Well, I´ve now finished my Spanish classes and it has helped in the ways that I hoped it would but I am still a very long way from fluency. On the upside though, I am now speaking a much higher quality of "Spanglish" :)
On another note, the school I took the classes through also does some community work in the local area... and in a "weak" moment I decided that I should do something to help.
I thought about it and felt that me doing a few days of manual labour was probably more of a burden than a help. I also figured that the best way to help was probably to let the local people help themselves. - They are the ones who live here and they know what is needed and who and how to be most effective with help.
So, I decided to sponsor a family on a permanent basis!
I let the locals decide which family that would be and how to spend the money (at this stage it is only $30 per month till I get back to work and can increase it). The family selected is a mother with four children (ages 2 - 10). The father died about two years ago but apparently he was a violent alcoholic and the family are "better-off" now than they were when he was around! The kids are learning Spanish in school but the mother only speaks the local native dialect, so I had to talk to her via an interpreter. They lived in a very basic adobe house with dirt floors that had three zones (not really separate rooms). One with a bed, one for cooking, and one for storage and everything else.
Apparently the really basic cost of living for this family is probably about $75 per month with a more comfortable life costing about $150-$200 per month (so what I am spending in three days, a family of five can make last for a month!)
I paid up front for one year so that they have some buffer for short term emergencies and so that I have time to get stable again and have a job before I need to pay again. I also said that if there are medical emergencies or other important or unplanned expenses that I can be called on.
... Hmmm, My trip may get rapidly shorter if I keep making spending decisions like this :))
