El Salvador was cool. We're back. Shippin' out tomorrow. Thanks for reading! Just kidding.
We left bright and early on Thursday morning, leaving Semilla at 6. We picked up Adriana and Caitlyn, an MCC SALTer who joined our trip, on route. Fortunately, before we got too far out of the city, Mario, our driver, remembered that we needed an important document to allow him to drive us over the border. We sat around for about an hour waiting for Antony, the MCC director, to drive out to where we were parked to give us this document, because the traffic into the city was awful and it was unrealistic for us to make good time going in. So we sat about. During this hour Geraldine and Jim broke out breakfast. Yum yum yum, pandulce. If you're interested, Ryan and I (Jordan) improved our Kaiser record to 4-0 in the time between then and now. The girls and Adam also realized that Cassandra is overcompetitive at card games.
There wasn't much to tell from there to the drive to the border. We didn't end up at the crossing we wanted to, but we made it more or less. We took the scenic route (got lost) to La Linea (the community we were to work at) through San Salvador. We discovered we had just missed Barack Obama by a day. ¡Shucks! See, our Spanish is improving! We did end up at La Linea and had some delicious chicken. We met the local MCC workers there named Lynden and Elizabeth. We were formally introduced to the church and its community afterwards at the new building they had for a church. After this, we were given a tour through their community. We visited the "old city" where the community lived before tropical storm Ida and mudslides destroyed much of the housing there. We were able to visit their old church. It had an incredible view, but the ground underneath was slowly receding (like Ryan's hair will be) so that the building was unsafe to worship in. We spent the night at San Martin in a convent/retreat center run by Catholic nuns.
The next day we went to see the "promised land." This is the land La Linea was planning to purchase to move their community to. They need roughly $30 000 more to buy it. Since they do not own the land they are on, if the railway company, whose land they are squatting on, decides to develop the area where they live, then the entire community would be homeless. To avoid this conflict, it's imperative they buy this land. It would give them a chance to get them away from the violence from the slum, reclaim an abandoned coffee plantation, and be able to grow gardens, mangos, oranges, guavas, avacados, plantains, and bananas. This is a big deal. I'm not sure how happy I would be to go back only because of the sketchy infrastructure. It's not exactly 4 lane highway.
One part of our experience was the cicadas. Man can they produce noise (Ryan thinks this is a little bland. He would have preferred scream). People really mean it when they say the forest comes alive at night. Wow. Ryan and Hillary, who was wearing ear plugs even, were also not aware that roosters crowed at 3 am. Kate, Katie, and Hillary finally broke down and pet their first puppies here. I'm surprised it took so long. I was getting sick of hearing them say how much they wanted to pet the dogs. Good news, it only itched for about an hour afterwards.
A note on the food of La Linea. Holy smokes! Delicious man! I've never had more delicious fish in my life, and I've been to some good fish places. Wow! I dedicated an entire page in my journal to this fish. Hillary didn't have it. What a weiner. We ate it on a beautiful courtyard surrounded by fruit trees, a duck, a few chickens, a parrot, and a spectacular view of the valley. After this fish, the local co-op brought out some goods for us to purchase. They make some wonderful hammocks. I'm sure it was the best day of sales they'd had in a long time.
The day continued with a parachute game with the smaller children. It was pretty hot. I think that's an understatement. The one person in our group who doesn't burn got burnt (Hillary). The amount of perspiration on mine and Ryan's back was quite gross. Matt's white shirt was not a solid choice. Lucky for us, we got to sweat more in a soccer tournament! The girls brought home gold, but they were led by the soccer star Caitlyn. The guys did not have such luck. We had Matt, and the rest of us gave our best. We lost out in the first game. Some highlights were being the fan favourites, Me (Jordan) taking out the net after saving a goal, and the aforementioned person missing various opportunities to score. Sorry team. As it turned out, Adam scored the only goal, surprisingly not with his face. The church team, who we were playing, ended up winning the whole thing.
In the evening, the church youth came to our abode and gave us a proper send off. We played some mixer games which including me breaking the game up for a few moments by speaking in a universal language, also known as passing gas. Whoops. At least some good came out of it. I will be remembered there! Perhaps not for the right reasons though. They sang us a song, and we gave them some gifts of appreciation. I sang Last Saskatchewan Pirate backed up by our group. We really need a whistler. They presented us with the trophies from the soccer tournament. The girls won theirs fair and square, and the guys were given the trophy won by the church team. Guess what? The guys was bigger and better. We had to carry ours on the bus and the girls packed theirs away in a backpack.
We took Israel and Sylvia back with us. They are "youth" from the community (24 years old). Interestingly enough, Israel's favourite sport is American football. They will be coming with us to San Marcos and Quetzaltenango. Our drive back was quite uneventful.
Hey mom's, the guys did laundry! Impressed? I thought so. Just be warned, it may not happen when we get home.
In the next couple of days we will be in San Marcos, Guatemalan La Linea, and Xela (Quetzaltenango). We may or may not have internet so we'll see what happens.
¡Feliz noches chikos y chikas!
Jordan, Hillary and Ryan
PS Currently the room was filled with an unbelievable amount of sarcasm directed at Cassandra's knowledge of computers. I'm surprised the walls didn't fall down because the room was bursting with it.
