FCE Delegations to El Salvador
The FCE leads yearly cultural immersion trips to El Salvador for people of all ages and walks of life. Participants stay with host families in the Sister City community, peer into the crater of a volcano, hike through an ecological park that was strategically important in the war, meet with top politicians, visit the site of the 1989 Jesuit massacre, tour the art workshop of El Salvador's most famous artist, Fernando Llort, visit the Museum of Modern Art, pay respects at Archbishop Oscar Romero’s house and tomb, tour a fair trade organic coffee cooperative, eat lots of pupusas, host an authentic atolada, participate in many activities with our Sister City community and MUCH MORE!
If you are interested in participating in our next delegation, please contact us for more information. The trips typically last between 10 and 14 days and cost approximately $2300, which includes all expenses. See a sample itinerary below!
If you are interested in participating in our next delegation, please contact us for more information. The trips typically last between 10 and 14 days and cost approximately $2300, which includes all expenses. See a sample itinerary below!
Sample itinerary:
Day 1 – Travel day to San Salvador, arriving late afternoon. After settling into the Guest House, Hostal San Jose, we will visit an area of the capital city up on a hill with a lookout over the capital and eat a traditional Salvadoran dish of pupusas at El Mirador pupuseria. As we will be arriving right in the middle of national vacations, we will attend a cultural activity in the evening, such as a carnival or a musical performance.
Day 2 – We will wake up and have an authentic breakfast at the Guest House and then head to CIS (Center for Exchange & Solidarity) for an orientation to the current situation in El Salvador. The latter part of the morning will be divided between an ancient ruins site called the Joya de Ceren, which has been called the Pompeii of the Western Hemisphere, and hiking a volcano just outside of the capital. After lunch, we take a driving tour of San Salvador, with stops including the Salvadoran Museum of Modern Art, the Parque Cuscatlan Civil War Memorial, and the Arbol de Dios art gallery/workshop where we will have the opportunity to see the work of (and meet, if he is present!) a prominent and renowned Salvadoran artist, Fernando Llort, and his student apprentices. For dinner we will experience El Salvador’s famous and beloved Pollo Campero fried chicken.
Day 3 – After an early breakfast at the Guest House, we will depart for Grand Junction’s Sister City community of El Espino. The community will be awaiting us at the Casa Comunal (Community Center) to host the Bienvenida, or welcoming ceremony, with artistic performances by the students, words of welcome by community leaders and recipients of FCE scholarships, and a meal prepared by the women of the community to be shared by all. After lunch, we will distribute participants with their host families and allow everyone some time to get comfortable and begin to get to know each other. And to give our host families time to prepare dinner, we will visit the homes of families that received aid from the Sister City relationship after the 2009 Hurricane Ida. In the evening, participants will return to their host families to share a meal and spend the rest of the evening together.
Day 4 – Participants will share a traditional breakfast with their host families and then will be picked up to be taken to the school to begin the work project (which your registration fees help pay for!). The project will be decided by the school before we get there and the FCE will have already sent down funding, and we will work side-by-side with parents and students to get the day’s job done. After breaking for lunch, we will spend a class period with the high school English class playing interactive English games. We will wrap up the day relaxing and having fun with the community with a piñata celebration and bicycle race competition. And of course, dinner and down time with our host families!
Day 5 – Today affords us the opportunity to take an outing with leaders of the community, the scholarship students, and a member of each of our host families. We will first attend mass at the Sister Parish (for those that choose to) at 6am and eat pupusas at a local pupuseria. Then we will travel about an hour to Cinquera, a Christian Base Community that was hit hard by the civil war. We will meet with community elder Don Pablo Alvarenga, who will share with us his very powerful testimony about his experiences before, during and after the war, and then share lunch with him. Time and weather permitting, we will either take an ecological hike through the mountains of Cinquera, which still bear the scars of the civil war, or take a boat ride on Lake Suchitoto in a neighboring colonial town to learn about the local fishing economy and see the Island of the Birds. Before it grows dark, we will return home and spend the evening with our host families.
Day 6 – This day will allow for more time devoted to the work project at the school, and will conclude with a visit to the Our Lady of Fatima Shrine/Lake Ilopango Overlook in neighboring Cojutepeque. Depending on group interests, time and budget, this day can be spent instead on an outing to Nejapa, an anomaly in El Salvador because of its prospering economy, socially-conscious community projects (trash system, community center, youth activities, etc.) and the site of the Balls of Fire tradition, where participants would spend part of the day with community members and a representative from each of the host families at a sports complex that houses an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a children’s slide and pool area. The day will conclude with dinner with our host families.
Day 7 – This will be our final day with the community, and we will wrap up our stay with a despedida or good-bye ceremony hosted by the community. After some emotional parting words, participants will return to their host families’ homes to eat lunch, gather their things, and say their last goodbyes. From there we will return to the Guest House in San Salvador, go shopping at the military-barracks-turned-artisan-market that spans four city blocks, and then participate in a cooking lesson at the Guest House.
Day 8 – After a leisurely breakfast at the Guest House, we will visit the Hospital of the Divine Providence, where Oscar Romero lived and gave mass. One of the nuns will give us a tour of the chapel and his humble home. From there, we will tour the San Salvador Cathedral that houses Romero’s tomb. Then we will continue on to a Coffee Cooperative in Santiago Texacuangos and have a delicious home-cooked lunch with the members of the Cooperative. We will meet with Alicia Morales, former president and late wife of one of the founding members of the Cooperative and hear her remarkable story. Then we will be led on a tour of the coffee plantation and have the opportunity to purchase their organic fair trade coffee. After dinner at Las Fajitas Mexican Restaurant just a few yards from the Guest House, we will be given salsa lessons by dance instructor Raul Urrutia, who has appeared on El Salvador’s version of Dancing with the Stars. Depending on the group, this night can also include an outing to a discoteca.
Day 9 – For our last day in San Salvador, we will meet with high-ranking government officials from ARENA and the FMLN, and then sit down with Raul Moreno, Professor of Economics at the University of El Salvador, to discuss the interplay of transnational economic policies, the economic situation in El Salvador and Central America, and the role of first-world countries in the economies of developing and underdeveloped nations. After those meetings, we will have lunch on campus with Psychology Professor Patricia Perez-Bennett and take a tour of the Rose Garden Memorial at the University of Central America, the Jesuit University that was the site of tragic assassinations at the tail end of the war. After a final wrap-up and debriefing at the Photo Cafe, a coffee shop and photo gallery that has undertaken the task of archiving hundreds of thousands of photos from El Salvador’s history and that has new photo expositions on its walls every few months, we will pack our bags for the beach.
Day 10 – Day at the beach, then we head home tomorrow!
Day 2 – We will wake up and have an authentic breakfast at the Guest House and then head to CIS (Center for Exchange & Solidarity) for an orientation to the current situation in El Salvador. The latter part of the morning will be divided between an ancient ruins site called the Joya de Ceren, which has been called the Pompeii of the Western Hemisphere, and hiking a volcano just outside of the capital. After lunch, we take a driving tour of San Salvador, with stops including the Salvadoran Museum of Modern Art, the Parque Cuscatlan Civil War Memorial, and the Arbol de Dios art gallery/workshop where we will have the opportunity to see the work of (and meet, if he is present!) a prominent and renowned Salvadoran artist, Fernando Llort, and his student apprentices. For dinner we will experience El Salvador’s famous and beloved Pollo Campero fried chicken.
Day 3 – After an early breakfast at the Guest House, we will depart for Grand Junction’s Sister City community of El Espino. The community will be awaiting us at the Casa Comunal (Community Center) to host the Bienvenida, or welcoming ceremony, with artistic performances by the students, words of welcome by community leaders and recipients of FCE scholarships, and a meal prepared by the women of the community to be shared by all. After lunch, we will distribute participants with their host families and allow everyone some time to get comfortable and begin to get to know each other. And to give our host families time to prepare dinner, we will visit the homes of families that received aid from the Sister City relationship after the 2009 Hurricane Ida. In the evening, participants will return to their host families to share a meal and spend the rest of the evening together.
Day 4 – Participants will share a traditional breakfast with their host families and then will be picked up to be taken to the school to begin the work project (which your registration fees help pay for!). The project will be decided by the school before we get there and the FCE will have already sent down funding, and we will work side-by-side with parents and students to get the day’s job done. After breaking for lunch, we will spend a class period with the high school English class playing interactive English games. We will wrap up the day relaxing and having fun with the community with a piñata celebration and bicycle race competition. And of course, dinner and down time with our host families!
Day 5 – Today affords us the opportunity to take an outing with leaders of the community, the scholarship students, and a member of each of our host families. We will first attend mass at the Sister Parish (for those that choose to) at 6am and eat pupusas at a local pupuseria. Then we will travel about an hour to Cinquera, a Christian Base Community that was hit hard by the civil war. We will meet with community elder Don Pablo Alvarenga, who will share with us his very powerful testimony about his experiences before, during and after the war, and then share lunch with him. Time and weather permitting, we will either take an ecological hike through the mountains of Cinquera, which still bear the scars of the civil war, or take a boat ride on Lake Suchitoto in a neighboring colonial town to learn about the local fishing economy and see the Island of the Birds. Before it grows dark, we will return home and spend the evening with our host families.
Day 6 – This day will allow for more time devoted to the work project at the school, and will conclude with a visit to the Our Lady of Fatima Shrine/Lake Ilopango Overlook in neighboring Cojutepeque. Depending on group interests, time and budget, this day can be spent instead on an outing to Nejapa, an anomaly in El Salvador because of its prospering economy, socially-conscious community projects (trash system, community center, youth activities, etc.) and the site of the Balls of Fire tradition, where participants would spend part of the day with community members and a representative from each of the host families at a sports complex that houses an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a children’s slide and pool area. The day will conclude with dinner with our host families.
Day 7 – This will be our final day with the community, and we will wrap up our stay with a despedida or good-bye ceremony hosted by the community. After some emotional parting words, participants will return to their host families’ homes to eat lunch, gather their things, and say their last goodbyes. From there we will return to the Guest House in San Salvador, go shopping at the military-barracks-turned-artisan-market that spans four city blocks, and then participate in a cooking lesson at the Guest House.
Day 8 – After a leisurely breakfast at the Guest House, we will visit the Hospital of the Divine Providence, where Oscar Romero lived and gave mass. One of the nuns will give us a tour of the chapel and his humble home. From there, we will tour the San Salvador Cathedral that houses Romero’s tomb. Then we will continue on to a Coffee Cooperative in Santiago Texacuangos and have a delicious home-cooked lunch with the members of the Cooperative. We will meet with Alicia Morales, former president and late wife of one of the founding members of the Cooperative and hear her remarkable story. Then we will be led on a tour of the coffee plantation and have the opportunity to purchase their organic fair trade coffee. After dinner at Las Fajitas Mexican Restaurant just a few yards from the Guest House, we will be given salsa lessons by dance instructor Raul Urrutia, who has appeared on El Salvador’s version of Dancing with the Stars. Depending on the group, this night can also include an outing to a discoteca.
Day 9 – For our last day in San Salvador, we will meet with high-ranking government officials from ARENA and the FMLN, and then sit down with Raul Moreno, Professor of Economics at the University of El Salvador, to discuss the interplay of transnational economic policies, the economic situation in El Salvador and Central America, and the role of first-world countries in the economies of developing and underdeveloped nations. After those meetings, we will have lunch on campus with Psychology Professor Patricia Perez-Bennett and take a tour of the Rose Garden Memorial at the University of Central America, the Jesuit University that was the site of tragic assassinations at the tail end of the war. After a final wrap-up and debriefing at the Photo Cafe, a coffee shop and photo gallery that has undertaken the task of archiving hundreds of thousands of photos from El Salvador’s history and that has new photo expositions on its walls every few months, we will pack our bags for the beach.
Day 10 – Day at the beach, then we head home tomorrow!