PST2 (Round Two) and Thanksgiving

First off, a very Happy Belated Thanksgiving to all! I missed spending the holidays with you and the opportunity to enjoy a gluttonous meal together. But, don’t feel quite so bad for me; I did manage to prepare and feast on a Butterball turkey on el Dia de Acciones Gracias. I’ll explain later.

So the count is officially down to a mere 20 days before I return home to Tonawanda, NY on December 23rd. It’s hard to believe that Christmas is coming upon us so quickly, and I am having an especially difficult time realizing it’s December as I continue to melt in the constant Salvadoran heat. Needless to say, however, I am more than ecstatic to spend the holidays with my family and friends, including my favorite Christmas events like traditional Polish Christmas at the Hanitzs’, Cousins’ Bowling, Scotch Eggs at Ruth and Pete’s, and reuniting with my UR loves. Above all, I look most forward to seeing my family and friends while indulging in all the delicious cuisine that I have missed. Don’t worry. My pants and I are prepared to gain 15 pounds.

In the meantime, though, I have been managing to remain busy, just completed my second round of training, celebrated Thanksgiving with my Peace Corps family on an island in a volcanic lake, and am heavily scheduled through December 22nd with preliminary latrine project events. Here’s a (not so) brief rundown of recent events in my ever-exciting, never-boring vida Salvadorena.

PST2 (Round Two)
Pre-Service Training, or PST as it’s affectionately called in PC acronymic lingo, is divided into two sections here in El Salvador. PST1 is the first two months a volunteer spends in country living with a host family in a training community, focusing mostly on language learning, as well as some technical training related to a volunteer’s program. After these two very challenging months filled with questions such as, “What am I doing here?", “What in the world was just said to me?", and my personal favorite, “How much longer do we have to sit in these white plastic chairs?", PCTs finally swear in officially as PCVs, traipse off to site for two months to begin service and community diagnostics before returning for PST2. In PST2, training is very specifically tailored to one’s program area and filled with valuable ideas and techniques to bring back to one’s community.

As those of you who have read my last blog update, the original dates of the SAg/EE (Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Education Program) PST2 was canceled due to the landslides that devastated the department of San Vicente and most significantly the municipality of Verapaz, a mere two kilometers from my training community of Molineros. After some rescheduling and a quick request for additional training funds from PC Washington, our PST2 was rescheduled for November 16th-November 26th at the Escuela Nacional de Agricultura (ENA), the National School of Agriculture. My group of 17 SAg/EE volunteers was set to arrive Sunday, November 15th to allow for a prompt 8AM start on the 16th and we were slated to finish at 12 noon on the 26th, Thanksgiving Day, just in time to celebrate my personal favorite American holiday (besides my birthday…haha).

My boss Rolando appointed me in charge of arriving first to the ENA to collect the key to the house we would be living in on campus for nearly two weeks. The house itself was pretty nice with a fair sized backyard that the boys in my group took full advantage of by setting up a slack line, a sort of not-so-tight tightrope balancing contraption, and large dorm style bedrooms my companeros and I would be sharing for nearly two weeks. With the exception of our one married couple that had a room to themselves, the remaining 15 of us slept five to a room. To be quite honest, I was a little nervous how our living situations would turn out, especially for me, considering I have never managed well in shared space. I have only shared a room once in my life first semester of junior in college, and let’s just say that was a challenging experience (Cait, I’m still sorry for being such a crappy roommate…love you and can’t wait to see you!) But, much to my pleasant surprise, we all got along swimmingly and had an awesome time sharing stories, watching movies and playing games (thanks, Casey, for sending me the rules of The Game…it was a huge hit!)

As far as actual training goes, we got to participate in a lot of very interesting, hands-on agricultural activities ranging from tree grafting to farm diversification. For someone whose agricultural experience starts and ends with a small vegetable garden in her parents’ backyard, cutting grass, and trimming bushes (the Rech Way, obviously), I learned a tremendous amount.

Tree grafting, taking advantage of the strong root structure of a particular plant and connecting a cutting of another plant that bears favorable fruit and is disease resistant, is a common practice in the farming of fruits here in ES. There are various techniques within this practice, and let me tell you, none of them are easy. One of the instructors from the ENA taught and showed us how to perform each of them, and then provided us with the opportunity to practice. To say that our tree grafts were comical is an understatement. Of course with practice we will continue to mejorar, but I just wish I had a camera to have evidence of how silly our poor grafts looked. They looked like tattered soldiers returning from battle.

In addition to several technical classes on campus including lombriculture, composting and soil testing, we also took several jaunts to visit various places in El Salvador. (Keep in mind, the country is the size of Massachusetts and our bosses had cars making travel bien facil.) One day we took a trip to one of El Salvador’s four national parks, Cero Verde, in the west where we hiked in the refreshingly brisk and unbelievable fresh mountain air, and learned about opportunities for field trips with youth groups or environmental clubs. Be sure to check out my photos on Facebook. (Aunt Lynn and Uncle Rand, I made sure to take lots of plant photos for you guys, so check them out!)

Another day we traveled east of San Salvador to San Pedro where we visited an organic, diversified farm. The man who ran the farm, Don Otto, was an amazing speaker, dedicated to he amplification of organics in El Salvador, passionate about his work, and a definite business man taking advantage of the growing organics market. I also have some great photos of this jaunt, so check those out, too! After exploring his parcel of land where Don Otto grows bananas, plantains, pineapple, coconuts, citrus, cacao and various ornamental plant varieties, we enjoyed an enormous meal of soup, chicken, rice, and salad that was all washed down with agua de coco, coconut water, that we drank straight from the fruit. If anyone ever decides to come down and visit me, I really would like to share this rare gem with you. So, book your flights already!

Thanksgiving
My original Thanksgiving plan was to enjoy a meal at the house of one of the very generous embassy families who openly welcomed us volunteers into their homes. But, before deciding to accept the invitation of these gracious families, a group of my friends and I decided to explore the option of renting a house on Lago Coatepeque, a volcanic lake in the western part of the country, where we would share the holiday together and prepare our own Thanksgiving feast. Many thanks to the hard work and continuous research of my friends Dana and Karl, we secured the rental of an amazing home on the island, Isla Teopan, in the lake. As extravagant and this sounds, and as extravagant as the home really was, the rental price was more than reasonable and when divided amongst friends, more than affordable, even on a PCV’s budget. I’ll be honest, I needed to be convinced to join my friends on the island rather than spend Thanksgiving with an embassy family, but as I later realized, my family here in El Salvador are my friends and fellow PCVs, and it’s far more special for us to spend the holidays together than with an embassy family. It’s difficult for us all to come together being peppered across the country, some in remote mountainous spots that require a two hour hike to the nearest form of transportation, so we definitely had to aprovechar this rare opportunity to all be together.

Seeing as we weren’t going to finish up training until noon on Thanksgiving Day, my friends and I decided that we would celebrate Thanksgiving on Black Friday instead (that’s practically an official American holiday anyway, right?) By the time we would get to the island, there would simply not be enough time to roast a turkey and prepare all the other fixings.

You may be asking right now, where in the world did you find a turkey to roast for Thanksgiving? The answer is simple: Price Smart, or the Central American equivalent of Costco, complete with Kirkland Brand products. Our boss, Rolando, was clutch in our obtainment of the bird, which we later named Cessie after the lady who prepared our meals at the ENA. When discussing our Thanksgiving plans with Rolando, another PCV and I got to talking about how much we would miss cranberry sauce made from fresh Ocean Spray cranberries, when Rolando chimed in and said Price Smart would have them. Unfortunately, Price Smart is a member shopping only store, so we quickly let the idea of cranberries go. But, very generously and in the true holiday spirit, Rolando not only offered to drive us to Price Smart on our return to the Peace Corps office from the ENA, he prestared (let us borrow) his membership card. Let me just tell you, walking into Price Smart was like walking into America. All the products available for purchase, all the displays, right down to the flat screen TV area was the exact same layout as any Costco or BJ’s in the States, was mind boggling. I was thrilled to find a Butterball Young Turkey available for purchase and stunned that it was cheaper than the Salvadoran brand of Turkey. Believe it or not, the going rate of a fresh young turkey is around $2.40 per pound in your normal supermarket here in ES. We were lucky to find a 15 pound Butterball for $28, all thanks to Rolando.

After a bit more running around for groceries (there are no food stores near the island) in a tag teamed effort (Dana and I, with our assistants Axel and Karl, were shopping at separate grocery stores with hopes of finding some canned Libby’s pumpkin, but no such luck, so nearly 15 phone calls were made), our trusty PC approved driver, Don Marcelo, picked us up and we were on our way. Don Marcelo dropped us of at the ferry dock with all of our belongings and all the food and drink we purchased for our two days at the lake. We must have been quite the site to see, ten gringos completely weighed down with luggage and grocery bags, walking onto a ferry to get to our dream rental house. Once finally at Quinta Torino (that’s the name of our house) we were able to take a load off, literally and figuratively, and enjoy ourselves for two days. Many funny times ensues including a 150 pound black lab, white plastic chairs and acorns, but those are all stories for another time and place...

Thursday night the boys, led by Karl, were in charge of preparing dinner . They did an amazing job firing up the charcoal grill (yes, we brought our own charcoal) and grilling some amazing steaks which they served with homemade steak cut French fries. Karl, being the former chef and coal blaster in Argentina, grilled a perfectly seasoned steak topped it off with some traditional Argentinean sauce.

Breakfast and Thanksgiving dinner the next day were left to the girls, and if I do say so myself, I think we did a bang-up job. Dana took the helm on the breakfast effort and we feasted on a wonderful, bacon and veggie filled egg casserole, hash browned potatoes and fresh pico de gallo. Once breakfast cleanup was finished, we got straight to work on the main event.

Naturally, turkey and gravy preparation was my responsibility and I went straight to work on Martha Stewart’s traditional super fatty turkey. With careful basting every 20 minutes, I have to say that this turkey was one of my best. You definitely need to check out the photos on Facebook because how well it turned out, it looked fake. The skin was perfectly browned and crisp, the breast juicy and tender. I also prepared the cranberry sauce and was able to maintain the perfect sour and sweet balance that’s often hard to find. To round out the meal, we had mashed potatoes made by the boys, Dana’s dressing, and Katheryn’s garlic green beans. In all senses it was a traditional Thanksgiving with our non-traditional, but ever supportive and loving, PC family.

What’s Gone On Since and What’s to Come
Saturday morning came much too soon after our Thanksgiving meal, but by 7AM, my friend Kallie and I were on the ferry and on our way out east to Chinameca where our monthly PC soccer game was to be held. We were fortunate the white fluffy clouds in the sky blocked the hot afternoon sun making our two forty-five minute halves bearable, but regardless the PC Women’s Team perished. According to my veteran teammates, the Chinameca Women’s Team was the best team they have played to date, so the pill of defeat was a little easier to swallow. Though we did lose a lot to one, I can take pride in scoring our only goal. My skills as forward are being honed, and hopefully at this month’s game on December 12th I’ll continue to improve. As always it was a great time, and fortunately the boys were victorious in their match.

Since back in site, I have dived right into the swing of things. This week alone I have had two meetings with both directives of the ADESCO and my women’s group. Unfortunately it seems like some of the wind has let from their sails of excitement and I am going to have to spend some time reenergizing them. It’s difficult because with language reconnect, the natural disaster, PST2 and Thanksgiving, I had been out of site nearly the entire month of November. But, I have faith and look forward to getting the ball rolling once again.

It was decided upon by the ADESCO and myself that the main project we will be pursuing is that of latrine construction, so be sure to keep checking back for updates and to check your inboxes; I no doubt will be pediring for ayuda very soon.

Right now, it is the time of the year when both sugar cane and coffee is harvested. Believe it or not, yesterday morning I set out with my counterpart Don Miguel at 5AM and spent four hours cutting sugar cane. We were arrozaring, which means we were cutting cane to be replanted next year, not for milling. The cane that will be milled won’t be cut for another two weeks. I was also told that arrozaring is much more difficult than harvesting the cane for milling. After we finished our work, Don Miguel told me that we cut about two tons of sugar cane, each workers’ daily quota. In the parcel of land that we were cutting, there were 25 workers, so in one day 50 tons of sugar were cut. I now have a new understanding and definite appreciation of where sugar comes from and how hard the work really is. All in all it was a great experience, I only got a few scratches on my face, a couple blisters on my hands, and got to smell the sweet scent of sugar all morning. Don Miguel told me that the next time I get to go work with him won’t be until we actually harvest the cane for milling. The work we did today is usually too hard for women, but harvest for milling is a different story. Ah, machismo.

Also, tomorrow I have plans to go with my host mother, Lilian, to my family’s cafetal, or coffee land, to help cut coffee. They are currently in the process of the first of two harvests of coffee, and this year, Lilian told me there is a lot to pick and they are behind schedule in their harvest. I am curious to see if the overall supply of coffee is up as well, and if so, how it affects prices.

One last pretty exciting thing I found out this week is that I was newly appointed editor of the SAg/EE section of El Salvador’s quarterly Peace Corps magazine, El Camino. My first issue will be published in February.

Well, the countdown to my return home continues, and I’m sure the time will continue to fly up until the 23rd at 7:45AM when I hop on my first flight to Houston. I hope all is well for you back in the States, and that you know I miss you all very much. We’ll see each other so soon!!! Wahoo!!!

Millions of thanks go out to Janet who not only sent me a Thanksgiving card, but also a wonderful surprise package. (Also, thanks Mr. Dehlinger for your message on the box, what a pleasant surprise!) My host sister, Leslie, and I will be making our first batch of Rice Krispie Treats tonight to take with us as a snack while cutting coffee. The chocolate, well, that’s already been enjoyed. Thanks so much!

A very special Happy Belated Birthday goes out to my cousin Darcie! I am so sorry I wasn’t able to email or Facebook you, but as some of you know, my Blackberry was out of commission due to network issues for the last two weeks. I am reconnected now! Next, a wonderful Happy Birthday goes out to my dear Mitchy! Have an awesome time, enjoy your last birthday in college and I hope to see you while I’m home. Also, congrats on the job! Lastly, but certainly not least, a very special Happy Early Birthday goes out of my cousin Devin! I don’t want to miss your birthday, too! Be good kiddo!