Wednesday, January 18th, 2012...7:14 pm

and i am back from el salvador!

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less than forty-eight hours ago my feet were in the pacific ocean and sitting in a hammock in el salvador. but i am back to bitterly cold new england and i have just survived (what could be) my last first day of school ever!

el salvador was incredible. there’s no real way to describe it. i could never do it justice if i were to even try. i can say it was life changing, or at least perspective altering.

since this was my first experience traveling to a third world country, i expected to learn and gain a wider global view. but in addition to what i witnessed while driving through downtown san salvador and the countryside, the conversations i had with salvadorans and the testimonies i heard about the war completely turned my world upside down. imagining your entire family begin murdered in front of them is not something anyone wants to envision, but to thousands of civil war survivors, this is their past. a past that is still very vivid today, especially in the  daily absence of all 75-100,000 they lost.

the day after i got home was the 20th anniversary of the peace accords that ended the war. i can only imagine the mix of joy and sadness that came with that date in el salvador. the country’s past is wrought with violence and repression, and unfortunately, the end of the war was not an escape as rival gangs quickly replaced the guerilla FMLN and the military government in battles for territory. i think, however, that as much as the violence and gruesome history affected me, the resilient joy of the salvadoran people with what awed me more. their ability to, as a community, overcome, accept the past and move forward is more inspiring than anything i have ever seen. what i learned from them in this respect is only something i can hope to incorporate in my life– the ability to accept and live, really live with pure joy, instead of getting stuck in the mundane negativities that flood most americans’ senses. as i try to fit myself back into my life, i continue to learn from el salvador even though i am back in america… and i have a feeling it still has a lot more to teach me.



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