rain

The weather has been really rainy for the past week, which is kind of unmotivating. I also haven’t been able to do laundry. Things are going pretty well, otherwise. My recycling plans have changed a little. We are going to sell at a different location than I was originally planning on, but it makes more sense this way. The high school students I’m working with have a huge pile of sacks filled with recyclebles which they are going to transport on Monday. We need to do some calculations, but the amount they will recieve from the sale should cover gas for transportation. In my town, the high school isn’t doing this project, so there is no group organizing things. So, rethinking things, and the selling situation, I decided we should really form a neighborhood committee to manage logistics, like storage and transportation and the funds. I talked to the mayor and the director of UMA, the environmental office, and they supported the idea and set a date to have a meeting to form an environmental committee.


My house is looking even better. A few volunteers in the area just finished thier service and left so I inheirited a fridge, a toaster oven, a blender, some chairs, and some shelves. I now actually have a kitchen. Every couple of days I’ll try cooking something. I’m trying to improve my cooking skills. Otherwise I eat easily prepared things or I eat next door. My neighbor feeds me often, they are really nice, they say I’m like family to them. I got so lucky with my house and my neighbors. I’m really happy with my house, it’s really important to have my own nice space to go to at the end of the day. The new group of volunteers will be getting to site in a couple weeks. The town next to me is getting a business volunteer. Hopefully he or she will be fun. And interested in recycling. I have a hammock now, which I spend way too much time in. It's just so comfortable. It's hung on my front porch, but I live on a really quiet street so hardly anyone passes by. Well, that's about all I feel like writing for now. My hammock is waiting for me.

I just realized how long it's been since I posted. Ooops. This will be kind of short because I'm in the library writing it and I don't have much time. Last Monday we planted lots of tree seeds in the school in the aldea, in the mountains. It was fun, all the kids were helping and a bunch of parents came to help. We cleaned up the weeds, prepared the dirt, filled seed bags, and prepared a seed bed, prepared the seeds, and planted them. It took all morning. I want to do another tree nursery in some of the other schools in the mountains.
Saturday was the youth baseball regional tournament. A bunch of volunteers have youth baseball teams, and a few times I went to help out a volunteer near me with his team. These kids just started practicing in October or November, knowing nothing about baseball, and they've improved so much. The tournament had 3 teams, and they played on a soccer field, so there was no back stop or infield, or outfield fence. It was fun watching, and the team I had been helping won! Those kids were so excited. It was a good day.
Sunday I had to help my counterpart give a training session to representatives from 4 different rural banks. There were about 30 people. The training was about accounting and managing all the books they have. This other guy, who is actually an accounting teacher, is part of my counterpart's NGO, but he ended up not coming, so we were kind of unprepared. But it actually went really well. I ended up explaining most of it, and we did lots of example problems for finding balances and calculating interest rates. Some people were really confused at first, but by the end I think they all got it. The weather has been really warm and sunny, so that's nice.
That's about all for now.