Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Wednesday: Leaping, Arm Wrestling, and Newsworthy Adventures

Wednesday: Happy Leap Day! We celebrated a little bit by jumping up and down. :)



We're a little bit tired from the heat and sun (it's 40 degrees Celsius in Ilobasco - that's about 100 Fahrenheit. In other words, really freaking hot), but not tired enough to want to come back to the cold and snow in Erie. We went to breakfast this morning at Nekal, a restaurant along the way with a fabulous view of the mountains and the lake, and had pupusas and real hot chocolate made of a chocolate bar dissolved in hot water. Here's a picture of one of the pupusas - doesn't it look good?



Once breakfast was over, Bruce guilted KBT into ordering a cake (her words, not mine) in Spanish. She doesn't speak Spanish. She ended up drawing a dollar sign with a question mark next to it to figure out how much it costs. But her efforts were well worth it when we got to eat it for dessert tonight at dinner.
Then we headed on to the school to say goodbye to the children and Don Miguel and decided to spend the day in the city because we got there too late to start working. In the city, we saw the church, grotto, cinema, shops, and park. We went to the shops and bought a bunch of new Salvadoran treasures. :)



For the second half of the day, we went to see the church where Archbishop Romero was killed and the museum that they have across the road. Romero was killed while he was saying mass. He had heard that there was a threat on his life, so he decided that he would be the only one near the altar during that mass and did all of the readings himself. At the end of the homily, a car pulled up in front of the church and one of the passengers shot Romero while he was preparing the gifts at the altar. Standing up on the altar and looking out the doors to the church, it was easy to see anything that was on the street outside. I can only imagine what it would be like to know that there was a threat on your life, see the gun point at you, and just stand there and let it happen to protect the people in the church. His story is quite inspirational. Oh yeah, and we'll be on the Salvadoran news on March 24th. :)



We then went to the University of Central America, where 6 Jesuit priests, the housekeeper, and her daughter were killed one night during the Civil War. They were the voice for the poor, and they were killed for defending the rights of the powerless. It's hard to believe, but the pictures don't lie - they died a graphic death. Their deaths brought the Salvadoran Civil War to the forefront of world news. The Salvadoran government lost international support and a few years later, a peace treaty was signed and the war ended.

It was a pretty emotionally heavy afternoon...so to lighten things up, we did some arm wrestling to keep up a service trip tradition (thought Susan would like that one). Fearless Leader Molly's family showed up for a quick visit and we had some time to take a family photo :)



Well, we're exhausted and taking an early night tonight so that we're refreshed and ready to start at a new worksite in the morning (and we even get to sleep in until 7:00!). So we're signing off for now. On a side note, do you remember that time that we missed our flight? Yeah, so do we. And it's a lot funnier now.

Hasta luego! -Steph :)

2 comments:

  1. Way to keep up with arm wrestling Wednesday!! Winners?

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  2. KBT---why don't you ever jump like that at the office? Lol! Can you sneak me some coffee home?

    ReplyDelete