In 2009 I was privileged to take a trip to El Salvador with my family. I was there previously in 1998 and can barely remember anything about that trip when I was a child. The reason that I will be using this trip to El Salvador is because of the differences in culture between it and the United States. I really stuck out while visiting different places and was noticeably out of place. People would speak to me in English even though my roots are from El Salvador. It was extremely interesting looking at a completely different way of life. Checking out the places that my parents grew up in really changed the way I thought about my own life and how different it is to grow up in a completely different environment. This experience was unique and something I had never experienced before. I was able to learn a lot about my own culture. The most interesting thing to me was the way people approached me that were not my family. People didn’t expect me to speak Spanish and I felt as though I was being treated much differently then everyone else. From the way that I spoke to the way I looked, I completely stood out from the general crowd. Hopefully I will be able to travel there again in the near future.
An excellent subject. There is a famous — and very short! — book by a U.S. writer named Joan Didion called SALVADOR, published in 1983 (before you were born!). It describes her trip to Salvador, and a certain view of El Salvador that people in the U.S. had at the time. You might want to read it as a kind of context or background to your own journey between El Salvador and the U.S.