Ya no aguanto mas frijoles negros.

(yes, I realize the photo is of red beans, but same deal, right??)

I never thought I’d get sick of black beans so quickly. But after experiencing the fine cuisine that NPH El Salvador has to offer, after just a week of being here I’ve about reached my breaking point. Beans up to three times a day. I really do enjoy eating beans, but for every meal it gets to be a little much. It takes the delight out of eating them. I guess at least my chances for developing colon cancer are shrinking by the plateful. I use that term “plateful” loosely, as the plates here are rarely ever full. Portion sizes between here and Honduras are like night and day. At least the size of their lunches. Quite honestly I wonder how the kids make it through the day! They must get decent snacks between meals.

That all is made up for though on Sunday. The suffering through the beans is all worth it for the kids once Sunday morning breakfast rolls around. Donuts. They have donuts. I admit that I’ve only actually rolled out of bed in time for the 5:30am breakfast twice now since I’ve arrived. The first time was Sunday (because it’s at 8am), and the second time today (mainly just because I needed my coffee to kick me into high gear for the day). Anyways, Sunday the kids finished their beans, drank their milk, and then they rolled out baskets full of donuts. I was shocked when the kids didn’t completely lose it at the sight of donuts for breakfast. The kids in Honduras would’ve gone absolutely nuts. After a little investigation, I found out they get them every Sunday. Note to self – for a change in pace in terms of nutritious delights, go to breakfast on Sundays.

Another shock to the system – back to taking cold showers. I’ve been so spoiled in Honduras over the past two years with a “suicide shower” as they’re known here. It’s an electrical attachment to place on your showerhead that heats the water as it blows out at you. It really is quite the invention, and it adds a little spice to your life in the morning when you turn it on and you see sparks. But no, not here in El Salvador. No suicide showers here. Straight up COLD water, which normally isn’t too terrible with the heat this country produces. Cold showers sometimes are actually nice. However, the past few days have actually been a little cool – like I’m not sweating sitting in the shade. Today was exceptionally chilly. I had to put on a long-sleeved shirt. The mornings tend to be cool, making taking cold showers not my favorite thing in the world.

Work here is going quite well. I’m pretty impressed by their clinic – they’ve really got it together. It’s much different than my experiences in other clinics. They have a new doctor, who has been great to work with. He’s only been working here for about three months, but is already seeing what needs to be changed and they’re well on their way to success.

I’m enjoying spending an extended amount of time in another NPH home, learning about how it functions as it does, and gathering ideas for improvement in other homes. It’s fun getting to talk to the kids here about how their NPH brothers and sisters live in other homes. NPH El Salvador doesn’t get visitors too often (I guess nobody wants to see El Salvador?? Weird.) So the kids really latch on when a foreigner happens to drop in. They’re really quite interested in what else is out there in that scary world they haven’t met yet.

Today we took advantage of a bus load of small children that was heading into Santa Ana (nearest town to the home). Another visitor and myself rode in with them just to make a quick trip to the grocery store – like I said, can’t take the beans for much longer! Once we got to the central park, we had about an hour and a half until we had to meet back to head back to the home. The other visitor was here for six months as a volunteer, so she suggested we visit the high school students’ homes. So we set out on a mission to find them – she couldn’t remember exactly how to get there.

We eventually wound up at the home where the guys lived. So we knock, and some grouchy man yells back at us “quien?” – he wanted to know who it was. We had no idea who it was behind that door, so we just said we were looking for the NPH guys. He opened the metal door, hands covered in cement. It turned out to be a quite nice older man. The guys no longer lived there, so he tried to direct us to their new home. I don’t think he actually knew where they moved to, but was just trying to be helpful, which people tend to do frequently here in Central America. If they’re clueless, they’ll just make something up to try to help. Anyways, we take off down the road, and knock on a door where we thought the girls lived. Nope. Wrong as well. So then we ask some armed guards on another street corner if they know where the girls lived. They actually were able to point us in the right direction, and we found them after all. So we got to see their houses – man, the guys live in a sweet house. They just moved in this past weekend. I considered moving in myself for my remaining time here! Not really, but it would be a great place to live.

18 Days until I’m home again!