Yo he llegado!

I officially returned to El Salvador on Tuesday December 1 and hit the ground running. Gina and I were given the assignment to teach a 2-week review class for both 7th and 10th grades. The classes were small and the girls were great. We basically reviewed the same 4 topics and thought they had a handle on it but the exams said otherwise. As expected we have a long road ahead of us but we're thankful that the girls are so patient with our spanish or lack thereof :). It was good for us to have a trial run, although we're not sure what we are going to do with a classroom of 50 girls per class!

We finished our classes on Dec. 12th and took a day trip to Playa El Tunco where we were rocked by the waves of the Pacific and ate some yummy paletas. Our mini-vacation was fun but we had to return quickly to pack our backpacks and head out to the campo to join some of the girls from the school who had already begun the week long mission where they would be serving the community of Sensunte. The schedule was rigourous especially for us gringas that are accustomed to our free time. We would awake at 4:30 am to shower in the pila, which is basically a water trough, where we would pour freezing water over our heads with buckets. It was quite the bonding experience. We would then begin chores, morning prayers, breakfast, and then the visiteos. For the visiteos we would head out in teams to walk all over the countryside through corn fields, up rocky hills, crossing rivers all the while attempting to evade the cattle, bulls, pigs, chickens, and turkeys that we encountered along the way. The purpose of the visiteos was to go to distant houses and read the bible and pray with the families. We also informed them that we had clothes and toys for the kids that could be picked up on th e last day of the mission. I would have to say the visiteos was my favorite part. In the afternoons we would have talleres (workshops) for all ages. The talleres consisted of pinanta making, panaderia (bakery), bordado (stitching), floristeria where they made wreaths w/ flowers, and the ninos which basically colored :). It was really great to see the girls of our school serve this community with all of their heart. We would finish up, eat dinner, and start the rosary. After the rosary, we had celebration of the liturgy. Then we would prepare for the following day. We usually went to bed around 11:30. As you might imagine I was exhausted and around 10:30 pretty grumpy! I think I should mention that there were all kinds of spiders crawling everywhere but when you're tired you just have to accept it and pass out hehe. This mission never lacked adventure even down to the ride home. So we all piled in the back of a truck which basically looked like a cattle trailer and headed down the rocky, craziest road ever and we all held on for dear life. The greatest part was when we had to switch to a smaller truck in which the back was about the size of a normal truck. The crazy thing is we had to pack in 16 people, 7 chickens, 2 little ducks, and all of our luggage. You better believe that salvadorenos could have fit about 8 more people back there with us. The worst/best part was that it began raining and it was freezing! Mind you we came from the campo where it was like 90 degrees everyday and so no one had a jacket. So for an hour and a half we listened to gina make jokes to take our minds off how miserable we were.

Now we're back in Soyapango awaiting the arrival of Gina's parents. We have all sorts of fun things planned and hopefully it won't take me another month to let you know about our adventures with them :) Feliz Navidad a todos!!!