El Sitio & Los Tercios

On Friday, I went to El Sitio Cenicero with Celeste. We left at 6:20 am because we had to go with the teachers since we had to take a car and a boat to get to the school. In the school there was only three teachers, and the principal was one of the teachers. Each teacher had to teach three different grades and they all were in the same classroom. For example, one teacher taught first, second, and third grade in the same classroom; I think is really hard for a teacher to teach the same material to students of different ages because they all have different needs depending on their grade. Another interesting thing that I noticed in El Sitio was that the mothers of the students go to the school and make food for all the students. I talked to the mother who had to make the food on Friday to see how they organize who goes when; she told me that they have a committee that decides who goes each week; two mothers go in the morning and afternoon every day and they have a different menu for each day. Also, the number of students in each class was small especially in the afternoon — for three grades there are only about seventeen students, but because of the absences there were only like eleven students. Other than teach classes, Celeste and I also made pupusas. It was my first time making pupusas and it was really fun because I do not like to cook but helping the mothers to cook it was not bad.  Yesterday, we also went to Los Tercios, which are waterfalls here in Suchitoto. The guy who went with us, told us a little of the history of the waterfalls. He told us that there are few stories that say that in the past the indigenous people had  firewood and one of their God turned it into rocks as a punishment. Also, he explained that the name Los Tercios is because here in El Salvador when people make a bundle of firewood they call it “un tercio de leña” and because of the shape of the waterfalls, there are “tercios de leña”. Finally, I learned that Suchitoto means place of birds and flowers in Náhuat.

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