EL SAlvador: Immersion Days

This weekend we had Immersion Days, which is when every trainee goes and stays with a current volunteer to observe their life, etc in site. Shawna and I both went to stay with a volunteer living in Sonsonate, which is the southwestern region of El Salvador. We left San Vicente at 7 am on Thursday to travel there. We had to travel up through San Salvador before heading towards Sonsonate, and altogether the trip took about 4.5 hours. The site was a pueblo in a really beautiful location. It was up in the mountains of Sonsonate, and driving up to it there were very beautiful views. Unfortunately, once in the pueblo you couldn’t really see the views very well.

It was really cool to get to see the kind of work we will be doing. We got to observe an English class, a sex ed class, as well as a seed planting project. We also got to hang out and walk around the town a lot. Unfortunately, I had to stay with a host family while I was there, which was pretty awkward. They acted mortally offended when I refused my 4^th pupusa at breakfast. One benefit of staying with the host family, though, was some introduction into how the food here is made. I guess I didn’t realize how “urban” Tecoluca is, but we buy all our cream, and cheese, and prepared beans. This weekend my host mom was making queso fresco (the typical cheese here), by massaging cream and some sort of prepared pills on a board as if it were dough. I also got to help shell black beans, which was pretty cool. Also, there were tons of puppies and kittens around the pueblo, so I got to have some animal therapy, which was really nice. On Sunday, we left our pueblo and headed farther west to a town called Juayua (I think that is spelled wrong…). This town has a huge food festival every weekend – it was amazing! The food was great; I had grilled steak, “grilled cheese” made out of tortillas, salad, pico de gallo, and chocolate cake!! There were also lots of artisan craft stands and booths, so it was really fun to browse. At the festival we met up with Ashley and her volunteer host, as well as another current volunteer. It was fun to talk to the other volunteers, too. And then Ashley, Shawna, and I were able to travel back together.

After our gastronomic event, we boarded the bus and headed on our 5 hr journey back to San Vicente. We splurged the extra $.50 to take the “super especial” buses to San Sal, and from San Sal to San V, so that we could make the trips without any stops, and also in buses with AC (rather than old US school buses that failed inspection). Therefore, the trip was pretty painless.