preparing to avoid making assumptions

So guess what! The president of Panama Martin Torrijos declared that tomorrow is a national holiday to celebrate the return of Irving Saladiño Panama's first gold medal winner ever! So fun.

I've been doing quite a bit of reading about the situation in El Salvador and the experience I'm about to immerse myself in. I know that I have had a lot of experience in the region, I am "from Central America" so this should be easy! Well, maybe it'll be easier on certain levels but, I think that one of the problems that I see in the Central American region is that there is a history of making assumptions that have lead to deep, deep misunderstandings and conflicts. So, one of my goals this summer is to avoid making assumptions in every possible way.

One of the best things that you can do for me during my time in El Salvador is to read my blog posts, tell you friends about them, and (this is my favorite part) leave comments! (If it is better for you, you can e-mail me with your comments and questions, I will do my best to respond promptly to e-mails while I'm gone). This type of interaction will remind me of why I'm down there and will help me do a better job while I'm there.

So, while I'm putting on fresh eyes and arriving to Central America hoping to see it in ways that I haven't seen it before, I'm going to introduce you to El Salvador. It is only about 8,260 square miles, smaller than the US state of Massachusetts with a population of approximately 5.8 million people. As you can probably guess, El Salvador is the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America, nestled between Guatemala and Honduras. It has coffee growing mountain regions, corn and bean growing central valleys and cane growing costal regions. I will be in San Salvador, the capital and the center of most industry for the country.

I have my new blog at The AP http://advocacynet.org/page/mckeeth (which doesn't have any new posts yet!) and will still be blogging at my personal blog if you would like to add them to your RSS feeds or bookmarks so that they will be easy to check regularly that would be great.

*Map from LonelyPlanet.org
*Stats from The World Factbook