Satisfactions

Today was full of satisfactions. First thing in the morning, last thing in the afternoon, I helped some of my favorite scholars get ready: Walther needed some extra cash for lab and materials fees, as he continues his 5-year program toward an engineering degree. Then, in the afternoon, I helped Rosita and her girls, Lupita and Edith, get backpacks and notebooks and colored pencils - they're in 4th and 5th grade.

In between those happy moments, I had the satisfaction of completely understanding a couple of relatively complicated phone calls from strangers - I must really be picking up my level of Spanish, though sometimes it seems as if I'll never master it - finding two challenging locations in the city, and picking up medications and eyeglasses for our clinics. Then I came home and made a stir-fry with roasted red pepper sauce, cooking to my pleasure without a recipe - and it turned out well.

None of this solves the deeper problems of the world or the terrible crises of El Salvador, crises of poverty and crime that I wrote about earlier this week. But it's good to have a day of minor satisfactions. Those, too, are real.