Wednesday, July 18, 2012
This was a very exciting and fun day in El Salvador. It was a short day at the orphanage and construction site due to our trip to "El Parque de Aquatico" (That's Water Park for the unenlightened). Our team split up first thing in the morning. Those who wanted to go to the orphanage spent half a day there and those that wanted to go and work on the construction site for a half day there. Though my spirit was willing to get my construction on, my back was giving me some issues. Rather than push it (and risk the wrath of Tyler, my physical therapist), I decided it was smarter to spend the morning at the orphanage. It was nice as today was a pretty chill day. I spent the morning playing with kids and helping a bit with VBS which was over the Gospel colors similar to what was presented in church on Sunday and the schools on Monday. After the lesson, several of us headed into the church sanctuary at the orphanage to get gifts ready for the kiddos. Here we discovered Jacob's great hidden talent as a piano player and he even played up some original tunes that he wrote. After a while, we had an impromptu jam session with Randy, Abby Stoker, and myself taking turns on the drums jamming along. Just a quick side note, I pretty much stink at drums possibly due to my inherent lack of rhythm.
Self revelation time, I'm a bit of a fidget bug and always need to have something in my hands. This week, I've been messing around with a little trinket that Ana Rosa gave me; 4 jingle bells and a neon yellow pipe cleaner (Go Oregon!). While tossing it up into the air and fielding fly balls, I managed to get my toy stuck in the rafters of the building. The Amandas and I brainstormed for a bit (Fave suggestion: tossing a small child up there), but I quickly resigned myself to not seeing my toy again. I walked outside and immediately saw a 20 foot piece of PVC pipe and a broom. This prompted my good idea meter to go from red to green. I put the two pieces together and went inside and started cleaning the tops of the rafters until my toy (and nice bits of Asbestos) fell down. Happily I continued playing with my toy. Soon after the girls joined us for gift time. It's always an awesome feeling to see the gratefulness that the girls show for the gifts that they receive. I even got a nice big hug from Ana Rosa for the PJs that Bethany had sent her. :) We were then treated to a great lunch of steak and rice before heading to "El Parque de Aquatico."
Our trip to the water park is always fun and this time was no exception. An interesting side note was that the (rickety and dangerous) water slide that was open six months earlier was now closed down. LOL. After swimming and playing with the kids for a while, we then took them to the Zoo. Now the highlights of this zoo include deer, porcupines, and crocodiles. However, my favorite part had to be the empty boa constrictor cage with an opening in the door big enough for a snake to crawl through. Somewhere right now, a middle aged woman just crawled into her bed and touched a massive snake with her feet, screamed loudly and woke up an entire city. After a full day at the water park, we took the kids back to the orphanage and headed back to Usulutan.
Interesting story, on the way to Usulutan, Luke Owen and I began discussing how fast food was not contributing to the El Salvadorian experience for us. So we took it upon ourselves to try to convince Joe and others to help us find a "hole in the wall" place to eat to get that true, authentic experience. Somewhat surprisingly, no one wanted to take us up on this offer. We did find people back at Campo Real who wanted to eat in the hotel restaurant with us. This was honestly one of the best meals that we've eaten out on the entire trip and we had an extremely fun group consisting of myself, Luke, the Cochrans, the Thomas, Sandy, Rachel, Raven, and Amanda. I think that I may have laughed more during this meal than I have in a while too! After dinner, we met up with our amigos and had a good meeting. It's interesting to see how some of the first timers are beginning to get shook up at what they've been seeing here. Especially as we only have one night left here at Campo Real, people are starting to get real during the meetings. Great day!
(Ed. note.: I don't know how, but I forgot to write about the hilarious morning at Mister Donut. It started typically, but I soon took notice of the Spanish soap opera on television while sitting with Sandy, Christina, and Amanda. Soon, we were "bridging the cultural gaps" and "reading the emotions that break all language barriers." By this I mean that we were putting hilarious words in people's mouths and creating our own plot. And it all went swimmingly until they changed the channel to Good Morning El Salvador and our vision was attacked by a clown singing CeeLo Green's Forget You.)
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