Immersion Day Hostess

With my own Immersion Days as a trainee fresh in my mind, I signed up to host an Environmental Ed volunteer-in-training for a weekend to give her a taste of volunteer life. It's really made me realize how far I've come since I arrived here last September -- how I've learned my way around, become able to predict what Salvadorans will do and how they will feel, and grown more patient, laid-back and accepting of the difficulty of life here.

We did have our youth group activity yesterday, and it took all day. In the morning we hiked to the river to pick corn, and hiked back in stifling heat. Then the youth group kids came over in the pouring rain and shucked all the corn on my porch -- total chaos. Then we broke in to the church (the guy with the key didn't show up) and made a sweet drink from the corn with cinnamon and sugar. We also boiled some -- mmm fresh corn on the cob. We didn't finish all this until 6 p.m. As the trainee, Dana, pointed out, it's strange to think that we could spend all day making corn on the cob and a pot of corn juice. But that's life here.

Now we're grocery shopping in the city and this afternoon we're going back to my site to pick fruit and have a youth group meeting.

I took tons of fun pictures of Corn Day yesterday but forgot to load them on my memory stick. Next time!

Paz y amor.