¡Hola Amigos!
On Monday, we all packed up and headed to the retreat center to begin our re-entry retreat. The first day we discussed our hopes and fears and what we thought would be the biggest challenges trying to reintegrate ourselves back into American culture. On Tuesday, we all went to this awesome beach with a huge water slide. This was our last day together as a group. We pulled an all-nighter on Tuesday since the first group of students left for the airport at 4:30am. It was so hard to say goodbye to everyone. Due to a flight problem, I had to say an extra day at the retreat center. That Wednesday was so depressing. Four other students stayed behind with me and we all just moped around all day. That night we pulled ourselves together and went out for drinks and dessert.
I arrived back in the States on Thursday, and it has been so hard to adjust back to “normal” life. I’m just in this daze trying to make sense of everything I experienced in the past four months.
So I guess this brings my story to an end. Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers while I’ve been away. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my adventures in El Salvador and if there’s time, I would love to sit down with each one of you and show you all my pictures and tell you all the crazy stories that I didn’t have the space to write about. ¡Adios amigos!
Paz,
Stephanie
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Mi último día en Mariona
¡Hola Amigos!
Wednesday was my last day in Mariona. To celebrate your time in the community, we planned a despedida (going away party). We invited all our English students and all the people we have met during our time I Mariona. Oti estimated that about 50 people were coming to the party and the Casa gave us a $50 stipend to work with. So Wednesday morning we spent shopping in the Mejicanos market for party things. In typical Salvadorian fashion, nothing went according to plan, but in the end all worked out for the best.
In the market we needed to print certificates for our students and handouts for the conversation they were going to present during the party, buy a cake, buy frosting for cupcakes Jen and I made the night before, get decorations, and find small gifts for each of the students. Our first stop was a print shop. We gave the man behind the counter my jump drive with all the saved documents. We only accomplished printing the certificates (which came out different since his program was not compatible to ours) and couldn’t print the handout because he was too confused and we couldn’t show him what document we wanted printed. So we left and found a cyber café to print the handout. The print shop had given my jump drive a virus so when we tried to print at the internet café, the document refused to open. We panicked a little since we really needed these handouts for our students. Somehow my jump drive miraculously fixed itself and we finally got to print the conversation, but we had wasted precious shopping time. With our papers we hurried off to the grocery store to buy icing and gifts. The store didn’t carry icing and the school supplies were too expensive for our budget. So we ran across the street to a paper store and bought 9 notebooks, pencils, and erasers for the students. Oti wanted us to buy more, but we were on a budget (school supplies are very expensive in El Salvador) and we only had 9 kids who came regularly to class. With our gifts and papers, we began the cake search. The first cake store we walked into was completely empty. All the display racks were empty. There was no cake to be found. Tuesday was worker’s day and no one baked any cakes because they had the day off from work. We found another cake shop, but they didn’t have cakes either. We asked if they sold icing and of course did not. So we bought $10 worth of pan dulce, which was 99 cookies. We continued the quest for icing and were running out of time so ended up buying chocolate to melt on top of the cupcakes.
Once back at the cooperative we thought we had everything under control. We made decorations and stuffed the piñata with candy (we had a cool Nemo piñata that we bought the night before). As the students began to arrive, we noticed that there were 10, not 9. One girl showed up that had only attended the first few classes. She told us she wanted to come to more classes but couldn’t because her mom had been in the hospital. We felt horrible and went into panic mode trying to find one more gift. Luckily we work at a cooperative and we bought a pair of earrings and a bracelet for one of the older girls who volunteered to be interviewed for our praxis project. The student presentations went well and some of the parents after told us our English classes had helped the kids do better in the English classes at school. We felt so proud.
After the presentations it was piñata time. Of course it was fun and everyone enjoyed beating Nemo. After we ate the cupcakes without frosting (which I thought were horrible but the kids liked them) and 100 pupusas (only 30 people showed up so we had a bunch of left over pupusas). After eating, a dance troop showed up to perform traditional dances for us. Over all our last day ended up being great. We exchanged contact info with some of our students and they gave us cute thank you notes. It was kind of sad saying goodbye to our students since most of them didn’t understand why we weren’t coming back in August and why we couldn’t come visit them often. We’re having a big depedida at the Casa Sunday, so I will say goodbye to Oti, Lolo, and the women from the cooperative then.
Paz,
Stephanie
Wednesday was my last day in Mariona. To celebrate your time in the community, we planned a despedida (going away party). We invited all our English students and all the people we have met during our time I Mariona. Oti estimated that about 50 people were coming to the party and the Casa gave us a $50 stipend to work with. So Wednesday morning we spent shopping in the Mejicanos market for party things. In typical Salvadorian fashion, nothing went according to plan, but in the end all worked out for the best.
In the market we needed to print certificates for our students and handouts for the conversation they were going to present during the party, buy a cake, buy frosting for cupcakes Jen and I made the night before, get decorations, and find small gifts for each of the students. Our first stop was a print shop. We gave the man behind the counter my jump drive with all the saved documents. We only accomplished printing the certificates (which came out different since his program was not compatible to ours) and couldn’t print the handout because he was too confused and we couldn’t show him what document we wanted printed. So we left and found a cyber café to print the handout. The print shop had given my jump drive a virus so when we tried to print at the internet café, the document refused to open. We panicked a little since we really needed these handouts for our students. Somehow my jump drive miraculously fixed itself and we finally got to print the conversation, but we had wasted precious shopping time. With our papers we hurried off to the grocery store to buy icing and gifts. The store didn’t carry icing and the school supplies were too expensive for our budget. So we ran across the street to a paper store and bought 9 notebooks, pencils, and erasers for the students. Oti wanted us to buy more, but we were on a budget (school supplies are very expensive in El Salvador) and we only had 9 kids who came regularly to class. With our gifts and papers, we began the cake search. The first cake store we walked into was completely empty. All the display racks were empty. There was no cake to be found. Tuesday was worker’s day and no one baked any cakes because they had the day off from work. We found another cake shop, but they didn’t have cakes either. We asked if they sold icing and of course did not. So we bought $10 worth of pan dulce, which was 99 cookies. We continued the quest for icing and were running out of time so ended up buying chocolate to melt on top of the cupcakes.
Once back at the cooperative we thought we had everything under control. We made decorations and stuffed the piñata with candy (we had a cool Nemo piñata that we bought the night before). As the students began to arrive, we noticed that there were 10, not 9. One girl showed up that had only attended the first few classes. She told us she wanted to come to more classes but couldn’t because her mom had been in the hospital. We felt horrible and went into panic mode trying to find one more gift. Luckily we work at a cooperative and we bought a pair of earrings and a bracelet for one of the older girls who volunteered to be interviewed for our praxis project. The student presentations went well and some of the parents after told us our English classes had helped the kids do better in the English classes at school. We felt so proud.
After the presentations it was piñata time. Of course it was fun and everyone enjoyed beating Nemo. After we ate the cupcakes without frosting (which I thought were horrible but the kids liked them) and 100 pupusas (only 30 people showed up so we had a bunch of left over pupusas). After eating, a dance troop showed up to perform traditional dances for us. Over all our last day ended up being great. We exchanged contact info with some of our students and they gave us cute thank you notes. It was kind of sad saying goodbye to our students since most of them didn’t understand why we weren’t coming back in August and why we couldn’t come visit them often. We’re having a big depedida at the Casa Sunday, so I will say goodbye to Oti, Lolo, and the women from the cooperative then.
Paz,
Stephanie
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