Good Apple

 This is my second time visiting El Salvador. If you haven’t yet, I would highly recommend coming someday. Since arriving to the country, lots of things have been very familiar, but there was still tons of newness to note. For example, the people. Mainly, there’s a lot of them on this team. There are 25 of us in total (including nine high school students who are all super cool), and we’re split into three sub-teams for building the houses.

  

  Today was our first build day. Each team built one house in the morning and one in the afternoon. I found this process to be very smooth. Everyone got involved and made sure they helped wherever there was a need for it. There weren’t any slackers. I was particularly proud of my sister, Eden, who dug lots of holes today. Let me tell you, that is not an easy accomplishment.

     There is so much more that I could write about today, but I will go into too much detail and then be sitting here for hours. So, I’ll just stick to one main highlight:

     Ansley and I met a little girl, Allison, on the first build site. Allison lives with her mom in another city, but she’s currently staying with her grandma and uncle—who were getting a house—while she’s on her vacation from school. I’m so glad she was there today because we had a blast. This girl might be the most smiley person I’ve ever met. She did seem pretty shy initially, but that smile was there just about the whole time. She eagerly picked out some elastic colours for Ansley to help her make bracelets out of (mostly rosa y some púrpura). I braided her hair. She coloured in a colouring book. She got to teach me some colours by pointing out different elastics and crayons and saying what colour it was in Spanish. She was very amused when my pronunciation was off and thrilled when I said something correctly.

     Later, Allison brought out a bag of toys; a baby doll, a couple Barbies, a keychain, some action figures, etc. All of which seemed inharmonious together. She was so excited to bring them out and show us. Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time to play with her toys because we had to go and talk with the family. Allison and I sat, squished together, on a hammock during the interview. Before we started, she got up to talk to her grandma, and then ran into the house they’d been staying in. A few seconds later, she emerged with a sneaky smile, carrying two small apples (manzanas), which she tried to conceal as she walked to the well and washed them off. She handed one to Ansley, and one to me. It was a touching gift. We were very grateful. She was beaming.

     After the interview, I rinsed my manzana with water and ate the whole thing, core and all. It was a good apple. 

Abby