Feels Like Forever

I decided to make a collage of my past couple weeks here. It's barely been two weeks, but it feels like we've been here for an eternity. I guess that's a good sign in a lot of ways, not that I'm getting into a rut or a routine, but things are feeling more natural. Two weeks of language school has gotten me back to par. I realized this when I did language school in Spain/Guatemala previously. I'm just about using all of the Spanish I've learned at this point. I'm even starting to forget what language I'm speaking. Sometimes I just think I'm extra skilled in Spanish when I start translating English into English!

Bucket showers have become the norm, but thank God my family doesn't mind brining me plenty of hot water in the mornings! I took a cold "shower" the first several days, then the topic came up and I mentioned I prefer warm water, but really I'd be OK with whatever. Let me tell you, that first morning of waking up to the sound of my mom opening the door and sloshing around a bucket of recently-boiled water... words cannot describe. You know that feeling you used to get on Christmas morning when you were a kid? This was better. I made sure to thank my mom a million times to encourage her, telling her that having warm water was like Heaven! And only using one bucket of water is SO water efficient, especially when that water is freezing (trust me, you use as little water as possible)! And for those of you who think it's a scorching desert outside and a cold shower feels nice to cool down... wrong. I think it's maybe 50F outside when I wake up (at 5:30).

You can see a couple shots of my quaint little room and the bigger picture is the view out my window at sunrise. The top left is the pila where I wash my clothes; it's a little hard to tell, but it's basically a cement basin of water with a permanent cement washboard on one side. We only get water once a week, so that's the storage facility, and then we fill up a big barrel inside the house. The other picture is the kitchen where my madre is cleaning some dishes and has the woodfire stove going. The other two are of the volunteers at the training facility on one of our many coffee breaks, and the other of us eating out at a local Pupusería.

No more information on what or where my assignment will be, but I'm not worried about it too much. Our staff are old pros at placing people and they are very good at what they do, so I'm just enjoying the training and trying to learn as much as possible. We head out to Feild Based Training (FBT) in another week in Yuscarán for 7 weeks. After that we'll return for the final week and swearing-in and I'll have my assignment by then. Trust me, I'll let you know as soon as I find out.

Now I'm off to thumb down a bus for the ride back to my house, which costs about 35 cents. ¡Nos Vemos!