After attending The Union Church of San Salvador (international non-denominational church) this morning, Lucy hopped on a bus to Guatemala to do some adoption networking there.  Our housemate Jen and I got the better end of the deal and ventured out to hike up the volcano that sits northwest of the city.

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Lucy booked us a trip to the coast cities of La Libertad and Playa El Tunco for yesterday (Sat.) – my first time outside San Salvador.  So here’s a little tour of those areas.

1 – La Libertad (”Freedom”) is a fishing community.  Sorry I can’t convey the smell along with the sights, but here’s the main pier with all the boats lined up after returning with their fish.

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Totally forgot to put my memory stick back in my camera last night, so I didn’t take any pictures of work today.  But for your visual stimulation, here are some I took during prior days that give a little sense of how life is different down here.

#1 – Fruit disinfectant – I did usually just eat the fruit without it, but some folks recommend using this disinfectant on your fruit to avoid getting sick from the water you use to get the dirt off.  So I did it once.  Then decided I’d risk it (so far, so good!)

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I was back at CIPI today but in a different area.  (CIPI is made up of a cluster of buildings that house different age groups or stage-groups.)  The morning started with the infants – and the teen mothers of a bunch of them.  For sure, the most surreal part of my day was a conversation I had with an 11 year old girl while she nursed her 2 month old baby!

The babies are housed mainly in one room, with an adjoining room for the moms.  I think about half of the babies I saw today were abandoned babies who had been sent their straight from the hospital.  The rest belonged to the older girls.

And since I had the point of reference, I couldn’t help but compare these kids’ circumstances to the ones I saw at Vinculo de Amor, yesterday.  Yesterday’s kids each had their own crib, and there were no more than four kids in any one room.  They were constantly being changed because each staff member was assigned no more than 4 babies.  The gal today had at least 12 babies all on her own (not including the ones being toted around by their pre-teen and teen moms), and forget separate cribs:

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Wow, today was the whole other end of the spectrum from yesterday.  I spent the day at Fundación Vinculo de Amor (The Love Link Foundation), an aid organization set up in 1987 by a couple from Texas, Sam and Julie Hawkins.  They take in severely malnourished babies, either brought by their parents or referred by the child welfare agency, and they nurse them back to health.  Concurrently, they train the parents on care and feeding.  Then when the babies are up to healthy sizes, they return them to their families and have them return for periodic check-ins to help them form the habits to keep their kids healthy.

I got permission to take photos today, so you’ll get to see some Salvadoran cuteness this time.  But first, here of some before and after shots from their website of two of the kids they’ve helped:

I’d say the real “work” began yesterday (Tues), but honestly most of what I did was play.  Still tired though.  I did get dropped off for the day at CIPI, the government-run orphanage closest to where we’re staying.  And I was given the option of working with the babies (most of whom were abandoned at birth or dropped off at a hospital or police station) or working with the special needs kids.  The question was answered in my mind when I saw the special needs room (full of kids when I arrived) and only one “Tia” working in there.  Kurt, the missionary who set up my work schedule, said that’s pretty typical.

I’m trying to be careful with the kids’ right to privacy so here’s the room minus the children.  Yes, there are 14 cribs, and some of them sleep more than one child.  Plus there are a couple beds in another corner that sleep a few of the older kids.  It’s a lot to keep up with.  Some of the older girls from other wings of the orphanage come over and help a little bit after their school is done.

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I’m here!  And eat your hearts out, Marylanders: it’s 90-some degrees and sunny.  Stepped out of the airport and it was a far cry from what I left this morning when I stepped into BWI:

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Haiti is (justifiably) getting the lion’s share of news coverage right now.  But Guatemala and El Salvador were also shaken by an earthquake on Monday – a magnitude 5.8 according to the U.S. Geological Survey .  With its epicenter located in the ocean to the south of Guatemala City and west of San Salvador, the quake rocked rural areas in both countries.

Just learned some big news from El Salvador this week that does very much affect our adoption – in fact all adoptions there. 

At 8:45 on Thursday night, Sonia Cortez de Madriz was sworn in as El Salvador’s Procuraduría General de la República [Attorney General].

Got the email confirmation yesterday evening that Lucy has booked my flights!  It’s becoming more real that I’ll be in El Salvador in less than 4 weeks!

Aside from firming up coverage for the boys while I’m gone and going about daily life responsibilities, I’m trying to squeeze in my Spanish lessons on Rosetta Stone and read up on the culture.  So I’ll share pertinent facts as I find them.

Today’s surprise:  El Salvador had a 10-year record high of 4,365 murders in 2009, majority gang-related.  Read the rest of this entry