Whoa sometimes I wonder what I am doing in
So in training we learned how to make artesanias, which are like trinkets sort of, gifts but with local material, in my case we learned how to make things out of potato chip bags, which are found everywhere because people just throw their trash on the ground after they are done with it. I am currently working on making some different things with my collected trash and actually decided to make my Halloween costume out of trash; it’s going to be good I have spent quite a bit of my free time on it…
It kind of sucks the time of year they lets us free on our communities because in about 1 month my whole area is going to be entering into the coffee harvest which last 3-4 months and nothing will get done in the area except coffee picking, which basically means I am going to have a good 3 months to do basically nothing, hang out and think about what I will be able to do in February when school starts again and then around April I will be able to start doing work with the members of the community…they have some reasons for this, to give us time to settle in and make out Spanish better, but quite frankly I have very little patience to wait 3 or 4 months to start doing projects, and what makes the situation worse is that in like 3 weeks the school let out, so I will not even be able to work in the schools…basically the next 3 months in site will be very boring, but I will be moving into my own house in 1 month and I will be able to spend some time fixing it up, making it how I want it, and then I might try and do some mini-projects. Also in this time I will be making some trips around the country to visit other sites and volunteers to get some better ideas on how to successfully run a project, where to look for funds to do different types of projects, etc…but all in all I got some long and boring days ahead of me J
The weather here currently makes it hard to do stuff as well, for instance when it pours hard with rain, which is does almost everyday its hard to even go out into the community and talk with people, because you can’t hear each other when talking because all the roofs here are tin, and when it pours its like elephants are jumping up and down, it is that loud, makes it tough…I bought a machete a couple a of weeks ago and its nice and sharp now and ready to work, I also bought rubber boots so I can play in the mud…in fact I go out and help out on my host dads farm about once or twice a week, he has cows so I get to haul the manure and help prepare their feast of grass and corn stalks everyday, its dirty work, but its kind of fun, and they milk the cows everyday which makes for fresh milk just about everyday in some shape, mostly a type of cheese my host mom makes which is delicious, but even better is the oatmeal I get for breakfast almost every morning with the fresh cow milk…good stuff…I love the food here, even though it’s the same a lot, beans, eggs, tortillas, rice…I love it, every now and then we eat meat, but rarely because of no electricity/no refrigeration, there is no way to store the food.
Slowly I am buying little household items which will “furnish” my house when I move in next month…it’s funny because I almost can’t spend money in my site because there is simply nothing here to spend money on, except for maybe a coke, or a bag of chips from time to time. The fruit here is amazing, fresh oranges, limes, bananas, plantains, guava, and a whole bunch of other fruit and produce. My soon to be house has an orange and lime tree, and my host dad’s farm has tons of bananas and oranges, so I foresee lots of fruit intake during my service here.
This is really my first blog blog, only 4 months in country and one month in site to get it out, but such is life,
