Surprise!

Today? Anything special? Why?
At least that's what everyone made Norma, the preacher, Jose's, wife, think. All day, she thought everyone forgot it was her 25th birthday. We felt bad not telling her happy birthday when we talked to her. She was so surprised when we were hiding around the corner in the house with the beautiful (and yummy!) cake! (Sorry this is sideways...)

It was a lot of fun. Also fun? Wathcing Nathan and Jose playing around together :)
And here is the two of us with Jose and Norma :)

Not a very long post at all today... But anyway :)
More to be posted later!
su amiga,
Ruth Erin

Weather Forecast?

Sorry, I didn't get around to posting last night.
Weather forecast for La Palma as given by Selina Thornton and I: "Rainy with a chance of Rain" or "Torrential downpour-y with no chance of stopping". :)
Every afternoon, sometime around 2 it starts to rain. Within 10 minutes of that it starts to pour. Yesterday, It was so loud you could hardly hear yourself think! I had to yell just to talk to my family when we were inside. Which is difficult, because I got a really sore throat yesterday morning, and it hurts to talk. :P
We went out shopping again yesterday morning and got our Tigo cell phones that work here, mostly for calling each other to make sure of where we are. Then Dad and Nathan went on home after lunch. Mom took me shopping to get paper clips and string. I figure that if I'm going to be away from everyone, why not at least have their pictures up in my room? I have tons of pictures that I packed into my carry on, and I used paperclips to put them onto strings and hung the strings on my walls. I don't have much blank wall left on my half of the room, and I like it :).
The rest of the day was spent inside because of the rain. It started lightly raining at 2:10, and by 2:15 it was pouring. Imagine my shock. Mom and I had just reached the church campus area about then and made it inside just before it started. Mom has a couple of ladies from the church coming over today for cooking. Not sure what else is on the agenda yet...
More to be posted later!
su amiga,
Ruth Erin

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Coconuts and Calla Lilies

Random fact of the day? Coconut milk is clear! They actually call it "agua de coco" which would be coconut water... Who knew? Haha, we bought a freshly picked coconut on the way here from San Salvador, and the hotel chopped off the top and brought us a glass of it with breakfast. I don't think any of us actually liked it...

After we finished breakfast, Ruth (no, I am not talking in third person) helped us get the rest of our stuff from the hotel to our new place. She took Mom and I shopping, and we left Dad and Nathan to get some stuff situated at home. Today was my first experience in the market! It's kind of inside, but kind of outside. I'm not sure how to explain it. There are tons of tables inside, piled high with fresh vegetables. Others have meat, cheeses, beans, whatever you want. What I was most excited by, was the huge boquets of flowers, like my personal favorite, calla lilies. These gorgeous bunches of flowers that would be really expensive in the States, are only a dollar! I bought some calla lilies. A boquet of 13 freshly picked calla lilies for one dollar :)Here they are on our kitchen table:
Don't you love the fancy vase they're in? ;)
And we almost made it through our whole shopping trip before the weather came in. Guess what we got more of today? Yep, torrential downpours. I seriously don't think there is a single dry thing in the whole city. It was raining so hard I couldn't see out the window, and I could hardly hear myself think! lol
We had a singing service at the building tonight. It's impressive how many of the people will walk all these hills and stuff in the pounding rain for miles to come to services. And it's amazing to hear them singing out praises so loud, regardless of how they sound. :)
We're finally moved into our house, and I have a bed to call my own, with a new woven blanket we got at a little tienda near the market... I'm heading there soon :)
More to be posted later!
su amiga,
Ruth Erin

Rain, Rain...

Yesterday I said we were planning on moving the beds in and doing grocery shopping. God had other plans! While I was typing, it started pouring rain. Like, seriously pouring. Thunder and lightening like crazy, too. Torrential downpours, as Mom called it, are not good for walking the market or moving furniture in trucks. We instead had a fun night consisting of travel Scrabble over dinner, and a movie on the laptop in the room. :)

Today was not any more dry than yesterday. It started out alright, we went to worship servicce and saw a lot of friends I hadn't seen since... 5th grade? I felt bad that I couldn't speak as much to them as I wanted to. I'm really looking forward to Spanish lessons!
When we got back to the hotel from lunch, the plan was for Romeo and Mauricio to come with a truck to get our luggage and the beds/wardrobes. When we planned this, it was hot and sunny. An hour or so later, before he was supposed to come, guess what started again? More torrential downpour. He showed up anyway, and with help from some plastic tarps we were able to get the luggage there. Dad, Nathan, and the guys went to go get the furniture. The bunk beds came in ok, despite the rain.
The wardrobes started to. Now, these arent' just little wardrobes. They are for the orphanage once it's open, but we are using them till then. Seven feet high, 5 feet wide, and 2 feet back. They made it through the door, but there was just no possible way to fit them into the bedrooms...
They plan on coming back tomorrow afternoon and possibly cutting them down some to fit.
After they left we headed to Reina's house/tienda for pupusas... :D
They were so amazing! The least amazing part of the day was the rainy walk home, though. It actually made it cold. When we got back to the hotel, I wrapped up in a blanket and hung out in the hammock for a while. We went to the hotel restaurant and got to see Isabel, back from her break. I got some vanilla tea stuff, and it was wonderful. It warmed me up, too lol. Nathan and I relearned how to play hearts with the fam during that. We're all back in the room now, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow night when we can sleep in our own place!

By the way, this is the view out one of our windows... and this is on a cloudy day, you should see when it's clear! :)
More to be posted later!
Su amiga,
Ruth Erin

You Know You're Being Ripped Off When...

A lot of shops and market stands on the street here sell things that we know are not really Abercrombie, American Eagle, Aeropostale, or whatever the tag may say. Some of my friends may remember my pair of "Chuck Laylors"? ;) But the people here don't really care a whole lot about name brands, so it doesn't matter much. This one shirt in particular just made me laugh, so I wanted to share... One way to tell when you're being ripped off? If it says "Hollister and Fitch"... :)
But after the market place we were able to get all of our furniture ordered. When we got back to the church/school compound we're living in, we realized we didn't have the key to open the big gate to get everything through. The only door that opened to it was a little door to walk through. The first thing to come through was matresses. We figured, correctly, that it would be ok for them to fit. The next thing was the couch... not so simple, we thought. When the truck arrived with them, we realized that God had totally been guiding us to pick the one we did: one with a really low back. Guess what fit just fine? :) Last came a refrigerator, which was probably the most difficult, but since I had fallen asleep on the new matresses I can only go by other people's accounts lol. Apparently, we had chosen correctly on the less wide one, too.
We're at the hotel again right now, we're hoping to get the beds in to our place tonight and be able to move in tomorrow. Mom and dad have "jugo de pina", I have some rasberry tea, and Nathan has an ice cream sandwich... No classes tonight, so we should just be busy getting groceries and moving the beds in.
More to be posted later!
Su amiga,
Ruth Erin

The First Day

So, yesterday was our first full day in El Salvador as a family- wow!
I'm not sure where to start... I guess I can actually start from Wednesday when we left. Saying all of our goodbyes over the past month has been really tough. Wednesday at the airport was no different. I'm going to miss everyone a lot. The flight itself went well, and all of our stuff made it, too. This picture is to prove to Jenna that I followed through on my promise to take Jo Jo on the flight :). We stayed at a hotel near San Salvador when we got there. It was beautiful; the weather was great, there was a pool and palm trees, and we had all sorts of great fresh food for breakfast. But yesterday was the fun part.
Ruth and Angelino picked us up in a van from the hotel and we headed to the beach! It was pretty, and we saw a lot of neat things on the shore- lots of shells, and I even found a starfish. When we left the beach we went for lunch at a place where the seafood we had could easily have been swimming shortly before... here it is:
When we drove through San Sal after lunch, we saw something really funny. A huge tanker truck thing, like the ones that carry oil, was full of molasses. It had apparently leaked and was spilled all over the streets, several inches thick for about a mile! Cars were sliding in it and sticking, and other cars would spray it back onto the ones behind them.
The prettiest part of the day, I thought, was the ride from San Sal to La Palma. The mountains are gorgeous, and we were in such a high elevation that we drove through the clouds! And now that we're are up in the mountains, it's actually pretty cool. From what I'm seeing on facebook, Missouri is pretty hot and humid right now, so this weather is really nice :).
Today we got to see the place we will be living. What is going to be a children's home/ orphanage thing isn't open yet, and we're living in that until it is. It's actually pretty nice, except for our welcoming visitors today: Several big spiders and a couple lizards... :P
We shopped around for our furniture for a little while, and got to visit this really cute little coffee shop with pastries and stuff. Right now we are back relaxing at the hotel we're staying at until our place is ready. Mom took Nathan down to the pool, and Dad and I are sitting outside listening to all the parrots talk, :)
If you noticed by the title, I am going by my middle name, Erin, while we are here. In Spanish, Ruth is just Rut, and I like the way Erin sounds in Spanish better. It's not uncommon here, though, to randomly switch which name you go by; some people use a couple different ones, even.
More to be posted later!
su amiga,
Ruth Erin

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This place? This is my blog! I'm Erin, or you may know me as Ruth. I'm spending this year living in La Palma, El Salvador with my family working with the church, and I'm pretty pumped about seeing some awesome stuff happen through our amazing God. Here, you can read about some of that awesome stuff, catch up with my family news (There's a link to the rest of the fam's blogs above!), or just see what I've been up to lately. Thanks for checking it out! :)



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