A different Friday - by Eva

I’ve been waiting for this Friday since I knew he was coming. I wake up early in the morning trying so hard to be awake and start up my day, I have to be ready for work today, but I am so exited cause it is not a normal day for me, reason why I look for a nice dress and try to make myself look a little nicer. It feels like you are going to meet someone that you’ve been really looking forward to meet. So I make it to work and finally get there, start my day as usual but somehow is not the same, then my phone rings and I pick up: “Hey there!, can you hear me?” … my heart pumps up! That’s him…” Hey guess what? My flight was canceled and now I will be delayed, I will be there at 7pm your time…” And I think to my self: “Great! I really want him to be here and they cancel the flight! Any way, waiting for tonight is not a big deal” so I replay: “ Don’t worry I will be there!” and the conversation ends with the same words as usual: “ OK, love ya! Bye…”

The day seems to be slower than usual but it turned to be longer! Another call saying he will be arriving even later! I can’t believe it! Somehow it makes me think about the day we fist met, there was no longer day than that day, but tonight waiting at the airport for almost 3 hours is getting close.

Finally he made it! Looking at him walking through the gates carrying a lot of suitcases and a huge box made me think to my self: “He is definitely part of the family, right?” and the next step: hugs and kisses, welcomes and lots of love! I have him here…

Every time he comes is a really nice experience, no matter my responsibilities, the job I have to perform and the time I may not share with him, he is here! These days I wish I could be 4 persons at once, but all the effort is good while we have our singular chats at night, we just can’t go to sleep, we gotta talk! Sharing our life and feelings, always keeps us close, and that’s our mission in life: to be there for each other.

Traveling woes

Its been a busy week here in panama. I've working with my family help them setup up there computer net work. I finally have some free time so I though I would write about what had to be one of the worst traveling experiences in my 10 years of going to Central America.

It all started last Friday morning at 4am in Boston. Thats when I had to get up for my 6am flight. I'm not a big fan of early flights but it helps in case you miss a connection or something. Anyway I arrived in north Carolina around 8:30. On my way to my next flight I passed one of the monitors only to see that my flight was canceled.

Canceled? I've never had a canceled flight before. Epically ON THE DAY OF THE FLIGHT. When I get to the would be gate no one is there. I guess I was supposed to know what to do on my own. I found a age agent at another gate and she told me to go to the service desk.

The service desk was moving very slowly...of course. Thankfully when it was my turn the agent tells me they are putting me on a 7pm flight out of Miami. I thought "This isn't too bad . At a least I will be there tonight."

I arrived at Miami around 2:30 in the after noon. I signed up to use the internet and settled in for a 5 hour wait before my next flight. As 7 drew closer they made an announcement that there was something wrong with my plane and that we can not take it. Perfect. However they did have another plane and they assured us it would only be a 45 minuet delay.

We finally start boarding the plane AT 7:45. Around 8:10 we are all on and just sitting there The captain informs us that we are waiting for catering. This turns into another 20 min wait. Then it starts to rain and they close down a run way. We finally get out of there around 9.

Oh and the catering we were waiting all that time for, is just drinks. They didn't even feed us.

Once we land I get out only to find an hour and half line for customs line in front of me. Lucky they didn't lose my bags and I my sister was there waiting for me.

We finally get home around 2am my time. By this time I had been up for 22 hours.

I think the only good part of the day was the car ride to my sisters house. My niece and I were sitting in the back seat falling asleep on each other. I had this feeling like: This is the reason I put up with all the headaches of traveling. To be here in this car with my family. Somehow, in that moment, it all seamed worth it.

Off to Central America

I've been running around all day getting ready for my trip to Costa Rica and Panama. I leave tomorrow morning bright and early. This is going to be a business trip of sorts.

I'm working on a project with my family in Panama. My father Luis has an embroidery business that he has been running in Panama for almost 20 years now. (After he left the revolution in the mid 80s he moved to Panama to rebuild his life. I may add a post about this part of the story.)

I'm working to help them create an order tracking system. I would like this to be a pilot for a bigger project of creating open-sourced business resource for Central America. I'll probably put a post up about that when I have a better idea what it is going to be all about.

In the mean time I am planning to do some more video interviews with various family members. Keep an eye out for those sometime next week!

E-Book is done!!

Its been a while since my last post. Thats because I have been working hard on creating an e-book of our story. I took a bunch of our blog posts and put them in order to make the story easier to understand. I also added a couple family pictures.

I was supposed to have this out by the begging of the summer but it took longer than expected. Well thats life I guess. Anyway we hope you enjoy and we would love to hear your feedback.

Ana's Miracle is the story of how our family was separated by death and adoption during the Civil War in El Salvador and our journey to reunite. This e-book is a collection of blog posts written by the children of a family that was torn apart. We are writing this to tell our story, share our experiences and remember our mother who is the inspiration for this e-book and our blog.

Ana's Mircale E-Book (pdf 1.8MB) Right click "save as"

Reestablishing family ties - The Boston Globe

Here is the article that appeared in today's Boston Globe.

Reestablishing family ties - The Boston Globe: "Tears welled in Imelda Auron's eyes before she began speaking.

The 31-year-old West Roxbury resident was one of thousands of Salvadoran children separated from their families during the 1980s, while the country was engulfed in civil war.

She had never spoken publicly about her situation or her reunion with her birth family.

But yesterday, sitting next to two other Massachusetts residents who have had similar experiences, Auron finally felt comfortable enough to discuss the joy, heartache, and anxiety that marked her quest to find her family."

The article appeared in the City/Region section and had a couple of pictures that you can't see as part of the online version. One of those pictures features half of my ear. :)

I only just met Imelda the other day but I give her a lot of credit. I know it wasn't easier for her to talk about what happened to her family. She did great. I hope talking about it will help her hear and deal with some of the feelings surrounding the death of her parents.

My sister and I have gotten a lot of comments on our video that we made but what people may not realize is that it took many years of healing to be able to talk about everything so openly.

People may also not realize how lucky we are to live in a county that protects our freedom of speech. We may not always agree with our leaders and we may speak negatively about them but we don't have to worry about the government storming in to our homes and killing our loved ones.

I'm really happy we were able to get some press and I am very exited to work with everyone on building this network and getting our story out there.

E-Book and Press Conference

Over the past few weeks I have been working on putting together an ebook of our story. I am taking some of the posts from the blog and organizing then in chronological order to take it easier to follow. I hope to be done with this project very soon and I will be posting here for people to download. Be sure to check back!

On a slightly different note I took part in a press conference today. This press conference was setup up to announce the formation the Pro-Busqueda Network that I blogged about earlier. We had a lot of help from Physicians for Human Rights to organize the conference.

My self and two other people who had been separated from their families gave statements. We shared a little about our stories and what we are hoping to get out of the network.

Check tomorrows Boston Globe for coverage!

Derek's First Post

Okay, so Nelson/Roberto has been getting on my case to actually contribute here. I promised I would in January, but then I got into my last semester of college and things were crazy and hectic. But I digress. For those who don't know me, my name is Derek, and I am Nelson's brother. My biological parents are his adoptive parents. I was born on May 30, 1985, two years to the day after my parents took him from the orphanage in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

For this post I'll deal with the beginning, at least the beginning for me. Obviously I knew from early on that Nelson was 'different' and my parents explained to him and I as best they could about who he was and what they knew, which wasn't much. At that age, it doesn't really matter. Family is family. Nelson was and is my brother in every meaning of the word. He has always looked out for me and I knew that he cared. We were very close, even though he was four years older than me.

My brother has already written about the night when he found out that he had family looking for him, so I won't repeat the basic events. I don't remember any other time, before or since, that my parents sounded so serious when they mentioned that they needed to talk with us after dinner. Right now I'm sitting no more than thirty feet from where I was that night, and I can still remember the look on my their faces and on my brother's. Obviously, when you hear those words as a kid, you think about divorce and my parents were quick to explain that that was not the reason for this talk. In hindsight, Nelson is right to say that it didn't make sense, but as I will reiterate later, the first thoughts of a 12 year-old on anything are not always rational.
As they explained the situation, I probably must have turned as white as a sheet, which is impressive for me considering my normal pallor. My first thought was that now that Nelson's real family had found him, they would want him to live with them and I would never see him again. Looking back, it sounds silly, but I really felt scared for a bit that I would lose my brother forever.

Pretty soon, it will have been ten years since that night and instead of losing a brother, I've gained an entire second family. I can understand the apprehension that somebody might feel in this situation. I experienced a lot of new things and it wasn't always easy, but I'm glad now that it happened. Everyone has been so welcoming, from the very first letters that our parents read to us that night through all of the visits and the other correspondence I have never once felt like an outsider, always like a member of the family. That's enough for now, I'll relate some of my other thoughts later.