Stoves, Water and Celebrating Elections

So it is somewhere between Monday and Friday morning, you just got to work or class, and while deciding between adding another packet of sugar to your coffee or just taking that first sip you decide to check Jimbo's blog - good choice. Through a series of phone calls, I got myself into the stove initiative here in El Salvador. A United States based NGO, Stove Team International, has a base here in Sonsonate and it is really badass. Imagine a little green stove, with a square opening on one of the sides where you can throw firewood. Seems pretty basic... not very sexy.

Wrong.

These stoves use 70 percent less wood and produce literaly no visible smoke when cooking properly. AKA the perfect idea for a health volunteer project. I brough a stove model into my community and have been passing it around - prediction, going to be a success. They 'cut down' on deforestation, which is becoming a problem here. Also, the smoked filled kicthens with black charred walls will finely settle, leaving the rooms to be filled with conversation rather than a black haze of death.

Also, I am about to start a clean water campaign in site. I am trying to corner down the local health promoter so that I can get some bags of water treatment that kill germs/prevent larva from growing! The plan is to run around my community tossing these things into pilas while doing weird dance moves to get the community as psyched about clean water as I am.

Speaking of being psyched - we all know Obama won. I did what most Americans did that night after he gave his speach, by going to a local kareoke club and singing/shouting Spanish lyrics to a crowd of Salvadorans: "YOOOO tengo la camisa negra, hoy me amor esta de luto. Tengo en el alma pena y es por culpa de tu embrujo" while dancing like a young Elvis Presley.

What have we learned?

Efficiant burning stoves are going to be a great improvement to life in my site.
Clean water is going to kill mosquitoes.
People here don't know who Elvis is but think I have amazing dance moves.

Other news:

Nos vemos... huge term here. "We will see eachother"... in rural El Salv it is more or less how every conversation is ended. With one exception, when talking with blind people. Where my language ability has really, really improved I still find myself nervous in certain situations. I had a hard time understanding this guys accent, a man who happens to be blind. Due to the fact that I had a hard time understanding him, I was a little nervous and I wasn't thinking clearly. The end of the convo came, and I through out "nos vemos pues" and the guy just kind of sat there stunned. Clearly I didn't mean anything by it, and he was not offended at all, but I don't think he gets that comment that often.

I have been told in country that I am an amazing dancer on more than one occasion now.

This has gone to my head.

Post-Peace Corps, I will be available as a wedding date, lucky you.