The picture below is of a group of students at a school outside the city. I went with a friend to this school because she teaches English on Saturday mornings. It was such an amazing experience. All of the students there go to school all week and then come to school there on Saturday mornings to learn English. I was so impressed with some of their stories and how difficult their lives are. One of the girls I was talking with leaves home at 430 in the morning to ride the bus 1 1/2 hours to the city....has class 6-8am, works all day, and then goes to class again from 6-8 at night. Then rides the bus home and gets home at 10pm. Each day is the same. SO amazing! I had taken some supplies that Mrs. Hepker, a friend's mom, had collected from her students in the states. She then sent the supplies down here and I took them to donate to the school. They were so excited about all of the new things, it was so cute! We spent the morning just talking.....English/Spanish. They did very well though and were all so motivated and wanted to make sure that they were saying things correctly so would repeat things again and again. I hope to definitely go back and see them again before I come home!
The students and I with the donated supplies.
My birthday was amazing....one of the best that I have had. A group of friends and I decided to go stay down at the beach for the night on Saturday and we stayed in a very nice hotel. We got down there Saturday afternoon and just hung out at the pool at our hotel and then showered and got ready for dinner. There were 9 of us staying at this particular hotel which was about a 5 minute drive from the town. So we drove and met up with 7 others to have dinner and go out to some beach clubs right on the beach. Our group ended up being 16 and it was so wonderful to celebrate with almost all of my closest friends here now, like my family! Well we danced all night and then slept in Sunday morning and got up and did more of the same. We had a nice breakfast, then spent the morning just playing vball in the pool and sitting around. It was a great birthday and one I will never forget!
This was the hotel that we stayed at. Ocean is behind in this picture so the decks looked out at the ocean...amazing!
We had some intense games of vball in the pool. A pretty great view too! I stayed in the room on the top right.
In El Salvador Mother's Day is always on the 10th of May, no matter what day of the week it is. Well it happened to be Tuesday this year and we had a big 5th grade event. All of the moms came and the kids sang 3 songs, then danced with their moms at the end. They had also made poems and drawn portraits of their moms. When they gave them to their moms, so many cried and it was super cute. It really made me miss home and my mom though. So between having bday wishes from a far and then having to wish my mom a happy mother's day only over skype was a little hard. I come home so soon though, just about a month!
Valeria, me, and Jesse in front of some of the decorations at the Mother's Day Luau. All survived our first year at EA!
Another first this last week was my first Jazz Reception at the embassy. A friend asked if I wanted to go and I said sure why not? So we got all fancied up and went to the reception at the ambassador's house. It was just a reception so drinks, snacks, and a live band playing jazz. It was fun to do something different and get all dressed up.
All dressed up for the Jazz Reception at the Ambassador's House. Fancy!
Overall, things are going very, very well. Only 17 days of school left. How crazy! We have 3 full weeks and then 2 days the last week. We finish June 9th with kids and then June 12th for teachers. I will be home June 16th, so just a little over a month. I can not believe that I have almost survived my first year. It has gone so well and I am going to miss these kids SO much. This weekend I'm planning on just hanging out and relaxing. A week from Monday starts the last master's class of the year so I need to enjoy the down time that I have now. Hope all is well at home and I'll see you so soon!
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