The Month of Love

So the theme of February has been love being that on Feb. 14 we celebrated Dia de Amistad y Amor. It has been a crazy month packed with all sorts of exciting and dramatic events. Our classes have been good minus a few that are crazy and hard to control. Some of the highlights of this month have been:

--the secret angel exchange for vday (we had 3 diff groups we exchanged with: the internas/sisters, alumnas de noveno grado, maestras/hermanas) it kept us busy but it was fun esp. when our angels gifted us with chocolate :)
--gina's three gigs in suchitoto; the weekend was a blast and we ate like royalty.
--our vday meal for the sisters and internas. we cooked a pasta meal and i think we could have fed like 60 ppl ha! it was a lot of work but everyone enjoyed it and it was a ton of fun
--the beginning of Cuaresma, Lent, and enjoying the journey with the sisters and internas
--having our best class of the year w/ our worst group even though they were good because sor marg. guillen was with us, we still enjoyed it!

I'm sure there are many more highlights but for now that's all I have. Happy Thursday!

Officially a Temporary Salvadorena

Well it wasn't fun nor cheap but we did it folks. We are now legal and according to immigration we will have temporary residence for a year. We have to return in April for our residence card and so hopefully their "investigation" goes well and they clear us to stay. It was a dagger to our finances but what other option did we really have, we don't have the time or money to leave the country every 3 months. Enough about that for now being that Gina and I have mulled over this for days now and we are over it, ugh!
Our school year has started and we are officially teachers! Scary, isn't it? Gina and I have 7 refuerzo English classes which basically are reinforcement classes. In total we have close to 300 students! We have enjoyed it thus far and everything has gone well. There a few obstacles such as having 50 girls in a room with construction right outside the door but we have managed so far. We also are the basketball coaches and thus far have only had around 8 girls. We're ok with that. We hope to recruit some more in the upcoming weeks. As Gina wrote in her blog we've had some drama with the new internas but we're hoping that they will adapt and become comfortable in the next few weeks. The height of the drama was one night after dinner I was talking with an "antigua", an interna who has been here for years, and all of a sudden she pulls me and says vamos a ver que esta pasando. We see that the antiguas had lined up on one side and the new internas on the other and were shouting and pointing fingers. I was like uh what's going on? Ha!?! They were talking so fast, the only thing I understood was algo sobre una guerra con ella y ella. Thankfully Gina returned from dinner and helped step in to do some crowd control. We let most of them have a turn but we had to end it otherwise they would have gone all night! Not everyone was happy but the girls agreed to end this "bonding session" with the sign of peace, aren't they the greatest? At least they were communicating, right? Well wish us luck :)

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!!!

SCRATCH THAT....

So I previously shared the intimate details of what I thought was traveler's diarrhea, however, we decided that after three days of cramps/fever I probably should head to the clinic. Since the sisters had the driver take Gina to the clinic we only had a general idea of where the clinic was and so Gina and I started walking the direction we thought was to the clinic. This trip to the clinic resulted in us walking up and down the dirty streets of Soyapango which didn't feel good at all since I was still pretty weak. My thoughts at the time were what's up with this, Gina gets driven to and from the clinic, medicine paid for, and food and juice when she arrived home and I had to walk to the clinic and no one except Karina and Gina came to see me :( ! Yea I was feeling sorry for myself lol. Then once we received the news that I also had the amoeba and an infection, the decisions as to what medicine I should take began. The doctor was really nice and patient while Gina and I deliberated over what the right choice would be, let's just say it ended up being a fun walk back hours later!

THEN....I received a phone call two days, Wednesday morning, later that my grandfather is very ill and they don't think he is going to make it. My family insisted that I get on a flight ASAP and so a few hours later Gina's parents, who so graciously called the airline for me thanks :) sent an email saying I was on the flight to Dallas Friday morning. WHAT!?! I have been on an emotional rollercoaster to say the least for the past week. I will return in a few weeks but it really has me in a daze to be back but the time I've already spent with my family esp. mi sobrino has been wonderful. I know that God will work it all out and I need to be patient. We ask for your prayers and I'll post an update when I have one.

Beans Everday does NOT keep the doctor away...

Instead of spending a nice weekend at the beach I was stuck in my bed with the dreaded travelers diarrhea. Yup that's right and who knew it could be so miserable because I didn't! I woke up in the middle of the night with chills and body aches like I've never felt before. But gracias a dios I'm on the road to recovery. The best part of this whole experience is that I'm likely to have it several times while I'm here. The sisters here are finally beginning to understand that eating beans three times a day every day is a huge change in diet for their volunteers. It has taken 4 volunteers getting sick before the light bulb came on. Apparently at dinner they asked Gina, Jodi esta enferma porque tanto frijoles? It's really hard for them to comprehend how the food they eat here is hard on the body. For breakfast they usually have beans/cheese and sometimes tamales. Then for lunch soup, rice, beans, and chicken. Then dinner beans and rice. Oh and with every meal they have homemade corn tortillas. Don't get me wrong, the food here is delicious but after so long it takes a toll on the body. The sisters are always telling Gina and I we need to eat more, since we're vegetarians they really worry about us. One of our first weeks here one of the sisters asked me why we weren't eating ham and I replied well because it's meat. De verdad? I don't think they really understand it but it provides momentary comic relief. Well I'm off to rest for the last week of school with the ninas...

A day in the life...

Here's mi horario diario....

5:15 Wake up
5:30 Morning Walk in the Gym
6:20 Breakfast
6:55 Buenas Dias (school announcements/prayer in gym w/ girls)
7:20/30ish - first class begins
7:30-9:25 - I accompany the school psychologist and help with kinder and pre-k small groups. She has been working to help develop their listening and social skills. (since i have a psy degree they think i am a qualified psychologist which i would be fine with if i could speak spanish!)
9:25-10 - RECREO (a break for all classes aka time to eat pupusas :)
10:00 - 12:20 - Work with psychologist or help Karina & Gina with English classes
12:20 - Almuerzo/Lunch
1:00 - 3:00
Monday & Tuesday Gina and I are the basketball coaches. Depending on the day we have 12 to 16 girls. It's pretty much a crazy house, street ball kind of game. We are starting with the basics, dribbling dribbling and more dribbling , rebotar in spanish as we quickly learned)
Also, Gina nad I have started teaching English to a few of the sisters, they are really cute :). This happens either on Monday or Tuesday depending on their availability.
Wed - Friday
I help Karina with her afternoon English classes.
4:30 - 7:00 - Homeowork/Chores/Rosary with the internas, the 14 girls that live here at the school (this is basically a time we "supervise" them as they finish their chores and prayer time)
7:00ish - Cena/Dinner
8:00ish - Time to go to my room because they let out the guard dogs and everyone has to be in their rooms so they don't get eaten hehe

I have put a lot of "ish" because everything here runs on Latin America time which means that things happen when they happen. Although you have a schedule does not mean they follow it!

Que semana!

So many things have happened these past few weeks! The top three that stand out for me are

1) Michael Jackson Thriller Skit where Gina and I "danced" with the teachers in front of the entire school
- i put dance in quotations because we only practiced the routine like 5 times and so as you might expect we only knew the first few moves of the dance. well i really am glad that we had awesome costumes because the dance was a lot worse than we expected! we basically did the first move and then everyone started doing something different and so at some point of the teachers yelled, caminamos and so we just started walking around like zombies. it was pretty hilarious! the skit was for the celebration of dia de los ninos which apparently is an important celebration for the country of el salvador. however, as we have found out, they have important celebrations for just about everything here!

2) Last Thursday I woke up from a deep sleep and thought I was dreaming because it felt as if my bed was moving. Then I soon realized that it was not a dream, it was in fact a tremor from a terremoto! It lasted for several seconds and was it was over I heard all the sisters come out of their room and talking about it. At this point I was too tired to get up. So the next morning I asked Gina if she had felt anything and she was like what are you talking about. I then started to doubt myself, maybe there wasn't one. Then the topic of breakfast was the terremoto! We couldn't believe Gina hadn't felt anything!

3) Unfortunately the sickness has found us. Gina started feeling weird this past Friday and soon was burning up with a temperature of 102.8. We headed to the clinic the following morning and found out she has the amoeba! The doctor gave her pills that should hopefully clear it up. Apparently she had the highest level of amoeba and infection possible! They tell us it's common and so no need to worry :) The experience of the clinic and being it was the first time we dealt with sickness here was an adventure in itself.