I cannot believe it’s March. We’re already in Month 3. I talked to my brother yesterday and he said his spring break is coming up. Really? It’s already spring for you people in America?
It feels like time is crawling by here, but when I look back, I can’t believe how many places I’ve already been and how many things I’ve done. People had been saying, “We have ten more months!” Now that number’s dwindled to eight. At the end of this month, we’ll leave Central America. One continent down, three to go. Time’s weird.
This month my team, Brazen Hearts, is with another team, All Out. We have the honor of living at Remar, a Christian orphanage in La Libertad, El Salvador. We’re about an hour out of San Salvador, the capital, and a ten minute walk from a vibrant beach community. People from all over the world travel here to surf! As you can imagine, we’re always in the water on our days off.
As awesome as the beach is, this ministry has been really difficult for a lot of us, more so than the last two months’ work. For one, it’s HOT. In Honduras and Guatemala, we had cooler temperatures and were living in the mountains. All of a sudden, we’re on the beach, and it’s hot and sticky and humid and we don’t know what to do with ourselves.
Also, the days are long here. We’re scheduled to work about 12 hours a day, starting at 5 a.m. We’ve been here a week now and we’re getting used to it, but it’s still different from what we’re used to.
I’ll write more soon about some of the challenges I’m facing personally here. But I wanted to show you what a typical day here at Remar looks like, as long as I’ve got time on the brain.
(Courtney, a member of Team All Out, eating a frozen something or other with some of the girls here)
4:30- We all hit the snooze button on our alarm clocks. There are several houses here at Remar for different age groups. We sleep in a house for the younger teenage girls, in a spare room with 8 empty bunk beds. We’ve broken two or three of the beds, unfortunately, because they were made more little children, not big Americans with their big backpacks.
4:55- We finally get out of bed and go to our stations.
5:00- Help the kids get ready for school.
5:45- Sweep and mop your own room to keep the ants out.
6:00- Go to the dining room and help yourself to coffee and cookies (Choco Risas, to be specific). It’s already starting to get too hot for hot drinks, but you need the coffee, so it’s difficult to go about this.
6:30- Eat breakfast. It’s usually rice and beans. Occasionally there will be a doughnut thrown in, but you need to check for ants.
7:30- Work begins for the day! Sometimes you work in the school that is located on the orphanage property, assisting in preschool and kindergarten classrooms and wondering how to say “don’t hit” or “get off the table” or “don’t sit on his head” in Spanish. Sometimes you’ll be in the laundry room with four machines that don’t work, so you just hand wash clothes (especially the ones with urine or blood on them). I’ve spent a lot of time doing construction, which has involved laying concrete at the school. I learned how to mix it by hand!
10:30- Treat yourself to a water break and a snack from the little tienda (store) at the school: perhaps some fried yuca, or a quesadilla? My go-to treat has been a frozen Gatorade.
12:30- Lunch time! Rice, beans, vegetables, and mystery meat is common.
1:00- Siesta! Sometimes we plan to read a book or hang out, but usually we just pass out in our room in front of the fan for an hour. I tend to take my first shower now to cool off and blast music in the bathroom. The cold shower’s a huge relief, though you have to turn the water on and off with pliers.
2:00- Back to work. Help the kids with their homework, start cooking dinner, or figure out how to clean the pool. (We’ve given up on the pool for now.)
5:00- After 12 hours of work, the next hour is yours! We’ll often go to the beach to swim for a half hour or so before dinner. No matter how hot and hard the days are, it’s great that we have this to look forward to.
6:30- Dinner time. More rice, more beans, more fellowship, more hot sauce.
7:00- Spend time with your team, playing a game, praying, or just hanging out. On Saturdays, both the teams that are here (Brazen Hearts and All Out) hang out together.
8:30- Take another shower to cool off again before bed.
8:45- Adjust the fan so you get a lot of air flow but not all of it, because you have to share.
9:00- Sleep.
12:00- Wake up sweating. Consider moving to the tile floor. Fall asleep deciding.
