Dude I’ve been here 6 MONTHS:

The old Cooperative de Limon. It used to be this huge hacienda but all the associates of the cooperative sold everything and this is all that’s left – the offices and the ranch, but they’re going to sell this piece of land along with 52 manzanas that are outside of the community and bordering the beach, for only $100,000. Dad, you should totally buy it!!!
Another shot of the main street in Mendez.
The health clinic
My host family’s house
Looking down the street from in front of my house




The school.
The house I’m going to be moving into


One of the three soccer fields in Mendez.



Alright, let’s see what’s new. Not too much I don’t think. The last time I blogged it was during a holiday. The first week of August is the feast day of San Salvador (I think) so they have the week off. I used the free time to really crack down on my census and got a lot done but unfortunately I also got really sick so that kind of killed my census run. I got the flu, which is really common here, I’ve already had it like three times. It’s a head cold and usually comes with a nasty cough. I got the flu with the bad cough my first month here in Mendez, but this time it was more just sinus and minus the cough. But it was actually worse because it turned into a sinus infection and I thought I was going to die. It felt like someone was ripping out my sinus cavity, or maybe it would have been better if someone actually did. But the weather has just been awfully hot and dry and that made it worse, especially with all the smoke in the air all the time from burning trash. Lovely.


But anyways, sick and all I hauled ass to finish the census amongst all of my other activities. I’ve just been so stressed out with looking for new housing and getting the census down that it’s no surprise I got sick. But I think I’ve finally found a place to move to. The place is fine, it’s small house/room that’s perfect for one person but it’s completely on the other side of town away from all my friends and all the action of the community which really sucks, but we’ll see how I adapt. Supposedly it’s just for three months while I wait for another house to open up that is much nicer, bigger and more in the middle of town. Hopefully things work out. I went to clean out the new house and start to get things ready so we’ll see how it all turns out.


Something extra cool we started this week is the reforestation project. The project has been under way for a while, but they had to ready the plot of land by cleaning it up and clearing it out and then building a fence around it. But this week I got a group of kids from the school together to start planting the trees. It was extra fun, first of all because the kids are fun to work with but it also just feels really good to plant trees. I don’t know what it is but I felt like I was really helping the environment. The project is being funded by Ayuda en Accion, an organization that does extensive work here in the community.

What else, I feel like I have been really busy but I don’t have much to write about. Maybe just being sick has taken it out of me. So in a hurry...just got back from a week long training in Apaneca, Ahuachapan and it was great seeing all the peeps from my training group and getting some down time and motivation and ideas. the place was beautiful although it was raining the whole time. and apparently there is a hurricane coming and the staff told me i was evacuated form my site but they were over exaggerating...we're just gonna get heavy rains. woohoo!!!!

hope you like the pics and sorry this entry is really ugly but i just don't have time to format it nicely. peace out


My room.