Thanksgiving Weekend

I had thanksgiving dinner with an US embassy family and a couple other volunteers. Lindsey and I helped prepare the cornbread dressing (missing gizzards and celery) and some of the vegetables. I was in a weird mood the entire night and I’m not really sure why. I could throw out some ideas, but I’ll be nice today. Stepping into the family’s penthouse was like stepping into another world. HE HAD A PRIVATE ELEVATOR! It was really weird to have traveled from my site, where people make their houses out of plastic bags and palm leaves, to then spend a few hours in a place like that. It really messed with my head. After a few hours of eating, drinking, and socializing with a breed of Salvadorans that I didn’t know existed I was more than ready to head back to my hotel room. Unfortunately, I was the only one ready to leave, so I had to wait around for everyone else (didn’t want to be rude to my host). Finally we left and I returned to the real world…where my hotel room costs $10 a night and in order to save money I order a $5 pizza and split it with someone else. Next year, I’m pretty sure that I won’t spend my thanksgiving with an embassy family. Maybe I’ll make dinner in my site!

On Friday we had the party for the group that came down in July at a club called FOUR. This party was so much better than the party we had for my group. The club was a lot nicer and the dance floor was bigger. Needless to say many volunteers were fall down drunk and they made fools of themselves…and I was there to take it all in…mmmmmmmHAHAHA.

I also saw the new Harry Potter movie with 3 CO-EDers (Dan, Jess, and Erica). It was a good movie, but so much has happened since the second movie (which was the last HP movie that I’d seen before #7) and I’m really confused. I’ll have to go to Centro and find #3-6 and catch up on everything that’s going on.

It was a great weekend! I returned home and there was about 2 weeks of laundry waiting to be done. I left a few household chores slide while I was preparing for my HIV workshop. Washing 2 weeks worth of dirty laundry by hand makes for a very sweaty morning.

Love you all,

Mya

HIV WORKSHOP!

Hello All!

After countless weeks of planning my HIV workshop is FINALLY over!! What a great experience it was for me to have done this project in my community.

From the beginning:

In order to fund an HIV workshop I had to apply for a VAST grant. This was my first time writing a grant proposal and let’s just say that my first submission raised a few eyebrows…after REsubmitting my second proposal I was approved for $238! I know this may not seem like a lot of money to those that are reading this blog, but let me assure you that in a country like El Salvador this kind of money can go a long way. After I was approved to do the workshop in my site I became really nervous. I was thinking, “can I really pull this off? I’ve never managed funds before. Will my community be interested in doing this type of workshop? I don’t think that I have enough experience.” Thankfully these thoughts didn’t deter me from moving ahead. I met with my committee members and discussed the possibility of having a day-long, HIV-related activity. I explained the importance of the workshop by mentioning that the infection was already in the community (this got their attention!). They were all de acuerdo with having the workshop, so the planning began!


The Planning:

First we set a date that would work for everyone (Wednesday, November 24). Next I had to find a locale that could accommodate 20 people. I had originally thought about having it in the community, but my counterpart wanted to have it outside of the community, so I called the mayor’s office and asked if we could you the conference room there. They said yes and the only thing that I had to worry about at this point was food and transportation. There are a few comedores near the alcadía so the food wouldn’t be a problem. The only problem that I encountered was how to get everyone on the bus at the same time in order to make it to the workshop on time. I realized that there was no way that I could control this…I’d just have to trust them to be on the bus on time. Over the next week and a half I bought all the materials for the workshop; poster paper, markers, tape, etc and I began making everything that I would need for the workshop. Guys, this was possibly the most tedious work that I’ve ever done! At home, I would’ve created a PowerPoint presentation for everything, but that wouldn’t work for this particular workshop because my computer is practically dead and it would’ve added to much stress to my life if I would’ve had to get someone to loan me a computer and a projector…so I decided to do things the old fashioned way. It took a lot of time to prepare everything, but I was so proud of myself after I looked at all that I had done.

Problems Along the Way:

About three days before the taller I received a phone call telling me that the mayor’s office was no longer available for my activity! I almost had a panic attack when I heard this, but quickly I thought about the place in my community where we held my general assembly. The place put you in the mind of a tiki hut with its straw roof and all. Well, I went to talk to the cuidandero and he told me that I could use the place for my activity! Now I just had to find someone to prepare lunch for us and this is where my community really helped me out. Wendy, one of the committee members recommended her aunt Isabel as a potential cook, so we went over to talk to her and she agreed to prepare the food. She wouldn’t tell me how much she was going to charge me and I left her house praying that it wouldn’t be more than $20 (which is A LOT) because I had to stay within my food budget or I’d be forced to pull money from other places.
Another problem was that I didn’t trust anyone to actually show up for the workshop. Ok, well I was about 60% sure that most of my committee members would show up, but you never know because one of their kids could get sick or they’d go into labor (I have 2 preggers on the committee) or they could decide not to show up out of pure laziness. Hands down this was the most agonizing part of this entire experience. I even had nightmares that no one showed up to the workshop. Throughout all of this I kept reminding my neighbors and everyone else that I had invited what time we would start and where. After I had to change locations everyone was really relieved because they didn’t want to travel to the mayor’s office, ALTHOUGH THEY SAID THAT THEY WOULD! Now do you guys understand why I was freaking out about attendance?

November 24, 2010

I woke up feeling unsure about how things would go. I began to listen to gospel music in order to calm my nerves and to encourage me. Lindsey (she came over to help out/keep me from freaking out) and I got everything ready and headed out to set up for the workshop. On the walk over to the place I felt like I was going to throw up. Now, it may have been due to the fact that we didn’t eat breakfast (I hadn’t really grocery shopped in a while) and we had to walk on the beach while the sun was blazing down on our professionally clad bodies OR it could’ve been my nerves. So, we get to the palce and we start setting up. It was so hard to get the posters to stick to the “wall” because there really wasn’t a wall...so we had to hang posters from electrical cables and we stood a table on two legs in order to stick some posters on it. It took us a while to figure out how we were gonna display the posters and I almost had a nervous breakdown. Thank God Lindsey was there! She was like, “Mya, go away and let me figure this out!” For my own good, I went somewhere, said a quick prayer, returned and she had figured it all out!
At 8 o’clock no one had arrived so I began freaking out AGAIN! I kept repeating “Lindsey, if no one shows up I’m gonna crawl into a ball and cry.” From about 8 to 8:07 (yes, I remember the exact minute) I was pacing back and forth hoping beyond all hope that at least 10 out of the 15 invitees would show up. And then they began to arrive!!! At 8:12 twelve people had shown up and I swear that I wanted to cry. We started at 8:15 with a pre-test just to see how much they already knew. At about 8:24 my neighbor arrived and…THE EVANGELICAL PASTOR!! I could not believe that he showed up, but I was so happy that he was there.
Overall, the workshop was a success. It went much better than I could’ve ever imagined. There were a couple of glitches along the way, i.e. the pastor didn’t want to participate in all of the activities and I discovered that one of my committee members can’t read or write so I had to cut out one activity from the agenda. I had 93% of the invitees in attendance and seriously as a first year volunteer you really can’t ask for more! I really feel that the information was well received by all and I know for a fact that everyone learned something new. THAT’S WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT, RIGHT?!?!

Now that I’ve trained my community leaders I will use them to educate the students at the local elementary school. Sustainability at its best!

I love life and my job!

Salú
Mya