*Smack* "Meeka!" *giggle and run away* Then repeat. Over and over and over. This has been what Nathan and I do every time there are kids out in the compound. "Erin!" I come over, thinking that they genuinely want to talk to me. "Su hermanito?" My little brother? Oh, I get it. Haha, so Nathan and I go play meeka with them. It's tag in Spanish. :)
So Saturday was fun. We get up and we're going to go out shopping. When we go outside, Reina and Amanda are at the compound to see what time Amanda can come over and play on the playground with me! :) So she ends up going shopping with us, and when we come home she and Nathan and I head out to the playground. She starts of by showing us where to stand and mostly using motions when I can only understand every other word. Basically, it was like playing monkey in the middle with Nate's plastic ball. After a while, that got old. Especially since I'm taller than both of them and was having a much easier time than they were ;). So we went out in the compound area to try futball! But first we needed goals... Nathan gets a couple big rocks for his, and then Amanda and I team up against him and use the area between two trashcans for ours. Once she and I were beating him 4-2, he decided the teams weren't fair. He hollers in throught the window and asks if Dad will come play, and he says yes. Amanda obviously couldn't understand, so she asked me to translate what he asked. When I explained, her eyes got so big... Monte is too big! It's not going to be fair! She thought it was pretty funny. But we had a good time, and I think it was about tied when we had to go in for lunch.
Later that afternoon I got to go to the market with Mom and Teresa. More one dollar calla lilies, anyone? :) And when we got home, I got to go learn some Spanish from the English class. That was the most interesting English class I'm pretty sure I've ever been in... Limes, muchachos or muchachas, and some more meeka... Yeah, that was fun :)
And of course we ended the day with a movie night. Same as how we ended yesterday. Yesterday afternoon was the teen girls class that Mom and Teresa taught, that was pretty fun. Nathan came outside and played meeka with us for, like, half an hour afterwards. And then we all went to Reina's for pupusas. We ended today with a movie night, too. And I think I'm actually going to end tonight and go to bed soon...
More to be posted later!
su amiga,
Ruth Erin

Wow, I have so many great, new experiences to post about tonight! I'm going to start with yesterday. La Palma is pretty well known for its art. At every little shop you will see something with the "typico" art style. It was designed by Fernando LLort (pronounced like Yort). Yesterday morning we went to this museum with an original drawing of his, and then a whole bunch of orher things that were done by people he trained. Unfortunately, there were no cameras allowed. After we finished there, we did get to go to the place where he used to work and make all of the stuff. Norma had "connections" with the people who work there now, so we got to tour the whole place and see how everything is made. Cameras were allowed here.

This is a man cutting the wood into the shape, I don't remember what they were working on here. Possibly a bird, I think.
After it's cut and sanded and all of the other stuff that all of my shop friends will know about that I don't, they paint it. This is the part that I enjoy watching, even though I totally love the smell of the room where they do all of the wood working. The man here is painting on some alphabet blocks, and then these ladies are working on several different projects. I love how their children come to work with them, and are "learning" how to help them at so young.

Today was really neat, too. This morning was the children's program, where all of the sponsor children got to get their bags of groceries. It's pretty cool to see them get so much; they aren't used to that. After the children's program was when the "adventure" began, though. Jorge drove us across the border to Honduras. We started off at his house and we got to meet his family. They have three girls, 12, 11, and 5. We played soccer in their hallway together, and it was actually a lot of fun. His wife helped my mom with shopping around town because they have things at the stores there that we need for cooking and can't find in El Salvador. Then, they said we were going to Esquipulas for some more shopping. We didn't realize till on the way- Esquipulas? Is a famous city in Guatemala. There is a huge, beautiful, and very very old catholic church

in the middle of town. It is home to a famous statue called Cristo Negro, or "Black Jesus". The whole city was really pretty, it was an amazing experience. A huge thanks to Jorge and his family :)

More to be posted later!
su amiga,
Ruth Erin

I haven't posted in a while, I've got a lot of pictures to put into this entry! I think my last post was about Wednesday. Thursday was not a good day for me; I was sick and stuck at home all day. We had been planning on going with the school on a field trip Friday. They were going to be driving to Santa Ana, an area near the coast, and visiting a national agriculture institute of some sort, and then going to a big water park. It had a wave pool like White Water, and a natural hot tub type area heated by volcanoes! How awesome does that sound? The park had crazy huge and crazy scary slides, too. Or at least the picture made it look like it, and the stories from Teresa and Jose. We didn't get to go because I was still sick Thursday night. :P
One thing that I'm finding that I really miss? Quiet. It's always noisy here. Every afternoon is rain, and depending on the day that can be really loud. We've been watching movies together every night since we don't go out after dark, and Teresa, the other American as she calls us ;), has been coming up to watch them with us several times. One night it got to the point where it was raining so hard that we had the TV at maximum volume and still had to pull it away from the wall and closer to the seats to even hear it over the rain. That was the same night that San Ignacio, another city next to La Palma, was having its huge party. Until after 2 in the morning, the bass lines and dj's voice was echoing throughout the house. It's kind of difficult to sleep when your bed is vibrating in rhythm to a Spanish song... My headphones have become good friends the past couple nights.
A favorite place of ours to eat lunch lately has been Eric's Pizzeria. They have good pizza, but here is a picture of my "quesadilla". It's more like a burrito, but it was yummy! And Mom and Dad sitting across the table from me :)
I've posted the gorgeous views out of our window before. I've never posted the other things on the window, so here is the lizard on the glass last night :)
We watched it eat two moths right in front of us, and it made me slightly less freaked out by the fact that there were several in our house. Less creepy bugs for 2 lizards? Fine trade by me.
Blanca and her daughter Emily came by yesterday, here's a picture of them together in our kitchen.

We also got to check out our backyard outside the compound area, and it's literally a jungle! I don't have the pictures on this laptop, but it is gorgeous. Reina came to pick banana leaves to wrap her tamales in. She's bringing some for us tomorrow night. It was crazy to watch her. She was wearing a skirt, and she was barefoot, and she just went all around with the machete and hacked down the leaves. Then she would pull the sides off of the middle part, and her daughter Amanda would roll them up. There are pictures on Mom's facebook, and I may put up a link to them on mine. Our view is so amazing- we have a jungle, and past the jungle is a river, and past the river is mountains. And more mountains. And more mountains.
Today, it was raining really hard at one point. I glanced out the window, and it was totally white. We were in a cloud! Living in the mountains is beautiful :) I wish I had the pictures right now to put up here, but I'll try to get them on facebook later. Teresa just left from another one of our movie nights, and we're all pretty tired. So,
More to be posted later!
Su amiga,
Ruth Erin