Sunday, June 29

Sorry we've been out of touch, but I want to let you know that we're having a great trip.  It has been really hot and humid.  There's been very little rain this year, which has prevented things from cooling off at night, though we did get a thunderstorm tonight which helped.  We're drinking a LOT of water.

The ESL classes are going well, in spite of daily surprises in the schedule.  Our volunteers are doing a great job and are gaining in confidence daily.  The materials are good and the kits are working out.  I love watching the teams of three doing their planning, they are so energized when they think about how they'll be working with the students.

The home stays are going well, too, though we heard a lot of stories about scary bugs when we were debriefing on Friday night.  Everyone loves their families and are working through the difficulties in communication.  There has been some success in playing games with the families, and some of the bilingual picture dictionaries that we brought with us have been useful.

We were divided into two groups for the Spanish classes, no matter what our level and it has been great.  We meet under the tree next to the community center in El Bario, and have had two classes so far, with three more to come next week. The first day we had a theme on farm animals and common things that we'd need to know in the house.  The second day we had foods and body parts.  Very practical, some new vocabulary for the more advanced students, and an explanation of which words are different in El Salvador.  It's a different approach and we've enjoyed it, partly because it's not too taxing.

Saturday we went to San Salvador for a pretty heavy day as far as civil war history goes.  We were well prepared from the two films that we saw in El Bario and from a couple of talks that we went to and got a lot out of it.  We also went to a play for an hour in the evening, then had dinner with our scholarship students and participated in some salsa dance lessons.  The evening was a lot of fun, and our youth interacted a lot with the Salvadoran youth.

Today was a free day, with Meeting for Worship, then swimming, shopping, or napping.  Tomorrow we go back to El Bario for two days of classes and another day of painting.

Robert has been really sick with typhoid, but is now on a course of medicine and is feeling much better.  He will be able to go with us next week on all our adventures.  Typhoid is food-borne (usually because fecal matter gets into the food) and, since he has not prepared any food for us and we've all been vaccinated or taken the oral prevention, we are not at any risk.  It's been hard for him, though, to stay home and have others help us out.  I'm really glad that he's getting better, and also am grateful that we have Andrew with us.  Thank goodness Andrew and I have been here enough times before that we know our way around.  Our local guides have been wonderful.

Our group has been very responsible, very mature, and very healthy!  A few icky stomachs, but no major problems, knock on wood.  Let's hope it stays that way!