So what the hell have you been doing, Greg?

This will be my extraordinarily scatterbrained recap of the past 6 weeks...

Moved to a canton se llama Molineros (a molino is a place where you grind corn and rice, and all that jazz.) where there are a lot of molinos... got it?
I live with an absolutely wonderful family. Mi Mama se llama Gladys and her husband is Don Orlando. The family is complicated beyond that and do not at all feel like explaining it. She is, without a shadow of a doubt, the sweetest woman I have ever met in my life. Don't dare challenge me on that. In my house I've got a bed and tarantulas. Outside we've got two hammocks and chickens. I eat at least 3 tortillas every meal and drink water from the well. I've lucked out, though, because Molineros has potable water. Oh, and the chickens live in the latrine. Took me weeks of being concerned about the clucking noise every time I pissed to realize my penis wasn't mocking me.

Training is a perpetual bore, but an undeniable necessity...not unlike cuddling. Well not that its boring, really, there are just better things I'd like to be doing with my time. (see: cuddling) Spanish is coming along and is a whole lot of hard work. Aside from that I've learned just about everything there is to know about women's health, women's reproductive system, how women should act in public, that women get treated like dirt here, women cook clean, care for kids, and often aren't the only girlfriend or wife of men, women's personal safety, and one time they told us this thing about men's health but I don't think anyone was listening.

Myself and 5 other aspirantes (trainees) had the unbelievable privilege of releasing I think close to 250 endangered baby sea turtles into the ocean by hand in Corral de Mulas, Usulutan. You want to talk about 'what the fuck?' I'm gonna go ahead and say that was it... That was a moment, man. That was something I won't soon forget barring any serious head injuries. Those things are mighty cool and mighty endangered. I recommend trying it...suckers.

There is some really interesting stuff going on around here. Foremost there was a civil war here, a particularly brutal one, between the early years of the 80's (and according to some fanciful others the middle 70's) and the early 90's. I've met only one person who likes to talk about it (a gringo) and frankly I may have heard all I can handle from him. In my canton they were not really effected by it it was mostly the eastern part of the country.
But I digress and am boring you terribly. I am as sure of that as I am sure that I fell out of the hammock this morning. (I swear it didn't hurt.) Anyway, its really cool... believe me, won't you?
The other crazy thing about this place is the gangs...MS-13 and M 18. Look that shit up... its real, I can fuckin promise you that. Myself, 4 other volunteers, and about 40 other bus passengers were hauling along at about 80 miles an hour on the Panamerican Highway for San Salvador when we came to a screeching halt because of an immense amount of police and commotion. When I say screeching I mean like 82% of the people on that bus now have "Blue Bird" permanently etched into their frontal lobes and the others got to know what kind of shampoo the person in front of them uses.
So all of us, a little jarred, start to look out the windows and one person points out just a little ways behind us is a little boy in a school uniform sprawled in the street.
By the time we got home later that day my family told us that the local news said the boy was 12 waiting for his bus to school with his mother. The maras pulled up and told him to get in the car. He didn't and paid the ultimate price. His mother was shot in both shoulders and brought to a hospital in San Sal. The news did not make the evening news. It did not make the papers the next day. By the next day people didn't even know what I was talking about it for anymore. 440 murders in El Salvador in 2010 by February 5th 2010 more than any city in the States gets in an entire year.
voiceselsalvador.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/el-salvador-reports-440-murders-in-2010/

On a lighter note! I have successfully avoided the drug trafficking and am currently living. Things are sometimes sketchy here, but not everywhere I hope.

I found out my site. I will be living in a tiny community called La Pena near Metapan in Santa Ana, El Salvador for at least the next two years of my life. It is about a 45 minute to an hour hike up the mountains from my nearest regular bus stop. Actually, there is a pick up truck but it runs like Monday and Friday mornings at 6 am. Monday AND Friday... not Monday through Friday. If I can handle Orchard Hill for a year I can handle anything, right?
So my site is tiny and I'm really digging the idea. I'm going to be living in a corn shed for at least two months. My family has a lot of cows and makes and sells cheese. I will guarantee I'll be an udder wizard...just give me a week. I hope to be riding horses soon, too. My site requirement was natural beauty so I'm pretty lit to see what things are like up there. There are only 50 houses in my community, its in the mountains so it shouldn't be 97 degrees every day, and I'll have a dog to hang out with me... Oh wait...

I also got a dog. A two month old dog who has yet to be named. I was thinking the caliche (its a language that only people in the cantones understand... a strange sub Spanish language) for a person who doesn't wear shoes haha. I've found a few other good ones but I'll save those for his introduction to this blog. He's got some serious shyness issues which will not fly with me but once I'm the one feeding him, I think he'll come around haha. He's mighty effin cool, though.

That sums up what I've been doing, I guess. Oh and I typed all this after tearing a ligament in my left pinky finger today in a basketball tourney. That injury is undiagnosed but hell I'm gonna milk it for all I can. All I know is that my pinky looked like the sign of Zoro this morning and the opposing teams point guard was my medic. How's that for Salvadoran hospitality?

We'll see when I get time to get back here... Got questions? Come on down to Santa Ana and ask them. I will have a hammock waiting for you. There is a good chance it will have chicken shit in or around it, you may get robbed on the way, you will get extraordinarily sick from the water or the food, you may end up in the wrong place (because everything has the same name), and you will most definitely get chaggas disease, but I can try my best to answer any question you've got when I get to the hospital to collect you.

It's been fun, kids, but I am fucking starving. I'm gonna go get some pupusas and see if I can make my pinky look like Harry Potter's scar again.

Que le vaya bien.