WOW

Last week was awesome. It was completely different from the week before, unlike two weeks ago last week was busy and great. Last Monday during our English conversation with Galina one of the nurses who works in the hospital talked about health care in El Salvador. She said that everything here is free, that if a person goes to the hospital that all the services are free including medicine. Even the surgeries are free and that doctors here do not earn as much money but still they have to go to school and spend a lot of money and time to become a doctor but since the government is who pays them then they receive a small payment compare to what doctors earn in the States. I was really amazed just to think about that because here the government does not even help students financially to go to school and they have to work to get the money to pay for it, and after they graduate only few students get a job doing what they studied for and others just waste their time and end up working in the fields. Another thing that is going on here is that teachers are not getting pay, for the past three months they have not get their salaries and that is why classes are being cancelled at least once a week every single week. When we went to Los Almendros and we were waiting for the bus, I noticed that moms go pick up their kids in their bicycles. Since some students live a few kilometers away then is easier for them to go in a bike than to walk. It is amazing to see how students here fight to get an education while people who have the opportunity to go to school and have a decent education do not take advantage of that. In the United States students get transportation provided and everything and still they do not appreciate it. I know a few people who preferred to work and not study, while here they have more obstacles to go to school but students do their best to overcome them. Being here made me realized that I care about people (and animals) more than I imagined.  I always said that I dislikes animals and thought that I was selfish in a way, but I found out that is not true. Talking to Sister Peggy she made it clear that I do care about others because just by being here I am giving out myself to help others. Also, this week when I was helping Nicholas with the museum, a little boy fall and started to cry. I went and help him and he came back a few minutes later with a candy and told me “Gracias por ayudarme, eres muy generosa” which means thank for helping me, you are so generous. Those words melt my heart, I almost cried because just hearing a seven years old using that vocabulary to describe me was amazing. Another great that happen was with one of my English class, Keith who is another volunteer and he is an ESL teacher came to sit in my class; the next day Sister Peggy told me that he said I was born to be a teacher. It was a great compliment, but it confuses me because I have been closed-minded about being a teacher, always thinking is not a good thing for me and I am too bad for that; but Keith said that I was passionate, enthusiastic, and motivated which are good skills for a teacher. I know I do not need to have my life figured out yet, but I want to know what I will be doing in the future. I just hope everything I am doing right now helps me to find out what I am truly passionate it about.

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