New projects

I saw a teenage girl wearing an "Old Guys Rule" tshirt yesterday.

Things, I would say, are going well for me right now. I feel like I'm finally taking ownership of my projects and motivating people to start there own. But, who knows how long this good feeling will last. Peace corps is like a roller coaster, but I've become okay with knowing that. Hopefully this isn't making me a complete cynic, but life out here is rough, rougher than perhaps I anticipated, but let's focus on the good for now.

First of all I got my cat. I posted pictures of her on facebook, as well of some with her and Jordan's new puppy; they're friends. Her name is Coco, as in coconut in Spanish. She is my resolution to my rat problem...well, she will be, right now she's too small (she's their size) and the rats eat her food if I leave it out at night. The good news is, she's taken to sleeping in the closet next to my bed, a former rat home, so that's one less. I love her, but she's a pain in the ass. I went through five days of potty training hell. She's using a litter box for now because she's too small and too dumb to be outside with all the other creatures; she'll get eaten right up. And let me tell you, litter is now so easy to come by. Let's just say I've gotten creative in creating her pseudo-American life here in El Salvador. She's cute though, and full of spunk, so hopefully she'll be a good hunter. All in all, she provides some good entertainment for me.

In other news, I finally started my HIV/AIDS workshops at the school and they're going quite well. The two teachers whose classes I teach in are really involved too. I've gotten them to one, help control the kids, and two, help motivate the kids to participate and really learn the material. It's also been beneficial for my Spanish, talking more professionally and getting good feedback from the teachers on where I need improvement. Anyway, the class is going well and I think these kids are actually learning something. It's frightening to see how little they know about sexual health, but now is the time for them to learn. And, these kids don't seem to mind asking anything. The other day I explained vaginal secretions to someone who asked. And, I'm happy to answer everything.

Also, I finally took some action in order to start my women's group. I'm in the planning process for our first meeting on October seventh now. I met with my health promoter this week to discuss everything. We decided to have two groups since my community has two parts and people won't walk to the other side, but we're starting with one first, to see how it goes. She made a list of women she thought would come and I'm currently working on invitations. We also threw around ideas for the first topic and decided to discuss the importance of an annual PAP smear. I hope it goes well.

I'm really excited to start more work in sexual health, because people don't get that information here and the youth struggle immensely. It's something that needs to be taught here and I'm more than happy to finally be contributing.

The other upcoming project I'm really excited about is my Summer English class. School gets out on November eleventh and doesn't resume until January. I was really getting worried that, since most of my work is in the school, I wouldn't have much to do, but that changed. My English teacher approached me and wants to do a community/Santa Rosa English class during the summer about twice a week. I'm excited to work more with him too.

So, now I have my women's group, English classes, my ever-so exciting ADESCO meetings, and hopefully my Summer take-over of our library project to do after school gets out. Wish we luck.

Right now, I'm sitting around waiting for Hurricane Matthew. I heard it's not actually going to hit El Salvador, but Peace Corps has put us on Standfast anyway. So we have this really cool Emergency Action Plan (EAP) that Peace Corps has in case of a national disaster (violence, natural disasters, etc). We got put on stage one, standfast, or don't travel and report your location, last night, so we'll see. There's been some rain, but is also the wet season, and it doesn't seem to be too bad. Guess I'll be staying in my house this weekend. What fun.