Hello Hello. So I haven't written in a month. But it doesn't seem like it's been that long. This month just went by fast. I guess that's the benefit of staying busy.
Well, not too much new here. In the beginning of the month I went to visit my friend Colleen who is a fellow Peace Corps volunteer and is pretty much my best friend down here. She also lives in the state of Usulutan but more in the middle where are all the mountains and coffee plantations are....yeah it's beautiful there, not to mention at least 10 degrees cooler. She lives in a small community and has a super cute house, which dammit I forgot to take pictures of. We just hung out and went for a hike to a community that is higher up on the mountain which has this beautiful view of the San Miguel Volcano.
Okay, so as you all know February 14th is Valentine's Day. Well here they call it El Dia del Amor y Amistad (Day of Love and Friendship) so it's nice to give out things to friends. With the youth group we made cards with cute little messages on them and sold them in the schools making about $25 which was pretty good. With my women's group we did secret friends to do a gift exchange (like secret santa) and it was so much fun. The week previous to Valentine's Day we did a fundraiser and raised $20. So on Valentine's Day we had a little get-together just to have fun and hang out. It was so much fun. Me, Margot and Eugenia (two good friends of mine in the community and two really awesome women) made pupusas (the famous Salvadoran dish) for everyone. Pupusas cooking on the grill.



Margot and Eugenia




We decorated the restaurant and then did our gift exchange. It was a lot of fun.



Last weekend was pretty busy. This crazy cool septic engineer named Bob from the Seattle area came down becuase he is looking to do a project with water filters, filtering the water people use to wash clothes, etc. And he is also looking at the shellfish industry to see if there is a possible international market. I so want in on that project cuz it'll be some money and it's really interesting. A large number of the families here survive on collecting and selling shellfish. They have to go into the mangroves and dig in the mud to search for the shellfish. I knew all this before but had never gone. Well with Bob and two other community members we went to check it out. It's CRAZY to say the least! These people have to walk through knee deep puddle of mud and dig through that mud to find the shellfish.
This is all inside of a forest of mangroves, so they have to climb through the tress like monkeys...it's crazy. And it's way hotter and more humid in the forest. There are so many bugs and mosquitoes that people are constantly smoking cigarettes or pure tobacco cigarettes to keep the bugs away. So people work for about 6-8 hours a day and make on average $5-7 a day. It's bruttle. It was a real adventure though and I learned a lot of the trip we went on. Bob is such a funny guy. He might be able to help me with a latrine project and he bought me a bottle of Bacardi when i told him i was more of a rum and coke girl than a beer girl!


Last week my Peace Corps friend Samantha came to visit me which was aweomse. We had so much fun. Saturday the youth group hosted a movie night to raise funds. It was the first time we did it and it turned out pretty well. We wtached a scary movie, which was what all the kids wanted to see. On Sunday Sam and I went to the beach and just hung out which was so relaxing.

Other than that not much is going on. In the tourist center we are really trying to get it fixed up for the big vacation week (holy week) in march.