Nieve Negra y Huevos de Amor

First of all, to clarify, I just want to say a bit about the program I´m working through. It´s called VIDES, and it´s through the Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians (more commonly known as Salesian Sisters), whose mission is for the advancement of youth and women. They have Sisters all over the world and VIDES volunteers from all over the world that stay with them. Their order was founded by St John Bosco and St Maria Domenica Mazzarello in Italy. The United States is divided into two Salesian provinces, East and West. The Western province is based in San Antonio at St John Bosco School. You can learn more about it from the website: www.vides.us.

So anyway, yesterday, in the middle of the afternoon, I was helping one of the older girls with her English homework, when everyone suddenly got really excited, pointed at the sky and yelled, ¨Nieve Negra (black snow, for you non-Spanish speakers)!¨ I looked up to see little pieces of ash floating in the air, from a nearby volcano. And apparently this is very exciting and not at all alarming. It only blew in for a minute or so, but I definitely had never seen anything like it before. I guess that´s the closest it gets to snowing here.

Also, I know the other volunteers and I have talked about this, but it seems like, worldwide, the Salesians as a group are really really good at two things: working you and feeding you. The sisters here eat four meals a day! Of course, you probably would too, if you woke up at 5 am, like I will every day (oy!). The sisters get up even earlier. But they also go to bed at 8:30. In fact, the whole town of Chalchuapa does, too. They have police at night that patrol the streets honking at houses with their lights on past 9, because apparently, nobody should be up doing anything at that hour.

Despite eating four meals, I don´t think I´ll be gaining weight as fast here as I would be if I ate four times a day back at home. They eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables from their trees and the garden, and beans with almost every meal. For breakfast, we had hot dogs mixed with eggs from the chickens in the back of the house. The call the eggs ¨huevos de amor¨ (eggs of love) to differentiate them from the eggs they buy at the store. And speaking of love, I just have to mention this story from the preschool class this morning.

The kids (18 of them) are learning the parts of the body and how to take care of their bodies (bathing, brushing their teeth, washing their hands, etc.). With the parts of the body, they learned really vague things like la cabeza (head), el tronco (trunk), and the extremeties (las extremidades). I was thinking how easy it was to teach them that the body has only three parts because that meant I didn´t need to know a lot about vocabulary. However, right after that, the teacher busted out some worksheets about genitalia! Talk about awkward! We all talked about the difference between boys and girls, and colored diagrams and everything. I guess when they learn at such a young age though, they´re not embarrassed about it later in life. Still, it was so awkward for me to teach it in my very first lesson!

Also, for those of yáll who asked me about my address, if you email me letting me know you want it, I´ll email you back. I just didn´t want to post it on the internet. ¡Salud!