What’s been going on…

Okay, I haven’t written in here in a while so I apologize to those of you who may be avid readers and just can’t wait for the next edition of “The Adventures of Natalie Foxworthy.” Well wait no longer here it is: (although it’s not that interesting)

Same old stuff going on in the community more or less. With an organization called CESTA we’re doing a training with a group of youth about solid waste, how to treat trash, and the environment. That is going pretty well and last Sunday we did a small trash pick-up in the bay because it is so full of trash. We filled five or six huge black trash bags full of trash in only a small area of the bahia – shoes, clothes, plastic bags, a broken fan, glass, food, dead animals. You name it and you can probably find it on the shore of the bahia; and yes I swim in that water. I can’t believe it but I do. Miraculous I don’t have a twin growing out of my side by now – son bromas (joking). Also with this group we are trying to plan a community wide inorganic trash campaign in which everyone takes all their inorganic trash in their house and leave it out for the trash truck from the pueblo to come by. Also we’re hoping to form groups to clean up public areas like the soccer fields, the streets and the bay.

The trash here is such a problem and everyone knows it too but not many people do anything about it, nor do they have the resources to do anything about it, as in dispose of their trash in an environmentally friendly way. In the trash campaign planning meeting people who live right on the bay were complaining about how people come to dump trash in front of their house and how the problem isn’t with them but it’s with the neighbors who don’t have to look out their front door at the monton de basura (the heap of trash) that is amounting in the bahia. But there is this one woman who goes to my exercise group and she is so active, has no problem in speaking-up; a mover and shaker as my boss calls them. Not many women like her in the community so I’m hoping to get her involved and others like her. We even talked about getting the mayor to pass an ordinance making it illegal to throw trash in the bahia with consequences and forming a group of vigilance to possibly take pictures of people they see throwing trash in the bay. It’s crazy that such radical and advanced ideas can come out of a meeting when it seems like the rest of the community doesn’t care. But truthfully I’d say it’s about 50% (maybe a little more) of the people in the community who are aware of the trash problem and do their part to keep their property clean.

Que mas? So my boss came for a site visit on june 13th to see what I’ve been up to, how I’m adapting, and talk with some of the people in the community I work with. It went well. We had a meeting, and of course everyone had good things to say about me, cuz I’m just so awesome. HAHA yeah right. No but in all seriousness I have received some nice compliments here and not just about how pretty my eyes are or how all North Americans are beautiful. A few people have told me that I have good personae, that I am friendly and an easy person to approach. That I don’t just stick with one group of people but that I work well with all groups, youth, adult and elderly. Which is true. I mean I love hanging with the kids and the youth because the kids are just so adorable and the youth are fun and vibrant. Hinestly I don’t have too much in common with people my age who are already married and with kids, but we can still chat. And in these last few weeks I have taken up the habit to make tortillas with my neighbour, Niña Ester (the grandma of my friends Henry and Wendy). Also when my host mom makes tortillas I’ll help her out. It’s fun chatting with the older women and laughing about how retarded looking my tortillas are.

So after my boss’ site visit I took a two day mental health break as I’d like to call it because I was getting to the point where I needed some Natalie time so my friend Kevin and I went to the department of Santa Ana and stayed two nights on Lake Coateque, which is a Crater Lake and probably the most beautiful in the country. The water is so clear and clean – it was a miracle really to discover such clean water in this country. We stayed at a really cute hostal right on the shore, went swimming, explored and guess what we found – the Presidential Vacation House. It was really funny because there was this really forested area just down the beach from us so we tried to get there only to find out that we couldn’t get in because that’s where the President’s Vacation House is.

Other than that I’ve started to help out in the high school down the road in a training of solid waste and composting and also with physical ed classes and I’m teaching a small salsa dance to a group at the school to perform for the belated celebration of Father’s Day.

So I’ve been pretty busy but not been keeping up with my census work so I have to push that really hard this coming month. UGH! But this last week has been pretty hard on me emotionally. Sometimes I feel like I have no idea why I’m here. And there’s a bunch of drama with my friends here, but they’re teenagers so I can’t blame them but it’s just really annoying. Because of this the fab four (me, Moncho, Tania and Pollito) has kind of dispersed leaving me feeling sad. But Moncho is an amazing friend. Last week almost every night we would go to sit on the wall at the shore of the bay to talk, listen to music, he’d play guitar. Just really good quality time. And he has a good eye for when something is bothering me and he is always willing to listen. But I’m also making even better friends, especially a girl named Isamar. She’s really awesome and a genuinely nice and sincere person. Also, my friend Carlos taught me how to ride a horse last week and we rode on horse back to the beach and back. My first time on a horse. It was okay, although he did all the directing, but hopefully I can learn more.

So yeah I guess that’s about it. I miss my family, my friends, the normalcy of life in the states. Love you all. Adios