Home life

Well, it can't be avoided any more. I'm having some serious troubles with my host site. I can be an incredibly emotional person (remember when I cried all over the Director of Peace Corps?), but I also try to counter that with cold hard logic.

After three sets of pro/con lists and talking it over with multiple people, I think I've finally narrowed down the source of what's making me feel so blue. My Project Manager is so kind and helpful, and she's going to take some steps with me to make it better.

If that's too cryptic for you, too bad. I do try to keep some things confidential while still updating the world with the goings ons in my life. The whole idea of this blog was to focus on culture and share El Salvador with my friends and family back home. Nah, I'm not having another blog crisis, but I do want to keep Third Goal in sight. After all, it'd be nice to win a trip to headquarters in Washington D. C.! (Check out some past Blog It Home winners here.)

That being said, I had a crazy experience yesterday. I was getting ready to leave for the day, packing my water bottles and snacks, when all of a sudden I hear this weird noise. It's kind of like what a lawn mower sounds like, but moving faster than a lawn mower could. The 8 year old boy I live with starts screaming and jumping around and at this point I run outside to see what's happening. And I run into a wall of ghosty white smoke.

Fumigation. The entire community, homes and along the roads, was engulfed in bug killing (and probably carcinogenic) smoke.

I freak out because, well, it's creepy and smells terrible. I run over to my host parent's house to ask if I should close the house up or if we should move to avoid breathing this stuff in. My host sister just kind of laughs. "They spray inside the house, too."

The smoke rising up through the roof of my neighbor's house.

I had a meeting with the health promotor later in the day. What's up with the fumigation!? It's part of the government's aggressive tactics to kill mosquitos and stop the spread of dengue. Some of you might be familiar with dengue. I've managed to stay dengue free for 11 months! Woo! But many a PCES volunteer have fallen victim to the fever. I guess I should be happy that my community is getting the ghosty makeover, but it still gives me the heeby jeebies. My bed sheets and towels smell like strong chemicals :(

The best news is, I'm assuming the fumes killed my little scorpion friend I shared on Facebook a few nights ago. Aw, shucks.

R.I.P. Scorpy