Brief update

I take a boat to school twice a week. Some days, the lechuga (the water lettuce that grows on the lake) is too thick to take the boat home. That happened both days this week and yesterday there wasn't anyone in the community of El Sitio who could give us a ride to the highway to take the bus back to Suchitoto.

So we walked the same road that many of my students walk to and from school each day. We walked with a handful of them. (We being the five of us teachers - four Salvadorans and I.) It was only my second time on that path, the first having been Tuesday, in a truck, so it was the first time walking it. It goes back and forth between cobble-stoned and dirt. It inclines up, gradually but steadily, the whole time, but then you get to a part where you go straight up on just dirt/mud for the length of about three city blocks.

I will never again complain - even in my head - about ending school early due to the rain. I will never again be annoyed when a student shows up late to the first class of the day. I wasn't spending too much time, before, on the latter, but I was definitely a bit irked each time we ended school early. (Which itself has only happened about four or five times total.)

The path was not mucky, but it was slick, even though it hadn't started to rain yet. We were up in the next community by the time it did start to rain. One of my students had picked up a guacal (a big, multi-use tub) of milk from a house on the road and had it on her head. Standing in the rain is the only way I ever really feel cool enough here, so I wasn't about to use my umbrella, but I grabbed it out anyway and held it over Laura's head as we walked. I'm pretty sure we looked like dorks (read: I looked like a dork and she looked like she was just carrying some milk), but we talked and laughed as we walked, so it was alright.

At one point, one of the teachers pointed out a house about 50 meters up the road and explained that a couple of the girls who had gone ahead lived there and their mother made tamales as a business. I thought, "Oh, cool, good to know." Then when we walked by their house, they each came out with bags full of tamales for us. (The one I got had about 10 in it.) This is THE time of year for fresh corn here, so this was an extraordinary gift, given for no particular reason. I was amazed.

About five minutes later, we came to Laura's house and her brother gave us a ride the rest of the way to Suchi in his pickup. This was after we interrupted the football game that he and his friends were in the middle of, but there was no sense of annoyance from him. He drove us fast and direct - and all the way to town, rather than just to the highway, since we'd missed the 5:15 bus and would have had to wait until the 6:15.

One of my other students hopped in the truck bed with us and rode along to town, since his community has an art exposition at a gallery here and he had something to do in town for it. As he jumped in and sat on the edge, a woman came out of the house and said, "Oh no, down on the floor." I asked if that was his mom. She was his aunt, but all the same, definitely an identifiable parental instinct. :) So we rode back to Suchi, the student, two other teachers, a woman from El Cereto, and me. (The other two teachers were in the cab - we didn't leave anyone behind!) And we talked and joked and it was just such a human experience. I was able to let down my linguistic guard and just speak without worrying about messing things up. And then we were in town and all said goodbye until Tuesday (my next day of teaching). And my tamales and I walked home. And it felt like home. Not a permanent home, for me, but a place where I belong for now.

My "brief" updates never end up being that way. Nor do they tend to capture the full feeling (nor the feeling of fullness) of what I experience. But imagine the situation described in the words I have here and then absolutely FILL it with love and contentment. That's at least a bit closer to the real thing.