October 23rd, 2008: One day in my community

The following is a description of just one of the days I spend in my community while visiting:

Today was a busy day, in the people sense of the word, not necessarily in the doing sense of the world. The morning was spent playing cards with my host brothers and sisters and the neighborhood children. Every once in a while new kids would stop by to introduce themselves and ask me when I was going to give English classes (that's the second most common question they ask me, apart from if I'm Canadian or not—a lot of Canadian volunteers come for small amounts of time). I try to talk to each of these kids, get a little bit of a sense of who they are, and of course memorize their names. We chat about baseball, school, their community, and I sometimes attempt to explain to them where I come from, though it's difficult to do without a map.
For about an hour my host brother and walked around to see more of the community; we went and saw where the clinic was, though we couldn't go in because it was closed. Then we went up on a hill to visit a barrio I hadn't seen yet. This barrio is a little more secluded and muuch more quiet, which was one of the reasons a women there said I should live in that barrio.
After lunch we sat on the patio more. A guy that works for one of the churches documenting the “adopted children” from that church came over and showed me all of his pictures of Canadians that had come by. After that I got ready to go to my meeting with the “jovenes” (young people). We tried to publicize it as much as possible, but it began to rain just when the meeting was supposed to start. This postponed it a bit and meant that only about 12 kids came. Still, it was good for me to introduce myself to them and get to know a bit about them. I asked them what they liked about their community, many mentioned the sense of unity that existed. I also asked them what they would like to see in their community. Many wanted more sports activities, some mentioned that they would like to have more laboral opportunities, and others, of course, wanted English classes. After the meeting I went back to my house, then walked with my sister to see the local disco, where people were beginning to arrive for a night of dancing and drinking. We did not go in, but I was able to meet a couple more jovenes, they are of course the ones that I would not meet at the churches. I am beginning to realize that it is important that I go to different places in the community so that I meet people from different groups.
At seven I was picked up to go to church. Seeing as I didn't go to church much in the US, and I had never been to an Evengelical church service, I was excited to see how this one would turn out. This particular church service was going to be lead by the youth group, and supposedly they had a special activity planned. We arrived by flashlight, since the electricity still hadn't come back, and I sat down and began to watch. I hadn't really thought about it when I sat down, but by chance, I sat down on the women's side of the church, it was only later that I realized that the two sides were separated! At the beginning there were lots of people singing and praying, then the service began, with different people leading songs and speaking about the bible. Towards the end of the service, during one song all the kids got up and began to dance around the room. Because of their religion, evangelicals are not able to dance normal dances, however they are able to move their bodies when praising God, and this is just what they were doing; in two separate lines the boys and girls marched up the aisle of the church moving their bodies, and then marched around the church. They did this several times, and every time they passed me I was smiling, no matter what you believe in, it was obvious that these kids were enjoying themselves and doing something they believed in. The jovenes were never able to do the activity they had planned because the electricity didn't come back in time, and the church was only lit by candlelight, but all the same it was an interesting, enjoyable service. I still have two more Evangelical and one more Catholic church to visit!