One Month Mark y Año Nuevo

Well, the new year marked our first month as volunteers. It also marked the end of a very strange adventurous year for us. One year ago today, we still had jobs and a house. We were already well on the way towards leaving, but the first of many more substantial commitments hadn’t occurred yet.

So here we are in El Centro now. These are several views of the local school that we will be working with. It has also been something of a home, since during this vacation period we have done all of our cooking here, and spent quite a bit of time studying in and out of the classrooms as well. School starts in a little over a week, so we will have to be moving. We are not quite sure where yet… probably to nearby Las Pilas, where there is a “hotel” of sorts that has a larger room that we can rent out for a couple of months while a house is completed.

Overall, I would give our first month here a thumbs up. I think we have a very good community to work with, and you really can’t beat the climate. It also feels much safer than much of the rest of El Salvador as well. We have certainly been very healthy, (knock on wood) no real health incidents at all up here, not even upset digestive systems. We still have a lot to work on, the housing being a part, and the language is still a huge struggle (and frustrating too!). But, good first steps have been taken, and we have kept busy and productive for new volunteers.

As far as the entire year goes… I’d have to say it was one of the better ones that I have had (can’t speak for Katie, but I think she enjoyed it to). It’s not just the fact that we weren’t working during most of it (yes, I’m sure that helped), but more that throughout a large portion of it we were actively doing things that we really wanted to do. Previously, we had been spending much more of our time on things we “had” to do, and lived for the short periods of things that we liked to do.

I guess I just feel like we spent most of our year actively pursuing personal goals, and meeting them. Of course all of this led to our being here, and now we have more huge challenges ahead. That’s what’s refreshing, everything about our lives here is a challenge. For those of you who think that we’ve just dropped out and are taking a two year vacation. Try uprooting yourself from a comfortable life and culture, and really go beyond your comfort zone living someplace where you don’t understand the culture, and you can’t even communicate that you don’t understand it. Then add to that that everyone, including yourself, hopes that you will provide some kind of help and support for this community. It’s a lot of pressure… but it is also very satisfying and mostly fun!

Ok, enough of the soul searching. I’ll end by promising that the next entry will have more description of things we are doing and experiencing. Cheers for now!