Wednesday, February 20

Day 3 of construction, and we were right on schedule. The folks working on the floor finished up today, and just in time. Right after our afternoon snack, the heavens opened up with a deluge of rain. February is the dry season in El Salvador, and this amount of rain in the middle of the day was pretty unusual. At first we were able to keep working, but then it just got too hard to continue. The neighbor of the house, Anna Theresa, who had been allowing us to store tools and more at her house all week, very generously let us track mud and more into her house as we sheltered both our bags and our bodies on her porch until it stopped.

While the rain interrupted our full head of steam we had built up, it did give us a chance to see that the dirt floor was solid--even soaking wet it didn't move when people walked on it, and there weren't puddles from low spots. It seemed that the concrete and tile would be on firm ground!

The rain also came on an unfortunate day. Wednesday was a short day, because it is the day that HES schedules for a "cultural exchange." We stopped work early, put on our Thrivent Builds shirts, and left the site for a field trip.

First stop was at the house that I worked on in August. When I had last seen it, the walls were not complete, and it was all very not-finished. Because we were working in the same reason and then expressed an interest in seeing a finished Habitat house, the HES staff arranged for us to visit "my" old house to see it with the family moved in.

That was really neat for me. Not only to see what a complete, inhabited Habitat house looks like, but to have a chance to see the house that I helped build finished, painted, and with stuff in it! The lady of the family (Carmina, wife of Tito, who is the brother of Victor, the HES Sonsonate construction supervisor) was also kind enough to allow us to traipse through her house to get a look at how the lights and other interior fixtures work. That house is slightly larger than the one we were working on (3 bedrooms vs. our 2), but the concept was the same. Carlos had returned to be with us, and he took the time to answer some of our questions about how the houses are finished.

After the tour of the finished house, we went back into the small town of San Antonio del Monte, a little place just outside of the town of Sonsonate. San Antonio del Monte is the home of the restaurant that catered all of our lunches while we were working. The man who owns the place lived in the US for about 25 years, and then he and his wife moved back home so that she could open the restaurant.

So we visited the restaurant for a little taste of El Salvador--pupusas! These stuffed corn tortillas (usually filled with cheese and/or beans, though sometimes with chicken or veggies) are the traditional dish of El Salvador. Everywhere we went in the country, we saw these small pupuserias offering them up for sale. They are often served with shredded cabbage and a mild salsa, and are very filling; and this afternoon, we were offered all we could eat.

We stuffed our faces for a while, then went on a bit of a walkabout of San Antonio. About a block from the restaurant is a beautiful small church, built during colonial times (I'm guessing by the Spanish, though I can't confirm that). It has held up incredibly over the years, including through several earthquakes and the countless small tremors that often go through the country.

We were very fortunate to have Victor with us. He attends the San Antonio church, so he was able to give us the lowdown on the building and its various historic features. He was extremely proud of the church, and it gave him great pleasure to be able to show it off.

From there it was back in the van and "home" to the hotel!