For the first two weeks, things have been going OK. I´m really just "Hanging-Out" with my family and Counterpart (both have been awesome) and practicing my Spanish. The one project I started is that I´m teaching English at the Grade School. 5th, 6th, and 7th grades for an hour a day three days a week. The kids are great and really seem excited to learn, but we´ll see how much they study. My first classes were over the English Alphabet. I made up a chart of the Alphabet with phonetic pronunciation in Spanish (Example; C= Si). This was a lot harder to make than I thought it would be. I´m an Engineer damn it, not an English Major! Anyway, I´ll be doing this until my real projects start up. Also, the High School wants me to help out with Chemistry and Physics classes in the Fall. Anyone know how to say "Moment of Inertia" in Spanish?
I did try to help the Ladies at the Community Bank the other day. They were having problems balancing their accounts. Finally we discovered that one woman´s account wasn´t showing up on their reports. Long story short, I figured that there was an internal problem in the system and her info got deleted off one file. I tried to explain this, but gave up after a few minutes. Oh well, more vocab to learn...database management.
I haven't been able to cook my own food yet. The water shortage is one thing, but there also seems to to be a lack of gas. There are no gas mains here. You buy your gas in tanks and hook them up to your appliances. I have one for hot water (when there is water), but I need one for my stove. After two weeks, no luck in buying one. So, for the first time in my life, I´m suffering from a want of gas.
As rough as things sound, I actually have it pretty good. I´ve heard from other PCV´s in my group who don´t have electricity, share one toilet with the entire town, have to take a canoe ride up a river to get to town, and my one friend´s site is so hot that after showering he lays in bed naked to cool off every night (although he did catch a bunch of people the other day staring at him through a crack in his wall. Great first impression!). It was so bad for one of my good friends that she has gone home. After 10 days of not sleeping and being constantly on edge, she left.
Other Quick Notes
- Because it was the name of the old PCV here, everyone in the town calls me Miguel (except for the two year old daughter of the family that lives by me)
- I was wearing my dirty old "Pike" hat and the family asked me why I don´t wash it. I can´t get away from people giving me crap about that hat.
- I did laundry last week and because it rains so much, it took over five days to dry.
- I got to milk a cow for the first time. I don´t think I did a good job, because the next time I helped, they just had me hold the bucket to catch the milk.
- I watched a pregnant cuy (guinea pig) get killed by our neighbor. She grabbed it by the neck and pushed the head in until we heard a couple of loud pops. Then she drained the blood out, dumped it in a pot of boiling water, and started ripping the fur off. Oh, forgot to mention that this all happened in our kitchen while I was sitting there drinking hot chocolate. Also, the pot of boiling water was the same one they make tea in. Very old school!
- Thank you Megan M. for correcting me on my misspelling of "poo". I really though there was an "h" at the end. That is why it is good to have nurse friends.
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