A Reflection on the Life of a Peace Corps Trainee in El Salvador: Month 1

Man weaving manteles (table cloths) in San Esteban, a town once known for its bustling textile industry near my town of San Rafael Cedros.

The ground immediately behind my bus stop where I take the bus 3 times a week to the training centre in San Rafael.

The view from the same bus stop when one overlooks the rubbish at one's feet.

Having reached the 1-month mark in our new lives as Peace Corps trainees in El Salvador, I think it's time for some reflection.

I'll be honest, my immersion weekend experience -dirty campo, volunteer town and capital- affected me greatly. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly happened to me and why I am having days where I can't be bothered eating another dinner of rice and beans so I over eat at lunch, so as to avoid dinner OR days where my Aralen dream world is looking much more attractive than getting out of bed and experiencing real life. I'm learning what I'm really made of out here, I guess that's what I wanted.

El Salvador, I feel, is a country of extremes. The landscape is some of the prettiest I've seen in my few years of life, yet Salvadorans litter like it's their full-time job without the pena they often exhibit during other activities. You can go to the capital and visit the richest neighbourhoods without a pupusa stand in sight and then take a short bus ride and see buildings so deteriorated they should be condemned with tired street vendors out front trying to make a living. Being that El Salvador is one of the poorest countries in Central America, the amount of new and shiny shopping centres one can find dotted around the country's capital department would make one think otherwise. You have people living in mud brick houses with dirt floors yapping on their cellphones while they walk down the dusty unpaved roads of their countryside villages.

I never expected to have that strange feeling of uneasiness, of uncomfort that seems to be eating away at my insides bit my bit - some days faster than others. Even though I've never classified myself as American, everyone else here has. I've been stripped of my own Latino heritage because I was born in America and lumped into the gringo category. No one expects me to speak or understand Spanish, so not only do they stare at me anywhere I go and watch everything that I do, they many times whisper behind cupped hands saying only God knows what.

I know it's out of curiosity that they want to stare at the frizzy-haired morenita (dark-skinned girl) as she walks down the street, but sometimes the eyes I see out of the corner of my eye staring at me so hard and so shamelessly actually bother me. Once you stare right back at them, they usually turn away. But sometimes...the eyes make their way back to staring at the morenita with the shameless curiosity of a child.

My father recently said to me that if we didn't have the downs that many times accomany the ups, then we wouldn't be normal and vice versa. Well, the ups better be coming soon!