The view at Pajaroflor
El SalVador escapades día 4:
06/17/2013
So today was a really interesting day. My med mates and I left the main city of San Salvador and moved to a small village called Suchitoto. So we’ve been in El Salvador for about 4 days now, I’ve finally gotten use to the hotel we stayed in and felt comfortable and more at home and up we go, off to a new unfamiliar place. Time to get disoriented again, yayy! But thankfully in a couple more days I will feel at home here, as well
So the way our program works is that each student or pairs of students will live with a local family in the town of Suchitoto– or in full translation bird(suchi) flower(toto). Luckily, I was placed with the president of the community of Suchitoto, Vilma. :). She is a truly lovely woman; I can sense it already! She welcomed my med mate and I into her home with open arms.
So Vilma is a midwife who has been working with women and empowering them since the times of the civil war. Yes, I said the civil war, so you know what that means– high stress and intense environments. Vilma surely has to be an excellent nurse to have treated patients in crisis mode for hours upon hours for 12 years (as long as the war lasted). Crafts and skills were definitely formed to be controlled enough to heal patients under such stress.
Another interesting part of today was the language school (Pajaroflor) my mates and I will spend 4 hrs a day for the next 4 weeks. I was a bit discouraged and disappointed with how much Spanish I have forgotten from my lack of use after college; it was actually very very frustrating being so tongue tied.
And now as I lay in bed under my purple floral mosquito net with iPhone in hand and Hillsong jamming through my head phones, I realized how my perspective really did set me up for a not so successful day with my Spanish.
I kept thinking wow, so how am I actually going to complete a whole investigation speaking with patients, doctors, nurses and all sort of health care providers entirely in Spanish when I’m sucking this bad. I kept repeating to myself, Jenn, yo se un pico Español y yo olvido todos! Where will that attitude get me? Umm, absolutely nowhere except to destination disappointment-ville.
The whole irony of today is that I have moved to Suchitoto a beautiful beautiful village in the mountains which has a breath-taking scenic route with luscious green mountains to the right, gorgeous bodies of water to the left of me, and rainbows radiating in the sky, yet I’ve come with an attitude of a fat rain cloud floating in the sky to dampen the beauty of Suchitoto. Oh the irony!
Ironic it maybe , but guess, what rain clouds are never permanent. They come with there funk and attitudes and block the sunshine and beauty but before you know it they are gone and there appears a beautiful rainbow to dissolve any recollection of the ugly rain cloud that was just in the sky. So this goes for me. Yes, I had a bit of a funk today and just some shock with my wonderful Spanish speaking skills HA!! but tomorrow is a new day. There is an upside to being down… the rainbow always shines after the storm.
XOXO,
Jenn
A beautiful rainbow we saw walking to dinner
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