{"id":1924,"date":"2009-06-20T22:35:05","date_gmt":"2009-06-21T04:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.JFanjoy.com\/blog\/?p=1924"},"modified":"2009-06-20T22:35:05","modified_gmt":"2009-06-21T04:35:05","slug":"a-friend-is-joining-the-peace-corps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/a-friend-is-joining-the-peace-corps\/","title":{"rendered":"A friend is joining the Peace Corps!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just got an email from an old friend of mine I haven&#8217;t heard from in a while. She&#8217;s going to be joining the Peace Corps next month! That&#8217;s very exciting. She will be heading to El Salvador, which is awfully close to Guatemala, so maybe I will even get to see her during our service.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.JFanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/GammaGoalie.jpg\" target=\"photo\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.JFanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/GammaGoalie1.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"266\" alt=\"GammaGoalie.jpg\" class=\"main_img_right\" \/><\/a>There are a lot of similarities between Guatemala and El Salvador: former Spanish colony, history of unstable governments, horrible violence and genocide in the 80s. But they have their differences, too: El Salvador is mostly ladino (non-native), and ALL of it is streamy hot. Man, I&#8217;m glad I am where I am, working with Mayans and living on a freezing mountaintop. But there is a place for everyone in this world&#8230; and apparently Alicia&#8217;s is El Salvador. I met her back when I was a summer camp counselor at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.camprocks.org\/skylark.html\" target=\"_blank\">Skylark Ranch<\/a>, and she was a camper. She was my best archery student ever (maybe even shoots better than I), and she was a counselor-in-training as well. It all makes sense to me; I&#8217;ve long maintained that being a Peace Corps Volunteer is like being a summer camp counselor x12. Instead of 2+ months, it&#8217;s 2+ years. Instead of one week of intense training, you get 12. You spend about 20 hours a day working, and get paid next to nothing. You live in the woods, poop in a hole in the ground, and regularly cook over an open fire. And, you change lives.<\/p>\n<p>I am sure Alicia (Gamma) will feel right at home.<\/p>\n<p>She is starting a blog, it&#8217;s at <span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 15px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aliceacock-esteb.blogspot.com\/\" style=\"color: blue; text-decoration: underline;\">www.aliceacock-esteb.blogspot.com<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just got an email from an old friend of mine I haven&#8217;t heard from in a while. She&#8217;s going to be joining the Peace Corps next month! That&#8217;s very exciting. She will be heading to El Salvador, which is awfully close to Guatemala, so maybe I will even get to see her during our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jims-guatemala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}