, I’ll cut this off here and continue next week.