So we´ve been really busy the last few days (weeks?), but not particularly doing anything productive. The PST (pre-service training) has been incredibly overwhelmed with mostly pointless information about very specific scenarios that apply to only a few people in our group. However, this weekend we had our Immersion Weekend, so I wanted to post about that before the details slip away.

Another trainee, Emily, and I were placed with a current volunteer in the northwest corner of the country in Cuiyuscat, Metapán, Santa Ana. We arrived Thursday morning after an eventless bus ride from San Vicente and began the trek to his site. Apparently, a flatbed truck runs between his site and Metapán (the larger city in the area) once a day. It leaves his site at 6am and returns around 12pm, so if he misses either, he has to hitchhike. We caught the flatbed as it was returning to his site, but the drive was still 45 minutes or so. That trek should be cut down a bit once they finish paving a highway through the area that will connect with the rest of the country.
His site is actually pretty nice. His house isn´t exactly the best, but he makes it work. The town somehow has paved roads and a tremendously large catholic church (donated by some german ngo), but the majority of the town doesn´t have constantly running water. Priorities, I guess.
Our first full day (friday) we awoke fairly early to, with a family he particularly likes, milk cows (yep, drank directly from the bucket) and then hike 45 minutes uphill in the beating sun (the temperature isn´t necessarily that bad - lack of shade is horrible) to a molienda. Apparently February is one of the harvest months for caña (sugar cane), so during February the molienda is in full operation. The molienda is essentially a cane press combined with a huge earth-stove that dehydrates the cane sap to something like molasses (sp) combined with Wether´s Originals. Pretty awesome process; very incredible outcome. It´s not pure sugar, but it´s not sappy. It has the texture of fudge and can be used in coffee, pastries, etc as a sweetener.


....the bus is coming soon! I´ll finish this later.