Llegé en El Salvador

¡Hola! Hello to all from El Salvador!
Where do I begin?
El Salvador is an amazingly beautiful country, it looks almost prehistoric from a bird´s eye view. Next time I can I´ll try to post pictures of the country, but I forgot my camera today. There are mountains galore, I can´t wait for the rainy season when apparently everything is brightly lush.
It´s beautiful no doubt, but man is it hot. The first few days it was pretty windy and felt cooler, but now the wind has stopped and I sweat quite a bit.
The first two days of orientation my group stayed in a hotel in San Vicente, a moderate sized city about 60 km outside of San Sal (yes that´s right, km). What a party that was. It was kind of like camp: the adult version. We´re all excited and energetic, but our hormones are ablaze. I get along with everyone, they´re all so nice and approachable, instant friendships were made. Just some of the coolest people you would ever want to meet.
And... some potential crushes, but I won´t delve into that just yet.
After a lot of lectures all about what the hell it is we´re getting into, and a Spanish Assessment interview (which I miraculously scored better on than I thought), we were assigned to different groups based on our projects and our Spanish adequacy. So for the past few days I´ve been living in a fairly rural pueblo with a host family, not far from San Vicente. I´m stayong here for 2 months to better my Spanish before I´m assigned to somewhere more or less on my own.
My family is incredibly hospitible, and very patient. My Señora, Marisol, loves to talk and doesn´t mind that I fumble over my words and understand only about 60% of what she says ( I find that a classic smile and nod will get you pretty far). She has 4 kids, three teenage boys (Esteban, Nardo, y Jose) and a nine year old girl (Jesica). She´s probably the most precious thing I´ve ever seen. They are all incredibly nice and accomodating... but then, so are most Salvadorans.
The people here are wonderful. Everyone who passes you in the street greets you, and most are excited and welcoming instead of dismissive to us gringos. I find my Spanish getting better everyday; understanding more about the people here is probably the best pay off for that.
There certainly have been a couple of adjustments: no running water for one (although bucket baths and latrines are not as bad as you think), and it´s unsafe for me to run, so I´ve been constricted to using my room, which is about the size of my old bathroom (although, you´d also be amazed at all the creative exercizes you can come up with in a space barely bigger than you are).
But I´m happy here. I know it´s early, but I feel great.
Last night I taught my hermanos how to play Egyptian War. I was a little nervous to explain it in Spanish, and that some of the rules might get lost in translation. But they were all very patient, and when they all caught on they loved it. I can´t tell you how happy this made me, I felt elated, as if I made a breakthrough. I know it´s early but something I feel that I´ve learned is this: A smile is a smile and a laugh is a laugh no matter where you are in the world.
Paz a todo. ¡La vida es aventura!