Day 3 - Corazon Imaculata de Maria

---

Today we went to another orphanage Immaculate Heart of Mary in Sonsonate about an hour outside of the city. The drivers here are totally crazy!! It is completely normal to pass on one lane roads so that you only miss hitting the oncoming cars by seconds. Also one of the highways we took today was 2 lanes in each direction but at one point the road was closed in the opposite direction so the cars going in that direction were using our left lane, but with NO warning! All of this is further complicated by having to avoid cars randomly stopped in the road and people changing lanes at terrifying speeds, not to mention the pedestrians who take their lives in their hands and cross anywhere they want. But anyway, this orphanage is very large and houses children of all ages most of whom have been taken away from their parents by the state or who have been abandoned. When we got there the older kids were at school so we started with the little kids. One little boy insisted on carrying all of the bags for us and was very sweet. Lots of colds and a few more kids with parasites and anemia. They brought us big greaen coconuts with straws so that we could drink the coconut water, which is very refreshing. One of the women who was chaperoning the kids is the lawyer for the home and deals with getting the kids into the home, visitation rights with parents, and the process of kids who are being adopted. Hopefully next time we go our spanish will be a little bit better because i'm sure her job must be very interesting. Dr. Iglesias also told us that many of the children are allowed to go home for the long school break in Dec and Jan and that when they come back many of the kids have to be treated for parasites because of the unclean living conditions at home. After lunch the older kids came back from school and a few of the younger girls were very excited to meet us. All of the children were very sweet and polite and mostly had patience with our limted spanish. On the car die home Dr Iglesias said "Let's make a deal, you guys correct my English and I will correct your Spanish" We obviously agreed, but since he speaks english fluently and our Spanish probably sounds a lot like Tarzan, he has way more correcting to do than we do. Plus, sometimes the mistakes he makes are so charming that we don't want to correct them.
Tonight we went to dinner at Kreef which is a restaurant and deli about 2 blocks away. We had delicious tortilla soup and tried a Salvadorean beer called suprema which was nice and light and comes in fancy bottles. Luckily this place also sells good coldcuts, meats, cheeses, and breads because the grocery store is kind of far away.

---