Semen? What's that?

Have you ever seen chickens do it? It's quite an awful site! One that I get to see every day. The rooster chases the lady chicken around for a while... she looks like she is running for her life. You can really tell she doesn't want it. She seems to eventually get tired or just gives up and the rooster jumps her... He gets on top, standing on her wings, pinning her down... and he does his thing while she is laying there unable to move... and the most annoying part of the site to me is watching him peck at her head throughout coitus like he's really showing her whose boss or telling her to shut up or something. Yuck. I am SO glad I am not a lady chicken. They're called hens right?

My host parents catch me staring at the chickens doing it sometimes. I always have this horrified look on my face, jaw dropped, and my host mom will look at the chickens, then look at my face... and we both laugh.

Marinita asked me to explain HIV and AIDS to her after getting back from the camp I took the kids to. She didn't know a thing about it. I was explaining to her what you can get it from... and this is when I discovered Marinita does not know what semen is. I was a bit shocked.. she has 4 kids. But when i told her the virus can be transmitted through the semen of a man... she asked me "what's semen?" I said... "you know- when a guy..." After a while she said "ooooh yea... that" so I guess she knew it existed kind of... maybe she just didnt know what it was called. She is such a conservative woman.

And sex is something people just don't talk about here. They all do it... but since they don't talk about it, maybe they don't really understand what they are doing, or even know the vocabulary for the parts and what not. This is why Peace Corps El Salvador spends time on educating youth about HIV/ AIDS and general sexual health, like at the camp I went to. My friend Emilie described what we did at the camp perfectly in her blog... I especially like her description of "Paso a Paso" when we taught the kids how to properly use a condom. Read it ---> HERE

A cute story about how clueless people can be without being educated or talking about sex. I was talking to a guy the other day... He's was pretty old... like 80 maybe. He told me that he and his wife never kissed... they have 8 kids, so they had sex... but they never kissed. That is, not until he got to be about 60 years old and started watching telenovelas (spanish soap operas)... He said they never knew how to do it... they learned from watching telenovelas. Now they kiss all the time. That story made me laugh.

You just don't see any PDA here either... I have gotten so used to not seeing anyone touch anyone else here, the other day I saw some teenagers holding hands and I was like "WHOA!" lol... I think it can never hurt for people to be more outwardly affectionate toward one another.

I'm learning that I really like going to bed early and waking up early. I went to bed at 8:30 last night and got nearly 10 hours of sleep. When you do this almost every night... it's amazing how good you can feel! I will never again be able to sleep so much in my life when I am done with peace corps.