Holy Week Begins!

I apologize for not posting the past few days.  I will be honest I forgot a couple of nights and just plain fell asleep as soon as we got home and ate dinner on Monday.  Things have been going well over the past few days. The pace certainly has not picked up since Semana Santa (Holy Week) is in full swing.  This country is basically at a stand still now and apparently will stay that way until Monday morning.

Monday we went back to Chalatenango and had clinic there.  On the way back to San Sal we stopped by an awesome little town called Suchitoto.  It was absolutely beautiful. All the streets were cobblestone, there was a traditional town square with a 200+ year old Catholic Church on one side and the entire town overlooked Lake Suchitlan. Everyone was starting to arrive for the traditional Holy Week celebration they have there so there were a ton of street vendors and fun things to do.

Yesterday we went back to the orphanage we went to on the first day in Sonsonate.  We had a blast seeing several of the kids and a few of the nuns there and got to check up on the 2 year old that had been dropped into the storm drain by his mother I mentioned in an earlier post.  He is actually doing much better, still quite listless, which I have a feeling will be the norm for him, but his lungs sounded clear and he has definitely grown in 2 weeks.

I truly mean this sincerely, but it is horrible that this trip has turned into so much of a vacation.  It is all out of our control as students as far as the timing of the trip and where VCOM will allow us to go but I definitely feel like we have been underutilized.  I guess I need to change my mindset and be thankful for the good we have done for the people we have gotten to see and not focus on the wealth of missed opportunities I feel like we have had.  We aren't sure what our plans will be for the rest of the week except we know there will be no clinic because of Holy Week. There are definitely several things we want to do but we want to be sure to respect the vacation time and religious desires of our driver and preceptors.

I hope everyone is doing well.  I can't deny that I am having a great time but I am very much looking forward to getting back to North Carolina.

 View of San Sal from Volcano on Sunday.  The haziness in the picture is actually the smog over the city.

We were able to pick out our apartment building from the Volcano.  There are three dark brick buildings in the bottom right corner.  Our apartment is the beige building at the 11 o'clock position of those buildings (the leftmost of the three buildings almost touches ours in the photo).

Panoramic view from the side of the volcano that faces away from the city on Sunday.

Our Group in Chalatenango on Monday. From L to R The local health promoter, Ryan, Tenke, Me and our driver Don Hernan. The little boy in the center is one of the patients we saw.

View on the drive up to Chalatenango.  It would be even more amazing to see this after the rainy season starts in a month or so and everything gets green. 

Catholic Church on the town square in Suchitoto.