El Salvador

Hola! We have made it to El Salvador safely (without any passport problems!) and we are having fun! The first week at the Hogar has been slightly overwhelming, but the kids are awesome. They all LOVE us and call us ¨mami¨and ¨papi¨. And, oh man, do they love Andrew. There aren´t a whole lot of guys around here, so they adore him!! They always say hello to him and give him hugs WAY before they say hi to me. haha! We adjusting to the Hogar life and figuring out a good daily schedule. We still have to meet some residents and figure out how we can help them out. It´s going to be fun...I´m really excited for everything that we´re going to do!!

Here are a few pictures for your viewing pleasures.

Us about to get on our flight at butt early in the morning...6 AM! Ugh

At the Hogar!! We made it!

Our ¨casita¨...aka our little house:)

the view from our house...beautiful!

So we have the weekends off to do whatever while we´re here. We decided to go to La Libertad, which is a town right on the coast and its only about an hour and a half from where we´re staying (on bus...and did I mention that the buses here are nuts? Packed to the edge of the doors. So most of the buses are old school buses from the states...like really old, sometimes hippy looking colorful buses...and they pack people into every possible spot...sometimes people are hanging OUT of the bus and the bus drivers still try to shove people on...so uncomfortable. I think my muscles are growing though from holding onto the seats/overhead bars as the driver swerves through traffic). The beach was REALLY rocky, the sand was gross and wet (and there was a crap load of trash EVERYWHERE! I watched countless people chuck their wrappers and soda bottles onto the sand as the walked by...gross), but the water was AMAZINGLY warm!! It was sooooo fun!! I forgot how much I love the beach:)

Can you tell we´re getting sun burnt? We couldn´t...

La playa!!

My poor sunburn. Andrew got burnt on his head...he decided not to swim though, the bum! We had fun anyway. We took a frisbee and threw it around, which was fun. But then this guy came up to us and starting talking to us in English and he was totally wasted. He spoke English really well, actually, because he lived in CA for while. Anyway, we were there with the HELP girls and he was TOTALLY hitting on them. He tolded Andrew he would ¨respect¨me because I was his wife. Haha! THANK GOODNESS! I felt bad because he WOULD NOT leave the poor girls alone no matter how much they ignored him. Finally, some guy was staring at the girls (actually, everyone was... we were the only white ones there, and all of HELP volunteers are really pretty, so they were the spectacle ALL day) and it made the drunk guy mad. He started yelling at the guy and was dropping the f-bomb every other word...literally. Every other word (not that the other guy would have understood anyway...seriously). But he left to go beat the guy up. Haha! looooveee it!

We had a fun weekend though. I forgot to put sunscreen on my back...so right now it hurts a lot...I have to sleep on my stomach at night...the picture doesn´t really do it justice, but OUCH! It hurts. I´m so glad we brought Aloe sunburn stuff with us!

Until the next update!!