El Salvador part one!

I can´t believe it´s only been barely over a week since I got here to El Salvador! I´ve been living in a homestay in a little rural village called Huisisilapa (Huisi for short), and my host family is amazing. I was a little nervous before coming because I´ve never spent so much time speaking only Spanish. What I didn´t know was that there´s been another group here from Spokane...they are a group of high school students (most of whom don´t speak spanish) that work to raise funds for the kids in Huisi to be able to go to school, and even a select few to go to University. Their main goal is solidarity with Huisi, and it´s been so great to get to know them. (side note: if anyone would like to contribute to this group´s fundraising, just let me know...most of the kids here are so eager to learn but just don´t have the resources to go to school. The government doesn´t care much about this community so they haven´t been all that helpful in providing teachers, materials, etc.)

Huisi is a relatively new community; it was started in 1993 with the end of the civil war here in El Salvador. I don´t think there´s a single person here who hasn´t been affected by the war, but what I love is that they are all SO willing to share their stories because they want the history to stay alive. Most of the adults (the kids my age were just little babies when this was going on so they don´t remember it) had family members killed or disappeared (aka kidnapped and killed). Some, like both of my host parents, saw the military kill someone right before their eyes, often a loved one. A large group of Salvadorans fled to Honduras to escape the war, and stayed there during the duration (12 years, I think). When the war was finally over, someone either gave or sold this chunk of land in the middle of nowhere in El Salvador to the refugees if they wanted to create a community. There are about 150 families that decided to come here to live, and I´m continually amazed by the people. It is such a tight knit group, and the high school students started their own youth organization to organize activities for the community...I´m not sure exactly what all they do, but the leadership that they show is incredible.

By American standards, I´m living in total poverty here, but it doesn´t really seem to me that that´s the case...everyone has a roof over their heads and we eat three solid meals a day (plus about a million little snacks). I feel like they´re always offering me food! I can already tell that my Spanish has improved a lot and that I can get by just fine with no English. My friend LJ is here too and doing well, and it´s nice to have the comfort zone of having someone I already knew with me. My host sister Josefina is 22 and is so great...she laughs all the time and is always so joyful. She´s already become like a sister to me and I´ll be so sad to leave her in a few days.

On Wednesday the 7th, 14 other Whitworth students will be arriving in El Salvador. LJ and I will go with our professor, Karla, to the airport to pick them up, and then on to another little village (I think) called Suchitoto, where we´ll do a little bit of language school. During the remaining 3 weeks we´ll be studying the informal markets here, being election observers in the upcoming municipal elections, and just get to know and love (even more) the Salvadoran people.

I´ve talked to my family a couple of times and they tell me that Spokane has a ridiculous amount of snow...it´s nice to be here getting tan! We went to the beach a couple of days ago and a couple days before that to a dormant volcano. It´s beautiful here and the jovenes (the young people) have organized lots of activities for us. We dance a lot, hang out a lot, laugh a lot, and enjoy just being :)

I think that´s all for now...hopefully I´ll be able to write again soon! I always love getting emails or notes on here, so if you feel so inclined, I´d love it!

Blessings from the tropics!!