My class in order: Nora, Anderson, Elsi, Me, Fátima, Ignacio, and Marvin
My nurse/doctor Cindy, and me this past week
Last weekend at the beach picking mangos with Mauricio and hanging out with his cousins.
The mangos we picked at the beach!
Eighteen.
Eighteen is the number of days I have left here.
Reflecting back, my experience has been incredible. I have learned so much, encountered new ideas and beliefs, conversed with amazing people and pushed the boundaries of my views beyond the Coconino Forest boundaries.
I am not ready to make my way to the airport, and board that plane just yet, but I'm just trying to keep that in the back of my mind. When I shuttle out of El Salvador on the 6th, I'll stay the night in Guatemala City and fly out the following day. I'm going to land in Miami on the 7th and spend the next six days with my Aunt and Uncle, before I board my flight home on the 13th to Phoenix. Having a plan is comforting and depressing at the same time.
Here, life has been great. The CIS cycle ended in the first week of March and we had a great graduation. Me and my class are really close and we all feel like a big family, we have been able to keep hanging out since classes ended. My students..
(in no particular order)
First there's Elsi. I know I shouldn't have favorites, but she'd be one of them. She has excellent English and is the class clown, or one of them. She's in her 30s and is a mom of two little girls, but she's very full of herself and concerned with superficiality. She doesn't own a single pair of sneakers, or flat sandals for that matter. Her heels always match her shirt and she wears a ton of make up. She has a ridiculous laugh that matches her sense of humor and carefree nurture. Through all of the sillyness she can be very serious and some times she acts like her 13 year old daughter, but it's funny.
Next there's Anderson. He's a chef in training in his early 30s as well and an insanely hard worker. He lives really close to me and we hang out a lot outside of class, he's one of my best friends here. We cook a lot and every sunday we go out to eat pupusas with his roommates. Sometimes we play basketball with the group or run errands. He vends fruit and eggs and such in the market and is always getting up at the crack of dawn to work, spending the day in his cooking school and studying or cooking in his free time. Crazy.
Fátima. She, Anderson and Elsi were all in my advanced class last semester and then conversation this year. Fátima is very tranquila and one of the nicest people I've met. She is a vegetarian hippy (also in her 30s) with a husband, and two baby boys. They own a cyber café and have plans to start a library in their house for the neighbor kids to use. Fati has a great heart, and is easy to talk to, she can relate to me and she always has good insight. She is a hard worker, and always overachieved in class.
Ignacio, or Nacho as they call him, is a 19 year old university student who's English could be better than mine (not sure why I'm teaching class..) He's a physics major and is insanely smart. He's hilarious and brings a good mood to the class. We hadn't hung out during the cycle but now that it's ended we've been playing soccer and such. He's a good guy.
Nora Canales. Nora is a delicate older lady in her 60s+ who's spanish is just as hard to understand as her english. She has lived a really cool life and is very involved in her church and the promotion of youth. She too, has a great sense of humor and is very grandmotherly towards everyone in the class.
Marvin...he is our class clown, he works late and arrives at the halfway mark of class. His conversation skills are great and he is always making everyone laugh. We made a video for the final presentation and he was the star.
My class has been great, it was awesome to see their english improve and get to know every one of them. So what's been going on this week --> Tues – Fri a medical brigade from Buffalo, New York was here and Ignacio, Fátima, Me, Elsi, and Nora, (and an advanced student Alvaro) all spent these days working for them as translators.
The days were long, we would leave San Salvador at 7am and arrive around 6pm. Each day we journeyed to a different area of the country, many cantones (small rural towns) with a high poverty rate and inaccessibility to medicine, potable water, or doctors. I worked with this nurse who was born in Jamaica, lived in England, and finally came to NY later on. Her name was Cindy and she briefly convinced me to follow the medicine career. I worked as her interpretor translating between her and the patients. It was an incredible experience! It felt like a cultureshock within a cultureshock at times.. but really beautiful. We all got paid 30$ a day which was great as well. We would arrive in between 8 and 930 and set up shop, work til about 12, take a 45 minute break for lunch, which was provided, and then work the afternoon until 3 or 4 when we would pack up and head home. It was interesting to be surrounded by a bunch of gringos again, who weren't accustomed to the Salvadoran life, or the country's history/reality. Yesterday after we finished (and were paid with 100$ bills – of which Nacho and Fati had never seen before) we went to Pizza Nova (this delicious pizza joint) and celebrated.
It was hard work and every night I would come home extremely tired, but as I said the experience was amazing.
A part from this week of work, I've been content here. My friends and I have been playing nightly games of basketball at the nearby park – although we are all horrendous – it's fun. My NAU classes are ok. I've been toying with the idea of trying to study at one of the universities here instead of NAU, but we'll see. It would be A LOT cheaper, but I would miss my family.
As of now, in eighteen days I will be in Florida, twenty-four in Flagstaff. I will spend this summer (Apr – Aug) with them for sure and from there, I'll find my own trail.
Eighteen.
