You Gonna Eat That!? - Mike Watkins /No Cavities And A Negative Stool Sample

Hey, hellooooo.
it is has been a few months, clearly, and now I am proud to say that I have completed my first year of service, had my medical evaluation and am very healthy, and I have no cavities. I am very fortunate to only have gotten amoebas, on more than one occasion, and to have been sick only once this whole time here.

Things are much different, they have been for quite some time. I feel different in my community. Not different as in set apart, but rather I feel just like another member of my community. Whenever I don't eat pupusas for more than 2 days I crave them, I eat 3 tortillas for lunch everyday instead of a half of one like my first months, and I have a dog that is serious about take caring of me. Little kids in the street will now speak to me in English after having taught them how to hear"How are you" and respond with "I'm good thank you." My boys are much more protective with me, they look out for me, make sure I am safe when I am not in site. My community has also met my brothers so they ask questions, want to be updated about them. There are so many more things that have changed that have made it hard, some days, to really envision that in less than a year I will be leaving.

Sometimes I feel like I am not actually going to go back, that is that I am not going home, I am home. Every single house in my community has someone that is right now, or has been recently, in the United States working. I heard a friend the other day tell me something that I could really relate to. He said he felt like his home was in the States, but his country is El Salvador. Sometimes I feel the same way, but reversed.

Now with a year left I am writing lots of letters to South Africa, finishing my reading list, seeing my projects come together, and planning some big changes in the next year and a half.

Your Brother is Better Looking Than You And Your Older Brother

The past 3 weeks have flown by.
My two brothers and sister in law came in,
And I am finally coming down from strep.
I remember when we hungout last time in June of 09. They both told me that they would come and visit me, and a year later they both came to this country where I serve. I had already had almost a month to practice before they came. I got to see the reactions of someone who had never been out of the USA, and the reaction of a seasoned traveler. We also wrestled a few times.

While they were here we celebrated my first full year in this country. And even though I can clearly remember certain poignant parts of this first year, I tend to think of that first year for another volunteer. I never expected anything before coming here, except that I expected it to be hard. And it is. I also knew that I would probably become closer to people as my spanish got better. You can ask my brothers, Tonio and his family are one of the best reasons to come and visit me and El Salvador.

I Missed The Bus: And It Was Something I Would Never Ever Do Again

Jutiapa, Cabanas, El Salvador April 27, 2010

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope that this letter finds you well. As all of you know, I am serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador. I have started a project for which I need your help. Two other volunteers that live and work in my community and I are trying to improve the transportation situation for high school students in our municipality.

The municipality in which we live is the 8th poorest in the country and it has a population of 6,584 people, of which, only 627 persons live in the village of Jutiapa itself. Thus, 94.8 % of the population live in isolated rural areas, without easy access to amenities and public services, like the high school. Recently, Non Government Organizations in collaboration with the government of El Salvador offered more scholarships to students who wish to study past 9th grade. Despite this new emphasis on education and the monetary support, 82 students still lack reliable transportation to and from the high school.

The only high school in the municipality is located in the pueblo of Jutiapa, more than 12 miles from some parts of our community. Because there are no school buses, the students’ only option is to walk 3 hours ONE WAY! Additionally, the road they walk is not only dangerous for young girls, but in the rainy season, the students have difficulty keeping their books and themselves dry.

With all of these obstacles, the drop out rate is high. The 3 of us, along with local leaders and the high school director, believe that transportation will increase the number of students who will decide to attend and to finish high school. Our goal is to raise $6,000 to purchase a 4x4 vehicle that will be used exclusively for school transportation. The funds are being raised through Peace Corps Partnership, which relies on donations from family, friends and returned Peace Corps volunteers in the United States. I am asking you to make a tax deductible donation to help improve the lives of the kids in Jutiapa. To donate please go to www.peacecorps.gov/contribute and select our project (Project Number 519-133) and follow the instructions. I will not know who donates or how much. If you cannot donate, please tell other people who might be interested in helping.

Thank you in advance for your support and for all the emails while I've been here.

Lite Bite and Big Ass Skies

I have a bike in my site, it is red and just the right size for me, and it's name is Suzi. Or Sucia.
I can get from my house to Ito's house in 8 minutes. I can get from my house to Cerrón Grande in 25, and I can get from my house to Jutiapa in one hour on my bike. Before coming here I used to ride my bike all the time. I had this one classic Schwinn cruiser that my friend Katie gave me and I rode it everywhere. It was so easy to ride too because there were no hills. Anywhere. Here there are lots of hills and trees and mountains or rolling hills. I never realized how big the sky is in Lubbock. I mean I always heard people talk about it and there was even a campaign that capitalized on how in some way Lubbock has many other giants besides it's breathtaking sky.

I knew I would miss certain things, showers for example, is now a treat whenever I stay in the capital or in a hotel or hostel. The shower doesn't even have to be hot or warm. And I am not even going to complain about taking bucket baths, I like them, but maybe it is more because I never get to have showers that make them so great. I knew food was going to be different and even though I did not exactly enjoy tortillas like I do today, I truly miss having a huge thing of peanut butter always at the ready. Something I truly miss are cell phone plans. Here you have to buy a card or "recharge" at a store and at times there will be these great promotions where you can talk back in the USA or send texts to friends for only one quarter.
What do I miss the most? Lite Bite. Yeah I think it would have to be Lite Bite. Amazing food, the smell, the music, the owner, the tables and hookahs and pita bread. The bahklava and hummus and lemonade and lentil soup. I miss riding my bike there with a book and a journal. I miss the different reactions people would give me when I had Lite Bite to go and ate it at their house. I think Lite Bite represents something about Lubbock that I really love, local cuisine. That's truly what I miss. It is a city that will continue to perplex and make me wonder about so many things that would only happen in that city, on the giant side of Texas.

A More Perfect Union

I have been here since tuesday. I got amoebas. Maldita amoebas!
I just have diarrhea. And I have lost about 10 pounds since tuesday.
On friday the newest group of trainees were sworn in, bound by the
constitution and the truths therein to uphold the ideals from which
John F Kennedy created the Peace Corps Act. To volunteer and help.

Friday night we welcomed the newly trained volunteers to a night of drinking and dancing and all around rump shaking. It was a great night, and also something of an initiation. Imagine if you will, a group of mainly 23 to 30 year olds who for two months were "not allowed" to drink during training, being served at the embassy with some of the best food in one of the most beautiful/elegant places I have been to (seriously there is a Marine that opens up the bathroom doors), and then being finally allowed to drink on the eve of your first day in site. It is not a joke. It's swearing in day.

Fortunately me and the other veteran volunteers stayed an extra night to make sure we could walk properly back into our sites. We spent most of the day recovering, watching shows in english on TV, and catching up with people back in America. There was something I knew about Peace Corps before coming here that I had yet to experience. Peace Corps Volunteers. I knew a few before coming here, the brother of a friend who I had a spanish class with, and also the friend of a friend that I got to know before coming. Both guys were so incredible.

Every group that comes in brings in their own personality.
What I have noticed is that in this country with every volunteer that I have met I am at awe at how weird I do not feel. I was in shock for the first few months at how well we all felt around each other. Like we knew each other before, like we went to school together, or swam at the Sea horse together, or were made to play with each other because our parents were friends and yet we grew up and still liked each other even though our parents weren't friends anymore.
I hardly feel normal. What is normal? If I hardly feel normal
then maybe what I feel is what is normal and what I hardly feel
is not normal. What I feel around volunteers, and around the
people in my group is something that I am trying to learn to
explain.
Community is the closest thing to describe it. Its much more than that.
It is like being with a lot of people who are so much like you, and sharing a
sense of service, and passion, and love for the people, and this country, and
your own country, and any other country, and unity in moving forward. Forward.
Moving forward.
I am trying to learn how to bring that back. One of the goals of the Peace Corps.
And something America really needs today. Not for progression of this party or
that party, not for the gain of more capital, and most certainly not because we are
the best maldito country in the world. Because everyone is watching. Because we
got off to a bad start and we move forward and it gets better. We see in each
other something that feels normal. We know that there is some way for us to
volunteer. And help.

Bicicleta, Bicicleta

I am at the mayor's office trying to, wait a second, the mayor just walked in!
(Super fast spanish, on his part, me trying to get to the point, he is a busy man) And success!
I am here to solicit transportation for a break dance camp that I am taking my kids to this next week. It is going to be at the Lago de Coatepeque and I was invited by two other volunteers that have put it on. I am taking 4 high school aged guys from my site and there is going to be workshops on different break dance moves. The coolest part about the camp is that most kids that are into break dancing feel like it is a bad thing because of the stigma that only delincuents are break dancers. Through the camp they get to meet other kids who are into it just as much as they are, they learn it is fine to enjoy break dancing, and in fact it is a healthy and artistic outlet for them. We also ask that when the students return back home they volunteer 15 hours of their time to community service.

I have been waiting all day for Don Adrian (the mayor). I am in Jutiapa where there is another volunteer who is in the Municipal Development program. There is only one bus that leaves for Jutiapa in the morning and it is at 630am. The problem is is that if I would have gotten there at 7 or 730am and then talked to Adrian for 5 minutes and gotten the OK for transportation I would to have had to wait for the bus to leave at 12pm. And if he wouldn't have been here this morning (like he wasn't) I would have totally missed him and wasted a whole morning. So this morning I left on my bycicle from my site all the way to Jutiapa. Close to 20 kilometers or 13 miles. It was super hilly, really hard at a few points, and overwhelmingly beautiful with the most fantastic views of El Salvador I have seen. Jutiapa is at a higher elevation than my site so it was cool to get to a few spots and just stop and look down at my site, all of the green and brown and dried up corn fields.

Things are getting busier every week. Last week me and about 15 kids had our first meeting to discuss forming a dance team. I tried forming a dance team about a month ago to no avail. I have learned that things do not have to be so hard here, and when you give more responsibility to the people they will at least try to do their part. Instead of creating a meeting and time for the dance team this time I asked Mirian, a 16 year old 8th grader, to be in charge and find out what day and time we could have a meeting. An hour later she had the day and time and I made a little poster to remind everyone. At the meeting we went through all the questions, why we want a group, where we will practice, and who will teach. We made a plan for all the questions except one, the teacher. I said I would search for a teacher, having no clue where to go, who to ask, or how it would work. It is exciting. It is the same feeling I had in July when I was in Washington DC. Clueless about the country I would soon be living in, what I would be doing, how I would be helping. I decided to talk to the director of the Instituto Nacional de Ilobasco. A really nice high school in my nearest pueblo. I explained the situation and he told me to come back the next day to meet a kid that could possibly help. I came back, talked to the kid and the guidance counselor, and tomorrow we will have our first dance team practice with our teach Eric. Success!

Time goes by slower
Acabamos de llegar
Learning bout success.

Money it is not
Nap at least once everyday
We need to slow down.

Be Part of The Solution

I just got my bookshelf!

I had Javier build me a bookshelf in October. He told me it would be a few months and I would have it. Javier is the local carpenter, he lived in Las Vegas for a few years working in a restaraunt, and he also learned carpentry.

Javier makes me laugh so much. I am late all the time, I lose track of it, and in a country like this one, that way of living makes most things a little easier and or less stressful. I did not think it would take Javier until February to get me the bookshelf. He makes me laugh because even after he had made it it took him weeks until he actually brought it over to my house. But asi es the life where I live. I would literally go to his house with the hopes of takign my bookshelf home, staring at it, hugging it, smelling it, and hoping he realized that I needed it. And every time he would just say "Yeah I'll bring it over later no worries." I knew that did not mean today, so I would sit down, talk about Las Vegas, carpentry, futbol, and girls.

Now that I have a bookshelf I feel like my house is a complete.
That is not to say that I have any of the conventional services of a complete house.

My house is a room.
I do not have:
a bathroom, toilet, water, or a fridge.

School has started back up and that means a few of my projects are going to start happening soon. One of my projects that I have had since I have been in my site has been with Stove Team International. It was created by a Peace Corps Volunteer and it is this really great company that provides ecological and economical stoves for salvadorans. They are really cheap, great quality, and good for the environment.

Also I am starting youth groups, art groups, and in general organizing people to just work together. I am really excited about a project that I will be starting really soon that will be a pen pal type of correspondence to my junior high alma mater. I am going to work with the spanish teacher their and have her kids write to my kids in spanish and then my kids will write back and talk about themselves, their family, and it is going to be a great way to share each others cultures.

This sunday is the super bowl.
I am going to root for the New Orleans Saints.
I am not from Louisiana, I have no family from there,
nor do I have any money riding on them winning this sunday.

I am going to be able to see the game too. I am going to come to the capital and watch it at a TGI Fridays. I am going to have a burger and beer and wear an american flag.

Que Le Vaya Bien 2009 part 2

first dance.

me, jocelynn, memo, li, pepe

novia.

me and li.

at tonios wedding.

michael!

padre.

floating on rio lempa.

chele.

the boys that i hungout with on christmas.

at rio lempa on christmas day.

wearing sonias hoodie.

jimmy on christmas eve.

the boys in my site dress up as old men for christmas.