This morning was pretty eventful, with not one but two earthquakes about 4 hours apart. I was in my bed a bit before 5 a.m. when I felt the first one. I'm not sure if I was already awake or if the shaking woke me up, but I was still half asleep and wasn't sure I hadn't dreamed the whole thing until I went online and saw a facebook post from my friend about the quake. Then later that morning I was in a meeting with the school committee at the Chua chioj school—we had already commented about the earthquake—when another more powerful one struck. The ground shook for about 30 seconds, not powerful enough to do any damage but definitely noticeable. I've been a bit jumpy since then, and I keep on imagining I feel the ground shaking.

The last few weeks, the first of the new school year, have been filled with both exciting advances as well as frustrating setbacks. My goal this year is to get the schools to take more ownership of the program, with the idea of making it self-sustaining, or at least partially so, by the time I leave. In addition to promoting consistent hand-washing and teeth brushing systems and other health related routines and activities in the classrooms, my main push has been to encourage teachers to begin teaching their own health classes this year, as opposed to last year where I worked more directly with the students. It's been kind of a roller coaster so far—as I expected, it's taken a while to get teachers going with the classes. In fairness, they do have lots other responsibilities and legitimate obstacles. Nonetheless, some teachers have really impressed me with how seriously they're taking the program and have planned quality health lessons, complete with additional materials and engaging activities. One teacher in particular, who I've had a lot of problems with him in the past, completely surprised me. Last year his class always seemed out of control, and he was always yelling at the kids and I even saw him hit them with a belt on one occasion. I was expecting problems getting him to participate actively this year, but to my great surprise, when I arrived to his classroom he had a solid lesson on hand washing—complete with paper cutouts of soap, water, hands, etc— prepared for his students, who listened attentively and participated. I like to think that my influence may have had a positive impact on this teacher, but whatever the cause I hope he and all the 14 teachers I work with will continue to progress forward throughout the school year.

Last week I went to help out with the training of the new batch of healthy schools trainees, and led a mini-workshop modeled after the workshops I did with my teachers last month, in order to teach the trainees about doing trainings in their schools. Everyone seemed to enjoy the session and I got positive feedback from the trainees. It felt nice to have knowledge and insights to share from actual experience, and to not feel like a rookie anymore.

My experience today was not quite so encouraging. For the third week in a row the 2 teachers at chua-chioj—my smallest school but also one of my favorites because of the enthusiastic kids—were still not prepared with health classes, telling me that they'd been so busy they hadn't had time to start. We had, however, planned a meeting with the school committee to discuss possible infrastructure projects to work on this year. The earthquake, which interrupted the meeting halfway through, seemed to be nature's way of summing up the overall tone of the meeting. Despite the enthusiastic pitch Profe Luis and I gave to try to motivate the parents in charge of the school to take on one or more projects, their response was half-hearted at best. They told us that, while they knew what we were saying was correct and the school had lots of important needs, there were lots of obstacles as well. For example, a project to connect the school's bathrooms, which are currently not in use, would need to be approved by the community's water committee, which currently prohibits flush toilets due to the scarcity of water. I was told that the bathrooms were only built in the first place because it was a requirement for a school to have bathrooms, but they were never actually intended to be used. Another problem is that the current school committee did not seem to have coordinated very well with the previous committee, and were also reluctant to start a new project because their term was up in another 5 months and would be replaced by new members at that point. Another problem we discussed is that in order to get funding from Peace Corps, the project would also have to be supported and funded in part by both the local community as well as the larger municipality, which both seem to be difficult tasks. As I have already observed on several occasions, local politics here are complicated and, sadly, seem fairly corrupt as well. Getting the mayor to support a project without having the right connections or strings to pull will definitely be an uphill battle. Most disappointing, however, is what the men told me about the local community itself, which is divided and, I was told, not particularly interested in supporting the school. Even the school committee members themselves did not seem overly motivated, with one of them reading a newspaper in the middle of the meeting. I find myself feeling jealous of my friends who've been able to successfully do infrastructure projects in their schools, but I also have to keep in mind that they're working mostly with schools that have already been in the healthy schools for 3 years, while all mine are new to the program, and they're also mostly working in areas that are relatively better off economically than my communities, which makes a large difference in obtaining community support. Despite the frustration, I did feel satisfaction that I'm doing all that I feel I can to encourage progress, and hopefully today's meeting will inspire more steps forward, even if it takes time to change things.