On Thursday I'll be officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Immediately after the swearing-in, I'll head to the eastern city of San Miguel along with the rest of my training group, where we'll spend the night and meet our new community guides in the morning for a half-day orientation. On Friday afternoon, I'll head for the first time to my community of Caserío Toreras with my community guides Carmen, the director of the school in my site, and Crisanto, the president of Toreras' ADESCO (in whose house I'll be living).
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| Wearing hats with my host siblings |
I'll miss my host family here in Nuevo Cuscatlán, but I'll be back at the end of November for two additional weeks of training, and I plan to come back a couple times after that to visit them. Fancying myself a pretty distant person, I didn't expect to develop any kind of emotional connection to a host family in just ten weeks, but they're such sweet people that it's definitely going to be hard to tell them goodbye on Thursday morning. Just this afternoon my host parents took me out thrift shopping in Santa Tecla to buy warm clothes (my site is way up in the mountains -- who knew I'd have to buy thermal long-sleeve tees in El Salvador?), and then my host mom taught me how to wash them (this of course elicited laughter all around, as men in El Salvador
never wash clothes). Laundry without machines is as labor-intensive as you would expect.
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| Yesterday I experienced my first "Fiesta Rosa" (Quinciñera) |
I don't know the exact nature of my internet situation in my site, but it'll likely be less ideal than here in my training community, where I've had internet access every day through a USB modem for only $15 a month. Peace Corps staff told me that there is an internet connection at Carmen's house, which is a 45-minute walk away from mine. Hopefully it's wifi, so I can connect my own devices to it, but I'm not getting my hopes up too high. In any event, I'm going to try to put up at least one blog post a week, and do my best to keep up with the news, which falls somewhere between food and shelter on my list of needs.
Speaking of which, for anyone getting bogged down by article after article about Congressional dysfunction, I invite you to read this Nicholas Kristof
op-ed about some human achievements we can be proud of. Also on the topic of achievements, this week health care exchanges open throughout the U.S. to offer low-cost, often subsidized plans to Americans who lack coverage. Kudos to those who have worked so hard to pass, preserve, implement the Affordable Care Act.
Good morning how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from El Salvador? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in El Salvador in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28902 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez