So for now...

All of a sudden, I only have 4 days left? Bizarre. Especially because I cannot believe that it is December as I sit here writing this in 90-degree humid heat…honestly, the thought of coming home to a temperature 1/3 of this is pretty frightening.  I feel like this should be some climactic, dramatic blog entry about these past four months and my future and everything else…but honestly, at the moment, I would rather be hanging out with my room mates, eating my last few pupusas, and not be on the internet…also I have absolutely no words to sum up the last four months.  That is impossible now, and will be even when I get home and have endless amounts of hours over winter break to talk it all over.  So bear with me when I get home, with my inability to explain all this and my rough re-adjustment to home and to American culture in the most American of all seasons, Christmas. 

            So I guess I will do two things…one, write out my “El Salvador is…,” something we all wrote the other night at our last reflection.  I just did a stream of consciousness list, and a lot of these will probably make no sense.  But maybe they can spur up some stories when I get home, or maybe give an idea of how amazing, liberating, and all over the place this experience has been.  Also I have no idea what else to write…

 

 

El Salvador is…

-Waking up at 6:45, making my 3 pieces of French toast, and still somehow not making it onto the Be Real bus until 7:34

-Discovering that my mind can work, even if not perfectly, in philosophy

-Learning to make pupusas from Aminta even though mine are always the ugliest ones

-Being spoiled with the best praxis partners in the world, our morning cafecito at Centro Hogar, our hearts breaking a little every day when Dawn can’t come, and our afternoon nev run in her honor

-Flipping off another gross man in the street for yet another cat call and continuously being angry at this machismo culture

-Never knowing if I have rid my life of kitsch or filled it full of it

-Realizing that you can never shut yourself in your room because, inevitably, you will hear people in the kitchen and realize that you would rather be playing bananagrams in the kitchen instead

-Learning to hate the internet and the phone card voice lady for entirely separate reasons

-23 amazing people who, on the first day of orientation, I honestly thought I would never learn the names of and now who I can’t imagine not seeing every day

-Never knowing how to react to kids at Centro Hogar, whether they are loving each other or killing each other

-Sitting in a living room in San Ramon drinking the biggest glass of warm coke I have ever had the pleasure of drinking

-Salvadoran open mic mass on Sunday at San Ramon, never knowing how long it will last

-Knowing the state of everyone’s bowel movements in your whole house—dengue, dysentery, and amoebas will do that.

-Forgetting ‘pena’ as we have a dance/cleaning party in the Romero courtyard

-Sometimes feeling fluent in Spanish, and often times feeling like I don’t speak it at all

-Having no idea what to do next, and being completely fine with that

-Knowing that the only way I can leave is with the definite knowledge that I will be back one day

Also, I want to make a list of things I will miss and things I definitely won’t miss from El Salvador…

 

THINGS I WILL MISS
-pupusas…for dinner every Thursday and every weekend meal

-People inviting you to their house whenever you want…and really meaning that you can show up one random day it would be fine

-PANDULCE

-90 degree weather every day

-Feeling completely comfortable all the time with a group of 23 people

-Living with 14 crazy, wonderful, energetic, brilliant people

-Philosophy class blowing my mind every day and framing every part of my life in a new way, history class amazing me with famous and wonderful speaker after speaker, literature class with Maria Ester in general

-having 8 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, and 3 pairs of shoes to choose from—getting dressed in 5 minutes every day

-Cold showers

-Walking into my classroom and hearing 25 3-year olds scream “SABINA!!!!!!” and run over to hug my legs

-Lunch at the Soy Project every Monday and Wednesday, after lunch ice cream, and story time with Anita before walking around with Areli

-People openly sharing their lives, their homes, their stories, and their food with you

-All the people I met here, both American and Salvadoran 

THINGS I WON’T MISS
-Not being able to walk to school without being cat called, kissed at, or “I love you”ed every step of the way by men aged anywhere from 15 to 70 years old—machismo in general

-Being eaten alive by mosquitoes every day and night

-Having ‘vegetarian’ mean “well, I don’t eat chunks of meat, but yes, I would LOVE that chicken flavored seasoning in everything I eat”

-Being told I look 14 by every Salvadoran woman, who means it as a compliment for some weird reason

-Being called ‘gringa’

-Being woken up by the evangelical church singing every Sunday morning

-Cold showers

-Throwing toilet paper in the trash

-Being overwhelmed by everything

 

Anyways, I am going to leave it at this and get back to life…sorry this was kind of cheesy, kind of all over the place, and kind of random. Like I said, bear with me when I get back and can’t explain them or can’t function in 30 degree weather and America for a little while. I can’t wait to see you all, that is for sure, and I can’t wait to try to share all of this with you.  

Beginning of Despedidas and Energy Baths

As I get closer to leaving, I have become worse and worse about updating this…apologies. Possibly because our homework load has suddenly increased, possibly because I am tired of the internet lately, or possibly because the prospect of leaving this place, and much less writing about leaving it, is the last thing I want to think about right now. Seeing as I have become increadibly lax and un-perfectionist about my school work lately in lieu of more important things, and that I can actually write these when I am off the internet anyways, it is probably the latter reason. But, reality check fun, I have only two weeks left here. (let tiny panic attack pass, start breathing again).
Among other things lately, one of the biggest event has been saying goodbye to the kids at Centro Hogar. The kids here get out of school in November, have summer break until January, then start the school year again in the middle of January. So last Wednesday was our last day with the kids at Centro Hogar, which was a fairly devastating day, for lack of any better words. On Wednesday, our last day, I got to class and they all (actually every kid came to school for once! All 28 of them in 1 room) got into an amazingly organized circle…then Lucy, the teacher, asked who wanted to say something nice about Sabina, which prompted every 3 year old standing up and mustering up enough eloquence to say…. “es que, es que, es que….te quiero mucho,” and running over to give me a hug. Needless to say, by about the third kid I was a mess and didn’t really even attempt to hold it together, which prompted questions from almost all the kids about why I had drops of water on my face. It’s a confusing world, isn’t it? Anyways, then we went about our regular day and, just as always, kids hit each other at recess and they didn’t listen to me when I told them to come inside and they didn’t eat all their lunch, and it was a perfect day.
We decided to come back on Friday, so Elizabeth and I (Dawn couldn’t go because of her back, pobrecita) went for their graduation party for about an hour to say a real goodbye and watch the festivities, which mostly consisted of hitting a piñata, putting on silly hats, and eating too much sugar. Again, all 28 kids were there in all their energetic glory. You know how in the US when we had a piñata for a class party or a birthday party, the parents or whoever would make sure every kid stood at least 20 feet away so they didn’t get hit? Apparently we don’t need to, because I learned during this piñata fest that, no matter how crazy or how hard kids swing the stick or how close the other kids are, there is some magical law of nature that says that it is IMPOSSIBLE to be hit with the stick during piñata. Finally we said our real goodbyes that we couldn’t put off anymore, which was probably more sad for us because I still had kids tell me “hasta lunes!” as I was leaving. If it weren’t for some reason illegal, I would smuggle them all home with me…maybe just a choice few in my carry-on.
Anyways, now that the kids are gone we are hanging out with the teachers in the morning. Yesterday we had a massage and meditation workshop put on by Oti and the Mariona people, another Praxis site where there is a meditation and massage center run by a wonderful group of Salvadoran women. At first, the teachers were definitely a little uneasy about sharing how the beautiful centerpiece with flowers made them feel, but little by little all the teachers were doing tai-chi, meditation, massage, and feeling sharing like none other. I think what strikes me most about Mariona and the workshop today was the fact that it absolutely discredits the complete load of shit (excuse me) that is the “hierarchy of needs.” Who says that just because someone isn’t fed that they can’t do yoga? Or because someone isn’t safe they can’t meditate? Or because someone is unemployed they can’t receive a massage, or join a women’s group, or create art? It seems like such a basic concept that if you don’t have time, money, safety, food, etc, you won’t have the time or resources for so many other things. But after seeing beautiful projects like Mariona, set in a community with one of the biggest jails in El Salvador and a pretty big gang problem, it becomes so evident that this is absolutely a creation of our own culture. We consider money, food, safety to come before everything else. If we are hungry or poor, how could we ever make art or meditate or organize? For Oti and everyone else who I have met doing equally as amazing things, how can they NOT make art, meditate, organize, read, massage, give energy bathts? Anyways, just my random thought of the day..or week…or until I have more time or energy to update again as I grapple with the fact that I only have 2 weeks left in this beautiful country, in this beautiful program, with these beautiful people. Asi es.

::sabine