(Wednesday, January 12 Day 205)

"The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government or the Peace Corps."

Phrase of the day: Interesante, pero por que solo no me pregunto por ayuda?... Interesting, but why didn't you just ask me for help?

Goal #2: Teaching people that it is okay to make mistakes and to ask for help. (Goal #1 is still opening up an ice cream parlor).

For the past few days I have been in Cumbaya at a project design and management workshop. I took the president of the local youth council, Susana, with me, and we worked on developing a recycling system for San Isidro. Yeah, quite possibly a bit bold for our first project together, but we'll see what happens! It was good to be back in the higlands though; I like it 1000x more than the coast. This was the view from the roof of where we were staying.

Susana had forgotten to bring her camera, so I let her borrow mine while we were there. Clearly I didn't learn anything the last time I let someone from town borrow my camera. Yup, when I got it back, it had been reset and all of the pictures were erased. Fantastic.

I wasn't exactly pleased, but what to do? (that was for you, rajib, ha). And it also wasn't a huge surprise, thankfully. That's just kind of how things are here. Many people seem to be ashamed when they don't know something, and instead of wanting to learn, they'll just make something up. And that goes for everything, from why a person is sick to where to put oil in a car. It can get pretty ridiculous.

But anyway, back to Cumbaya. The workshop went well, and I got to see other volunteers and meet their community members. Some had great counterparts, and others not so much. The best part was naturally seeing the volunteers, as usual. The Tabacundo girls and Claire bought me strawberry ice cream when they went out, which was really nice of them (and delicious). My favorite part was probably looking at stars on the roof! That just isn't possible in San Isidro because of the cloudiness in the evening. There was also this ridiculous high school next door to us.

It had an indoor swimming pool, tennis courts, basketball courts, soccer fields, climbing walls. Suposedly most of the kids drive BMW's, so just a tad bit different than the rest of the country.

I'm back in town now, trying to plan the recycling system more thoroughly. My first brunch now that I'm cooking for myself; An apple, wheat bread with cheese and jam, and granola with milk (Yes, I know I didn't actually have to cook anything for this meal!):

And my first dinner; cheese empanadas topped with sauted carrots and tomatoes:

Not too shabby to start off, right? Riiight...