Cleaning Day

CLEANING IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!

If there is one thing that everyone back home knows about me, it is that I love to clean... a lot, right, mom?

Elections came and went in my town. Voting stations were sent in for a weekend along with observers. To prepair for the big day and also to throw a little 'rural health' on the ticket we did a town clean up. At around 9am, we got all the cool youth in my town who are 'down' with picking 'up' trash together. Rakes, wheel barriles, smiles and a ton of plastic trash everything. After a few hours, we had made a huge difference!

Don't let these kids fool you, they could 'sweep' your legs out from under you. (hehe, haha, so clever).
No help at all.

Do you see any trash in the picture? That means I did a good job. Cleaing the streets and looking sexy - that is what I do.

Mashizo - that means stud.

In the distance, you can see the ocean... well, you can't - but I can, everyday!

Cleaning up the streets

Jimbo

Climbing the Volcanoe

Look at this picture of my sideways face - some would say that is a typical Jimbo look... not bad looking, no very photogenic and the need to shave to look profesional. To those who agree with that analysis, I say to you: add in, just climbed a volcanoe!

That is right, folks! Last week, while hanging out with some dudes in the street (stuff us peace corps El Salv volunteers do) we decided it was time to climb the volcano! With that said, I ran to the church, turned on the microphone and made an announcement:

TODOS Y TODAS ESTAN INVITADOS VENIR A SUBIR EL VOLCAN ESTE SABADO A LAS 8:00 en PUNTOOOOOOO!!! - I yelled

Come Saturday, 8:00am - six of the 48,000 people that said they would come showed up. Within this six, 4 bottles of water, close to no food and 3 blankets. It was safe to say that we were pretty screwed. Hiking through forest, scaling walls of rock, cutting down vine with my machete - the first four minutes of our trip were easy. The last 4 and a half hours sucked. The last hour, specifically, beat me down - every ten minutes I had to take a break while my six guides yelled, "Ya Jim no aguanta" Jim can't handle it!.

Were we ran out of water, food and warm clothing - we did find snakes.

This snake really hated us.

This is my buddy, Javier - he speaks better Spanish than I do.

But, I am way taller.

Miguel here let me know that I had nothing to worry about with the snake.

Mario and myself guarding the top of the volcano with fake guns. Fake guns serve just as well as real guns when there is no one to fight against - something I learned on top of the rock!

Mario really liked the whole fake gun thing way more than I did - he wouldn't share his fake gun with anyone.

Leddy.

When we arrived on top, I was met my our MTV Cribs alike, champa (or hut). Instead of going in, we climbed on.

Mire la vista, pues

Our chumpa - so pretty, so hardcore.

Inside the crib - decked out.

Fogata - that means campfire! Trust me, it got crazy cold up top with the elevation and the wind - we lit this sucker up and sang the night away (until 8pm when we went to bed).

We made it home! Over six hours to climb up, and only 2 hours and change to get down. I would like to add here that I was the only one who did not fall while returning... however, I was the only one who cried on the way up...

The crew - how do you say, "guapo" in English?

Handsome.

The parade of women waiting for us to return from our victory... or the community just filling up water.

An anti-climatic ending to quite the hike. We went up and down, we had ups and downs - I left a boy, returned a man!

Will I ever do it again? Probably not.

Les deseo feliz ano nuevo!

Hope everyone had an amazing holiday season!

I road in the 2009 wave beach side with people from all over the world - but would have loved to have seen some familiar faces! Last year brought a ton of changes and I am lucky man to be in the situation that I am currently in. Projects to come, meetings to attend and friendships to continue building. I remember last year around this time I was working a job just for a paycheck - what a blessing to be doing something that I am really passionate about!

Love you all and let's keep in touch!

Jimbo