Day 1 (although posted on Day 2)

Wow! I think that is the only way to encapsulate the tumult of feelings and sights and experiences of the last 24 hours (and its only been 24 hours!)

After about 2 hours of sleep the shuttle arrived and took us to the airport. We eventually boarded, what seemed to us to be a very small plane for such a long journey, and we were off to El Salvador.

Upon disembarking you are immediately overwhelmed by the heat, the smell, and the sounds of this country. Once we finally made it through customs (here's a tip - don't pack things that look like tool boxes) we made our way outside and found the smiling face of Tito waiting there for us.

The journey to Suchitoto took about 1.5 hours over winding roads and through some small towns. The view of the countryside was amazing. And the air conditioning in the van was even better as we were still trying to acclimatize ourselves to the 35 degree heat. :)

Once in Suchitoto we arrived at each of our hotels and agreed to meet up soon. This led to an interesting encounter with Sean's landlady. (Mike and I were standing outside of this building, each of us reluctant to walk into what looked like her living room to go and ask her if she knew a Sean. Mike was eventually the braver of the two of us and after some descriptive hand waving and one word sentences, we found him. We were later described by this same woman as 'una chica y dos gringos') Anyway, after this adventure the three of us made our way to the town square where we managed to successfully order tres cervezas y dos chalupas.

After a short while, Ed and his son, Trevor, found us and soon after that the rest of the gang from Casa es Artes and more had joined us. All told there were about 12 of us enjoying the cool night air, some cervezas and each others' company. What an incredible group of people - so warm and welcoming and so excited about this project!

We eventually had to break up the party to get some dinner and headed over to Gringo's (a fitting choice, I thought, for our first night here). The night was cool and lovely although the air in our hostel room was thick. This was soon dealt with by the fan we had packed (thanks for that tip Frank, Ted and Eric) and we quickly drifted off to sleep.