Good Morning Salvador: Accion de Gracias

Let's go in chronological order...I passed my mid service medical exams this week with flying colors, except I apparently have an intestinal parasite that Peace Corps will not treat because ¨we have tried to treat it before and it doesn't go away.¨ Ummm...?

Thanksgiving was lots of fun. Peace Corps has a program where volunteers can sign up for Thanksgiving dinner with families who work for the U.S. Embassy, who usually have the money/resources/hired help to cook an actual Thanksgiving dinner...turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, pumpkin pie, the works. Much better than the chicken and $7 cranberry juice we had last year.

I went with two other volunteers to an amazing family. The husband had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, and the wife is South African and had just got back from a trip to Bangladesh on Tuesday, so we had plenty to talk about! They had a gorgeous high rise penthouse apartment that I will post pictures of, and had invited Salvadoran friends too, all very nice people. We stayed there until about 2 a.m. drinking, dancing and smoking hookah (they had spent a lot of time in the Middle East).

Next week I head to a beautiful lake in the crater of a volcano for three days for an English workshop with two teachers from my school. And in two weeks exactly I come HOME for three weeks of vacation! Life is good!

A view of San Salvador from the penthouse apartment

Where we spent a lot of the night...

I also want to post some pictures of the damage done to my site by Hurricane Ida, in stark contrast to the prosperity seen here. It seems a little incongruous, but that is exactly how I felt on Thanksgiving. When asked what I was thankful for at the dinner table, I said I was thankful for the chance to be in a beautiful apartment eating a huge delicious meal, but for the first time I actually felt guilty about it as well. Even though the family we visited had lived in poorer conditions before, I still found it hard to reconcile their wealth with what I see in my village every day. Our Thanksgiving family deserved every privilege they had. I just wish that everyone else who deserves those priveleges could also have them.

Shutting up now...