Temporary Residency

After a little quest in the land of paperwork mishaps, I´m now officially a temporary resident of El Salvador! Since I´ve spent the past week on this project, I´ve been staying in Santa Tecla and will return to Olocuilta tomorrow morning.

When I arrived here last Saturday, we had a devotional meeting/fundraiser. The event was held at the Baha´i Center that evening. As it is perpetually summer here, the prayers and songs were recited outside. They were so beautiful! These devotions were said for a group of Baha´is who are imprisoned, soley for their beliefs, in Iran and the date of their trial is soon. The fundraiser side of things was for the community of El Salvador, in general. Wonderful food was served and people made donations. All the while there was more music and I met such lively people.

My religion also has its own calendar, where each month spans 19 days. At the start of the new month we get together for a Feast. The one I attended earlier this week was another opportunity for me to meet more blessed people. During the devotions I read a short passage, in Spanish nonetheless, for a group of no less than 30 people. What an accomplishment in my bilingual studies! I may have not made any grand mistakes at that gathering, but I´ve sure said some funny things in my attempts to communicate. For instance, I once tried to say 'I am going to like the children' and it came out 'All the boys will like me'...! However, I´ve learned to embrace my mistakes and relish the moments when I can laugh at myself. Speaking of which, the day I finally located and bought a new memory card for my camera, I dropped the whole thing and it may be broken, oops.

This is a good time for me to reflect on my life´s learning. The purpose of this blog is to share my experiences, but also to convey the fact that all of this is one big process for me. There is always so much more I could say. However, be assured that while I´m having the time of my life, this is a difficult adjustment. My time here has made me question the foundations I base my happiness on. I see many people who have next to nothing, but are rich in spirit and cheer. For me, life always has its polite way of encouraging me to improve.

Rain y Fiestas

I left off last time talking about food, so I´ll resume that discussion now. El Salvadorans eat these wonders called ¨pupusas¨ and Olocuilta happens to be the land of pupusas! They are especially good with a green called loroco. Almost every meal here is accompanied by a tortilla. Both my hostess and the maid are fantastic cooks. Oh, and that´s something else I forgot to write about earlier: maids are very common here. However, the culture is so welcoming of their hired help; they are treated like family. I´m enjoying doing plenty of dishwashing here too, so don´t think I´m off the hook :p

The past two days we´ve been welcoming local teens into our home for English and virtue classes. Yesterday and today, all we had to do was visit two local schools and speak to their directors. Our host explained that my roommate and I are doing a year of volunteer service. We are offering the classes for free and on a purely volunteer basis. After introducing ourselves to several classrooms we had lists of interested persons. So far, we´ve had 40 kids attend! They arrive in smaller groups throughout the afternoon. This will be one of my projects for the remainder of the calendar year. I start leading Baha´i service activities like Junior Youth groups soon.

And I would have pictures for you all, but a tragedy occured! My camera stopped being able to read my memory card on Monday. I tried plugging the XD card into an adaptor, that didn´t work either. So now everything may be lost, I´m not sure what happened. However, I took it to mean two things: I´m a bit of an idiot and also perhaps the past 2 weeks had been too special to capture in picture form. haha...

Currently, it is nearing the end of a two week festival here in Olocuilta. I´ve had the hardest time going to bed at night because of the LOUD rain and partying going on in the evening. I was able to wake up at 5:00am the other day and take a walk down to the river. It was a mile steeply downhill, then back up. I hope to make a regular habit of it! But people keep getting a kick out of the fact that I´m from Alaska. I´m walking around sweating and wilting. Today, the director of one of the schools gave me a cold, frigid drink and said it was like my home! Aww! Seriously, it was one of the most touching moments ever. And I love asking people if there´s penguins in AK, all of them say yes!

Olocuilta

Wow!!! It's hot here! Since it's still raining off and on, the first few days weren't too bad. But now I'm WILTING. My body is so confused, normally it's getting prepared for winter...

And there was a change of plans. My roommate and I will be traveling to Olocuilta soon to help out their community instead of going to the school. We can visit the children in the near future though :)

Even though I'm having bunches of good times here, I'm definitely still getting used to things. Never before had I seen such poverty and wealth living in close proximity. For example, yesterday we assisted with the jr. youth celebration near Lourdes. On the drive there were glimpses of the reality of the Third World. The kids were great though! They performed music, dance and skits. Later in the evening, we went to a birthday party. It was in another guarded/gated neighborhood, like the one I'm staying in now. All the friends and family there were dressed real nice, the living room had a chandelier, etc. And today we passed through a shady area and within a couple miles was a nice shopping center. All this aside, it's the atmosphere of the country and welcoming people that has captured my heart.

Some more new things: a common way of saying "guys" is "bichos". And if the group is several girls, one would address them as "bichas". Haha! The accents around the country are pretty different too. One of the most challenging things is learning the region-specific words. And some days my Spanish doesn't quite work, but it's coming along :) Oh, and the food is AMAZING!