Warm Water, Cold Showers

How it is in El Salvador (at least for me):

• Freezing cold showers, which you think would feel good given that it is generally at least 90 degrees + humidity outside, but it is still a shock everytime.
• Bottled water is the ONLY acceptable drinking water, and it is always luke warm.  Even if I put it in the freezer the night before, it melts and is warm by 10 or 11am.
• Public "chicken buses" are the main mode of transportation, the type where you have to use your hand sanitizer when you're done and where you might get a seat and if you don't, you just have to hold on for dear life - or you just sway with the crowd of people standing ALL around. 
• I have gotten my excercise program started with lots and lots of walking, hauling rocks and trying to dig up clay.
• If you add together the heat, the stuffy, crowded buses, and walking up and down hills, it makes for lots of sweatiness.  I am usually soaked, but its okay, because everyone else is too.  Wet and stinky is just a part of life here in El Salvador.
• I have my own cot to sleep on and feel quite lucky to have my own fan since I live in a house of 20 people.  5 males, the rest women, makes for some tough negotiating for bathroom time.
• I have actually been working on projects and meeting with our partner organizations.  All of the humanitarian service and community development we do here is with a established, locally based organizations - some government funded, some religiously affiliated and others private.
• I am missing my boys but am so glad for phones that are only 10 cents a minute.  I have been able to talk to Russ and the boys almost everyday.
• Other things that defined this week - late nights, either with meetings or talking with volunteers or the Country Directors; early mornings, we generally leave the house around 6am or 7 at the latest; yummy latin food made by our "mamita", Estela; several quick runs to the bathroom; riding in the back of pick-up trucks (going 80miles per hour); and lots of improvement in my Spanish, I can still speak after all these years!

And for your viewing pleasure, a few pics of El Salvador . . .