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Published: August 1st 2010
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Saturday, 31 July
We left the house at 3:30am and joined up with the other 29 Hillcrest Baptist Church missionaries. We had no problems with connections or seats all the way to El Salvador, although we did observe the usual "I can't fit my luggage in here" and "you're in the wrong seat". Getting thru customs and out with our luggage (2 LARGE suitcases each, plus carry-ons!) was a matter of organization and helpful customs folks. Upon leaving the customs area, we quickly saw a lady holding up the Moody Missions sign and figured that would be us. Sure enough, in no time at all, we were loaded up on two small buses and a pickup truck and headed towards our hotel in Santa Ana. My first impressions of El Salvador is that it looks and feels a lot like Guatemala, Honduras, and other Central American countries... with a twist... everything is in U.S. dollars! I havent' determined this yet for sure, but I'm begging to get the impression they can't or don't want to deal with any denomiation except one dollar bills. Nobody so far has had change for a five dollar bill and everything cost... one dollar!
Staging Area
Here we are loading up the pickup truck with our luggage while we wait for the minibuses. Since most of us went to bed late Friday and got up so early, many of the folks on our bus were asleep by the time we reached the hotel. I did notice along the way however that traffic can be a real nightmare. Any accident of any size seems to back things up for miles. We stopped along the way to eat lunch at the El Salvador version of fast food chain, Pollo Campero. A very slick McDonaldish place with chicken of course... and burgers.. and lasagna... and many other things. Strange! Soon after we reached our hotel, Hotel Tolteka Plaza, and put our stuff in our rooms, we were headed out to visit the refugee camp where we'd be spending most of the coming week. I should note here that the hotel was quite nice and the staff do try, but there are some real deficiences, such as readily available refreshments, towels, and Wi-Fi, which is why there may be no pics with this story. Only the lobby's computer seems to connect to the Wi-Fi. On the bright side though, we do have a 24-hour armed guard at the front door.
I felt so lost when we
Hotel Tolteka Plaza
Our home for the next week. got to the refugee camp... all those folks so obviously poor but friendly to all, and the every-growing crowd of little boys and girls that wanted to hug and talk to us all.
I'm sure I'll be more comfortable soon enough. They just want attention... and a bit of candy helps too! We finally dragged ourselves away to return to the hotel for an orientation meeting and dinner. Dinner was some very tasty pizza. Tomorrow we leave at 8am to get our feet wet, and in my case, start to build 10 houses for the refugee camp. I hope I can get photos up soon and also that my daily entries will be a bit more lively and interesting...its just so hard when you had 3 horus sleep before traveling so many hours!
I finally got connected with WiFi, so I'll upload a couple of pics from my camera...since the wife is already asleep.
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Silvia Storm
non-member comment
Hola!
¡Hola Manoli y JC! Gran blog y gracias por la actualización. Manténgalos viniendo. Tenga un gran tiempo ayudando las familias en El Salvador.