Life, Liberty and the Happiness of Pursuit

I had a prof at my university that would change our country's slogan to, "Life, Liberty and the Happiness of Pursuit."

I've been thinking about this lately because I went to a home visit last week (the one I mentioned in San Miguel), and the family lived in a hut.  It was literally made of sticks and straw.  Like something you'd see people build on Survivor.  The house was a good size, probably 40x40 ft and there was a wall to separate the beds and give a little privacy to change.  There were 4 plastic chairs (the kind we typically see outdoors that can be stacked)  All were broken.  And they were repaired in impressive ways.  One, the plastic was ripping at the top, and they laced a shoelace through it (creating holes at the top where there weren't natural holes in the chair design) to hold it together.  The remaining three had a couple legs missing from each, and had tree branches carved and designed to work as the legs.  It was impressive carpentry without many tools.  There was no bathroom or shower, but there was running water outside to fill the pila (kind of a concrete cistern used to hold water to be used throughout the day, and usually has one side where people wash clothes by hand).  It was on a pretty piece of land with beautiful trees and a great view of the volcano nearby (which erupted again last week).  There was garbage scattered throughout the area surrounding where they spent most of hte time near the house.

And I found myself thinking about if I lived there, what kind of improvements would I make to the home?  Some ideas came easy, others, I wasn't sure about the next steps I would take if I lived there with limited resources.  I found out that the man's grandparents had lived there and had built a concrete cistern and was surprised that with the decades it had been made, little had been done.

I tried to determine how much of my ideas and thoughts were from my spoiled American mindset.  And I ultimately found myself stuck on the idea of contentment vs laziness.    Because, if this family has enough to survive in a healthy manner, why shouldn't they be content?  But if they have the talent to improve their situation, are they just being lazy by continuing in their meager home?

And I don't know.  I'm still pondering it.  But whether or not this particular family is lazy or content, I know that contentment is something my own culture does not make room for.  This brings me back to the Life, Liberty and the Happiness of Pursuit.  Because we are taught to strive for more.  Never do we have enough.  And while I never want to be lazy, I do want to be able to enjoy what I have and be content.

finally an update!

I've been thinking I'd post when I had my pictures from a couple trips I went on, but apparently that's not happening, so I might as well post without them.  Yes, I realize it's a brilliant idea to disappoint my multitude of readers at the start :)

 But at least I've lowered your expectations for the rest of this post and so now I'll sound much more impressive!

Lets see, I've been pretty busy.  A couple of weeks ago I forgot my allergy meds (because the air pollution here is bad) for a couple of days. It just so happened that those days were incredibly windy and I spent several hours in a windy area with tons of dirt flying about.  So began my congestion.  Then I went on several road trips.  So, after two weeks, im just starting to feel back to normal.  The last week its been clearing out and has effected my throat and voice.  This last week I've discovered that it really is not fun to teach when you don't have a voice.  Don't think it's helped with my healing process either.  and getting less sleep because i'm congested has made my spanish worse.

So, besides being patheticly sick the last couple of weeks, I've been up to some fun stuff.  I've gotten to meet some of the families of the kids at the orphanage.  They have a family day every couple of weeks and it's interesting to participate and see the interactions.  (I guess it would be good to clarify that most of the children in the orphanage have families they see regularly.  Some of the kids were abandoned, but most were removed from their homes because of abuse.)

Last week I went to San Miguel to visit a family.  San Miguel's city slogan says, "When the Devil gets too hot in San Miguel, he goes back to hell."  I think it was only in the 90s when we went.  I've been once before years ago and it was 116 and over 90% humidity.  Not my favorite weather.  Also, it was interesting because we went near the volcano which erupted a month ago.  This is what I was hoping to get pictures of for you, but i took the pics with the camera from the orphanage and havent gotten copies yet.
So. . .the family visit -  A very interesting event because we saw the mom of some of the children. She had disappeared after her kids were removed from her home and this is the first anyone in her family had heard from her in 10 years. It was very interesting to be apart of the reunion, both very exciting and very hard.

Therapy at the women's shelter has been great.  I've built enough trust that the women are willing to begin working on their trauma, and it's so rewarding to watch them heal each week.

And I took a vacation this weekend!  I went to Guatemala.  I was invited because my Salvadoranean family that lives in Guatemala City was going to Panajachel, which happens to be one of my favorite towns.  It's a little hippie town that sits on the edge of a lake surrounded by volcanoes and mountains.  People from all over the world visit and live there and it's just a nice relaxing place to be.  I have a hard time not buying everything while I'm there.  And I normally hate shopping.  If you've ever seen me wearing clothes from Guatemala - they're from Panajachel. Here's a picture of the waterfall when we were leaving:

So, that's about it.  Still staying busy teaching english and therapy at the orphanage and women's shelter.  I've been working on fun stuff for my Visa to stay here for the year and trying to get together everything to do my taxes.  You know - the fun stuff.  It's making me extra excited for when I have to leave the country in a couple weeks to renew my visa.  I'm gonna spend a week in Costa Rica.  I just can't decide if I want to go to the town with the beautiful beach, or the one with the lake and volcano and all the hot springs.

 hmmm. . .life is always full of such difficult choices.

Meet Dandy!

This is Dandy!

My favorite decapitated dog!  We have a regular pupusaria (restaurant for the national food) we go to every weekend.  I love it, not only because they have tasty pupusas, but because of these signs they have up.  I've interpreted them to mean that you are not allowed to bring decapitated dogs to their restaurant.  I try to hold back on making a joke about it every week.  . .but i don't always succeed.
Recently, I decided my friend needed a name.  Clearly.  And after a couple minutes of deep pondering, I remembered a someone had asked me for the translation of 'dandelion' a few days prior.  I liked the alliteration, and then it hit me - dandelions lose their 'heads'.  Oh, it gives me such joy!

So i thought i'd share a bit of that joy with you - Dandy, the decapitated dog :)

Sad entry

So, I've actually had a lot of positive experiences in my counseling here the last couple of weeks.  But today, you're receiving a bit more of the heartbreak.

Today is the 2nd time in two weeks that I've advised a director for the organizations i'm volunteering at that it would be best if one of their young adults left.  Today it meant that a young woman and her 2 yr old son will be leaving to live in an unsafe home.  Life would be so much easier if we could force people to be logical and make wise choices!

Besides these issues, i've been saddened by the challenges within the society.  There is a new law (within the last 2 or 3 years) which theoretically sounds awesome, but in practicality is horrifying.  The law is designed to protect the rights of children and prioritize the family.  Every child should have the right to be with their family and the family is the best place for a child.  Sounds great - who wants to force kids to live in an institution when they've got a family?

Unfortunately, this means that those kids that were removed from abusive homes, are being put back in them.  In some instances there have been mom's who have literally thrown their infants in the garbage and receive those babies back 3 months later - for them only to die.  In the orphanage, it means some of the kids are court ordered to go home every other weekend.  They spend their weeks in fear of the abuse they will receive that weekend.  How do you treat trauma when you have to send a child back into it all the time?

The amount of trauma makes the successes much more rewarding - but for today, today I will be sad.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas my friends!

I hope you had a lovely holiday.  I had a good Christmas.  A bit sad to miss out on my family Christmas, but it was still nice.  I went to Guatemala for Christmas and celebrated with the family that I used to stay with every summer in El Salvador (and they moved to Guatemala several years ago).  We had a full house with lots of Christmas fun.  Their oldest came home from college in Arkansas and it was so nice to get to see her.  She's loving college and is really excited about all of the opportunities she has.

Here's a picture of the family waiting in the cold wind for her to arrive at the airport.

The celebration starts on Christmas eve, that's when the big meal is served and then gifts are opened at midnight and all the neighbors light fireworks.  Not the silly little ones we do (like sparklers), but slightly smaller versions of a big firework display in the sky.  

Christmas day we went up to a mountain for a favorite restaurant and then to a beautiful site with stores, restaurants and a big field and playground and horseback riding.  Lots of pictures were taken.

I came back to El Salvador on the 26th, and my souvenier was a sore throat!  I'm hoping that it is a result of too much time on the road with the pollution and not that I'm getting sick again.  Not fun.  This week will be filled with more counseling, more holiday fun and a bit of sadness that it's my last week of vacation before school starts again. :)

A car at last!

Well, my first week back from the visiting California was a bit frustrating.  I don't know if it was because i'd switched cultural gears and was no longer patient, or if my patience just naturally came to an end :)

But my week back I was excited to be returning and I had two possible cars to buy that both didn't work out and the kids at school were crazy with me returning and it being the last week before vacation, and then through other circumstances all of my counseling appointments were canceled.  So, i ended the first week pretty frustrated.

This last week has been quite the opposite though!  I found a car.  It's quite large especially when compared to a smart car (which is just slightlly smaller than it).  It's a 2007 Hyundai ATOS.  I googled it to compare prices and only found comparisons in South Africa.  (after some currency conversions, I did discover that it was being sold at a reasonable price).  It's a manual transmission - which I did better than expected with after not having driven a 5 spd for 6 years!  I've been driving for 5 days and have yet to kill myself, anyone else or get so lost i have had to call someone for help! I'm pretty proud of this accomplishment.

Counseling this week has also not been boring.  Had a great session with the group at the women's shelter and also ended up helping with a crisis at the orphanage I've been helping at.  A bit of an emotional breakdown by one of the children a few days ago and today we ended up checking him in to the hospital (their equivalent of a 5150).

My spanish blunder to entertain you with this week is that I accidently said that there was an eyeball in the butter instead of garlic in the butter.  you're welcome.

Thanks Holidays for the break!

Clearly the holiday season has begun because people have been too busy to harass me about failing to post anything new in my blog for a few weeks :)
So, I've had a bit of an adventure lately.  Originally, I had intended to go to Costa Rica for a week to deal with renewing my visa to stay in the country.  Long story, but I ended up not being able to take the bus and the flights were the same cost to go to Costa Rica as to go home.  So I spent the last 2 weeks in Fresno getting to enjoy family.  I got to see so many people because they were arriving for thanksgiving, but I flew back to El Salvador on Thanksgiving morning (because the flight was much cheaper then).

So, I'm just trying to re-acclimate back.  My skin and hair have resented the traveling back and forth between the two climates so frequently, but at least the bugs and mosquitoes are happy about my return!

I've got a mechanic checking out a car and if all is well I think I will end up with a car this week!  It shall be strange to have a bit of freedom and flexibility in my schedule back.

Hope everyone has enjoyed Thanksgiving and the beginning of the Christmas season!  Miss you all! (or probably most of you anyways :] )