El Salvador Reflections

So it’s been a week since El Salvador.  School is starting, life is returning somewhat to the normal routine, and I am adjusting.  This week has been hard.  Hard to walk into my apartment, hard to go to the grocery store, hard to eat out, hard to be at sorority recruitment, hard to understand how I have been so blessed as to live in a country like the United States and grow up with the wonderful family I have here.  El Salvador opened my eyes to new forms of sacrifice, pain, and suffering.  It challenged me to step out live in another world.  It showed me love in the purest form and faith that can move mountains.  Below are a few of excerpts from the journal I wrote in while I was there and will continue to write in this semester as I continue to think about and process this experience.

“I just took a bucket shower, more to come on that experience. I am feeling happy, happy to be here surrounded by people who have lived and loved in the fullest form.  Their stories touch my heart and will never be forgotten.”

“The poverty, war and destruction can be seen everywhere.  It is in my mother Rita’s face…”

 “I want to kill the rosters and dogs.” (Written at 3am in the moonlight)

“What a place of peace.  Nowhere else have I ever built relationships like the ones I have made here.  Honest relationships built through conversations of strength and faith, stories of hardship and poverty but never complaining.  El Salvador is simple, and yet so extraordinary and inspiring.”

My time in El Salvador was something that I have never experienced before and will take with me forever.  It was beautiful, even in the death and destruction.  The people of El Salvador have transformed me.