Photos from pre-departure festivities are at debhelt.blogspot.com. Paula was helping me make this blog and it crashed but apparently those pictures were saved at this other address.
5/27- 5/28
So the night before I left I sat in bed in my room in Echo Park, sandwiched between the giant blue quilt from Guatemala that hangs on the left wall and the green mandala thing that hangs on the right wall, and thinking that the blank white wall in front of me seemed to glow with peace and possibility. I´d had my last day working at USC, and my apartment was almost completely bare and ready for its summer inhabitants. I was so excited, as coming to Latin America to participate in a program like this is something I have wanted to do since I was a little kid.
Paula came over hours before I left and helped me be brutally discerning about what to pack and to start this blog. The neighbor kids ¨helped¨ off and on all day, washing dishes and countertops with excessive amounts of soap, moving things around, actually being incredibly useful in helping me to finally get rid of the three years worth of crap I had banished to the purgatory/hell that was the trunk of my car. (For some reason giving them the clipboards, binders, random stuff etc. from organizing and school was easier than just throwing them away or giving them to the Goodwill. I cannot express how big of a triumph the car trunk thing was but I digress :). At around 9 p.m. I threw a few nagging details into a box, threw it in the closet, turned off all the lights, said a very sad goodbye to the kiddos and left for the airport.
I took the redeye from LA to San Salvador and was immediately drawn into a conversation with the man sitting next to me, me in the window seat and him in the middle seat. He told me about his family and his home in the U.S. He kept asking me in Spanish if something bad had happened to me in the U.S. and was that why I was going to El Salvador? I said no, its a program. I am a volunteer and I want to learn Spanish, etc. I didn´t want to offer too many details, nor was I able to explain further in my broken Spanish. It took me a full five minutes to realize he was wasted. He kept offering me his number for when things went wrong in El Salvador and I would need some help. Other passengers looked at me sympathetically and finally when the guy got up to go to the bathroom the angelic man in the aisle seat moved to the middle and became the new target of his chatter. After a few minutes I heard the inebriated man say to the angelic man in Spanish (I´m pretty sure he said, among other things), ¨Something really bad happened to that woman in the U.S. -and- She works for the government.¨ A couple other passengers glanced over at me, knowing full well he had asked me about 800 times why I was going to El Salvador. I shrugged and they laughed.
I got to San Salvador at 5:45 in the morning, emerging into a rather intimidating crowd of people waiting for passengers, the Sesame Street song ¨One of these things is not like the others,¨ ringing annoyingly in my head. I wandered around, getting a little angsty and finally caught the eye of a tall Salvadorean man and a young white woman in a Romero shirt, who turned out to be our wonderful coordinators Javier and Tedde. They said welcome, etc. and Javier pointed out in a very nice way that I had a huge booger in my nose (the words ¨huge¨ and ¨booger¨ were of course not used but I digress). It really was an enormous booger, and I found this pretty funny considering how my friend Paula had mocked me for packing an excessive amount of tissue and paper products, yet already in my first hour of need I was unprepared and scrounging for a napkin. Ah, la vida.
Anyway, I got my first glimpses of the country which were amazing. We drove by small towns, an area heavy with maquiladoras and mountains and in a short time we arrived in San Salvador and the CRISPAZ office. I was fascinated by everything and really enjoyed getting to know Javier and Tedde a little. The other two SIPPIES Abby and Mariah arrived later in the day and we all had pupusas together in the office to celebrate our first day of orientation.
To be continued...
5/27- 5/28
So the night before I left I sat in bed in my room in Echo Park, sandwiched between the giant blue quilt from Guatemala that hangs on the left wall and the green mandala thing that hangs on the right wall, and thinking that the blank white wall in front of me seemed to glow with peace and possibility. I´d had my last day working at USC, and my apartment was almost completely bare and ready for its summer inhabitants. I was so excited, as coming to Latin America to participate in a program like this is something I have wanted to do since I was a little kid.
Paula came over hours before I left and helped me be brutally discerning about what to pack and to start this blog. The neighbor kids ¨helped¨ off and on all day, washing dishes and countertops with excessive amounts of soap, moving things around, actually being incredibly useful in helping me to finally get rid of the three years worth of crap I had banished to the purgatory/hell that was the trunk of my car. (For some reason giving them the clipboards, binders, random stuff etc. from organizing and school was easier than just throwing them away or giving them to the Goodwill. I cannot express how big of a triumph the car trunk thing was but I digress :). At around 9 p.m. I threw a few nagging details into a box, threw it in the closet, turned off all the lights, said a very sad goodbye to the kiddos and left for the airport.
I took the redeye from LA to San Salvador and was immediately drawn into a conversation with the man sitting next to me, me in the window seat and him in the middle seat. He told me about his family and his home in the U.S. He kept asking me in Spanish if something bad had happened to me in the U.S. and was that why I was going to El Salvador? I said no, its a program. I am a volunteer and I want to learn Spanish, etc. I didn´t want to offer too many details, nor was I able to explain further in my broken Spanish. It took me a full five minutes to realize he was wasted. He kept offering me his number for when things went wrong in El Salvador and I would need some help. Other passengers looked at me sympathetically and finally when the guy got up to go to the bathroom the angelic man in the aisle seat moved to the middle and became the new target of his chatter. After a few minutes I heard the inebriated man say to the angelic man in Spanish (I´m pretty sure he said, among other things), ¨Something really bad happened to that woman in the U.S. -and- She works for the government.¨ A couple other passengers glanced over at me, knowing full well he had asked me about 800 times why I was going to El Salvador. I shrugged and they laughed.
I got to San Salvador at 5:45 in the morning, emerging into a rather intimidating crowd of people waiting for passengers, the Sesame Street song ¨One of these things is not like the others,¨ ringing annoyingly in my head. I wandered around, getting a little angsty and finally caught the eye of a tall Salvadorean man and a young white woman in a Romero shirt, who turned out to be our wonderful coordinators Javier and Tedde. They said welcome, etc. and Javier pointed out in a very nice way that I had a huge booger in my nose (the words ¨huge¨ and ¨booger¨ were of course not used but I digress). It really was an enormous booger, and I found this pretty funny considering how my friend Paula had mocked me for packing an excessive amount of tissue and paper products, yet already in my first hour of need I was unprepared and scrounging for a napkin. Ah, la vida.
Anyway, I got my first glimpses of the country which were amazing. We drove by small towns, an area heavy with maquiladoras and mountains and in a short time we arrived in San Salvador and the CRISPAZ office. I was fascinated by everything and really enjoyed getting to know Javier and Tedde a little. The other two SIPPIES Abby and Mariah arrived later in the day and we all had pupusas together in the office to celebrate our first day of orientation.
To be continued...
posted by D.Helt at 5:38 PM
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