Club Cheras Takes Off!

Hey everyone! For those of you back home in the States, I hope this post finds you well, and in a fabulous winter wonderland. Thanks for sending me all the incredible photos of the snow storm I´ve missed out on! Hope you´re all staying warm. Today as I was riding into Dolores on my bike, the sun on my back, Bob Dylan in my ear, and herds of cows as my witnesses, I thought of how intensely happy I am right now. Peace Corps is full of polarized moments. When it´s good, it´s the best feeling you could ever imagine. You feel like you could burst with ecstacy, you just want to stop the clock and bask in the moment indefintely. You tremble at the thought of leaving this world that´s become your home. When it´s bad, it´s BAD. The project you´ve been planning for months crashes and burns. The youth group you started falls apart and disappears. You want to ball your eyes out, scream, and pack up your bags and go back to the life you used to know. There are a lot more good moments than bad moments, which is what keeps me rolling along, giving my all. I know some bad moments are around the corner. I just think of Tracy Bonham´s lyrics, ¨Whether you fall, means nothing at all...it´s whether you get up.¨ Just gotta get up!

So Valentine´s Day is behind us now...Club Cheras, my girls youth group, took advantage of this incredibly comercialized holiday to raise some money by hosting a Valentines Day Dance and by selling Candygrams at the school. All of the planning for these activities was established at our meeting last Sunday. That being said, I think everything went unexpectedly smoothly. Each girl had different responsibilities in terms of time commitment and contribution of resources. Each girl came through. I am really proud! We charged a $0.25 cover for the dance, and sold the candygrams for the same price. We also sold raffle tickets for a Valentine´s surprise gift at $0.10 a ticket. When all was said and done we raised a total of $57.62. We can use this money for other community events and hopefully raise enough in time for an excursion, a vocational workshop, or group T-shirts. The dance was well-attended and it´s always great to see the youth in the community dancing to their favorite American pop music and just being goofy with their friends. The event also made Club Cheras more recognized as an organization in the community. We had planned 4 different party games for the dance. However, when it came time to explain the games and look for participants, NOBODY in the girls group wanted to talk in front of the guests. I tried to pull some up on stage, but they were terrified and walked off immediately. I have three girls who are not paralized by public speaking. I didn´t like that all of the speaking at the event fell on their shoulders. Confidence-building is one of my central goals for the group. I´m planning to do a mini-course on Public Speaking with them to improve their confidence. I don´t expect all the girls would come out of such a course being top-notch speakers, but maybe it would be enough to prove to them that public-speaking is a monster that they are all capable of conquering.

Currently, our school is under construction after years of waiting for more classrooms. The construction will supposedly take 6 months. In the meantime classes will be held in make-shift sheet metal shacks behind the construction zone. These are far from ideal learning conditions, in the hottest months of the year. However, a bigger school is absolutely necesssary. This week I´m trying to figure out where I can hold my English Group, Club Cheras, Young Artist Group, etc. Options are limited. With the school out of the cards, that leaves the church or someone´s house. Nobody has a house that could potentially host such meetings except Niña Reyna, my Salvadoran mom, and I don´t want her house to be invaded throughout the whole week for months to come. I don´t think she would be comfortable with that. I´ll keep you all in the loop of what develops. Send me some good vibes please!

Next Tuesday I´m off to Santa Ana with 4 rockstar youth from my community for a 3-day camp on Leadership and Conflict Resolution. The camp is hosted by an international university based in Costa Rica. Presenters will be professors and students with leadership training from around the world. There were only spots for 11 volunteers and 25 youth from around the country. I applied and our Montecristo kids were accepted to go this year! I will be taking 2 boys, Gere and Carlos, and 2 girls, Vanesa and Marily. They are between 15 and 16 years of age. All of these youth are motivated, energetic, and have leader potential. It was challlenging picking just four, but I´m happy with the picks. The school director Juan helped me witht the selection process. They are all excited; it´s gonna be a blast!

Well I need to get going to run some errands, below I´ve posted some photos from the Valentine´s Day fundraiser and some photos from this past Saturday. I went for an overnight to my friend Eric´s site for Supper Club. We feasted on ¨fusion¨themed foods. Everyone made something different and we spent the night laughing and stuffing our faces. Much love to all of you back home. Stay in touch!