the death of schafik handal

i just realized that i forgot to put the whole “these views aren’t the views of the peace corps” statement on my blog, and when i started writing this entry, i decided it was time since this is primarily a political entry. anyway....

i don’t know if this was covered at all in the u.s., but schafik handal, the leader of the FMLN party died on wednesday. he had a heart attack in the airport after his trip to bolivia to attend the inaugeration of evo morales. this is really important for el salvador because the FMLN (which stands for ¨Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional¨- sometimes simply referred to as ¨The Frente¨) is the only other serious party in opposition to ARENA, which is the conservative party here, and the party of the current president, and george bush ally, tony saca. anyway, schafik was described to us by one of the guys who gave us a little political lesson during training in san vicente, as being a man that would scare the bejesus out of anyone. i’m not sure if that’s because he was so radically left, or what. but that’s how i first heard him described. in weeks afterward, i read a lot about him in articles and in the newspapers and things like that, simply talking about him as the leader of the FMLN, and former presidential candidate (in 2004). there was article in the international version of newsweek magazine where venezuela’s hugo chavez named him, as well as fidel castro, and also evo morales (who just won the presidency – mostly with the help of the indigenous vote – in bolivia), as one of his closest friends. some say that was his last final ¨victory¨ - helping morales get elected. schafik was very anti-american and wanted to have weaker ties with the u.s.

i’ve heard many poor people here tell me stories of how ARENA, for the past 14 years has “rigged” the presidential elections. despite this being a democratic country, with the peace accords of 1992 stating that it should be, the only party that has held the presidency since 1992 is ARENA. i was talking to someone just the other day about how there are so many poor people here who can’t read or write, and when they go to vote, apparently, members of the ARENA party “help” them. or they give them money to vote for ARENA. in the last election they also ran on a platform that if the people voted for handal, many salvadorans in the u.s. would be deported (because of handal´s strong anti-americanism), and i´m sure this scared a lot of the poor people who have relatives in the u.s. and rely on their dollars they send back here. and obviously, ARENA is the party that implemented the change from the colon to the u.s. dollar as the national currency. my mom in molineros talked to me one night about this and she said that change was the death to any opportunity for the poor people here to make any kind of good living for themselves. she said in the past, for example, something that used to cost one colon, now costs one dollar......which is way more than one colon used to be. it just seems so ridiculous in more ways than one that a country has another country’s currency as their national currency. anyway, ARENA was responsible for that and i don’t know how they keep winning the presidency because the majority of this country is poor and just that one thing – the change from the colon to the dollar – had to effect every single one of those poor people, and not in a good way. obviously, i´m not an economist and i don´t know the ins and outs of why these things happen. all i know is what i´ve heard from the people who struggle to make it every day here. that´s all i´m going on.

we as peace corps volunteers are absolutely not, under any circumstances, allowed to participate in anything of a political nature here. i believe this is mostly for our safety – latin american countries and political involvement haven’t had a good past. we aren’t allowed to attend political rallies, or have political signs or whatever near us, we can’t take donations for projects (such as trash cans in a canton) from a political party – well we can take the donations, but we can’t let them paint their political insignia on them or anything..... basically, we can’t have anything to do with the politics here. we can discuss it with people and if we want, voice our opinions, but it’s pretty much not something you want to do if you don’t want to alienate the other half of the people who think opposite of you. but basically, everyone who knows me well knows that if i were a salvadoran and i had the chance, i’d most likely have an FMLN flag waving high on my house and i’d definitely be out helping the people who can’t read or write understand what’s going on when they go vote.

the death of schafik handal, however, might be a good thing (not for schafik of course, i’m not saying that his dying was good). what i mean is that he was really radically left and for some people that was too much. i talked to my family in molineros about that this weekend and ana told me that she didn’t like schafik handal - because of his part as a guerilla during the war - but did like most of the ideas of the FMLN. FMLN was the party who fought for the people and against ARENA and the military back during the civil war - but they were also a ¨guerilla¨ party, and this alienates some people from voting for them now. but after the peace accords were signed in 1992, the FMLN went from being a guerilla party to an official political one. so it’s quite possible that there are a lot more people like her that will be more willing to vote FMLN now because schafik isn’t the leader of the party. maybe it won´t be good. maybe the left-wing revolutionary party will die out. i really don´t know.

his death also came at a very awkward time. the mayoral elections are in march, and are HUGE here. they are held every three years and every three years, mayors for all the cities, pueblos, etc. are elected. the political campaigning here is crazy!!!! but it’s not annoying like in the states with the commercials and all that. here, they just paint everything. and i mean EVERYTHING. it’s so crazy. the FMLN is basically red/white. ARENA is red/white/blue. there is another party, the PDC, which uses green paint and it’s symbol is the jesus fish. there are more parties, and the history of these parties is really confusing. some blended into others, some fail to exist anymore, some are waiting for the right time to make an official debut. the way the government is divided up is equally confusing. i know this is a really lame explanation of the politics here, but i had wanted to write about this for a while, and then on wednesday schafik croaked. oh, and today, i accidentally “attended” his funeral. well, not exactly. i was coming back from molineros and had to go from terminal oriente to terminal occidente and it just so happened that my bus between these terminals passed through clusters and clusters of people decked out in their very best red/white/star t-shirts, waving flags, and anything else red, for the burial of schafik in the public cemetery in san salvador. i had no idea this would happen when i made plans to go to molineros...i made those plans last weekend, before schafik died. and the only reason i was returning today (sunday), instead of monday, is because i was going to the fiesta de las patronales in sonsonate. so there.

if you are at all interested in reading...or if you can´t read spanish, looking at pictures.....la prensa grafica (one of the two major newspapers here, and obviously the more left of the two) has a pretty good layout of photos and articles on their website. http://www.laprensagrafica.com/especiales/2006/schafikhandal/

not quite missing the states, but there is this one thing....

well, i’ve been reminded of one thing i miss terribly about the great north. for the past couple of weeks i’ve been listening to nothing but pearl jam, and since my friend nick sent me copies of a few shows from their canadian tour way back when, i’ve had quite the pearl jam fiesta going on here, because i’m not getting burned out on any one album or show of theirs. i swear, i think i brought every pearl jam disc that i own with me (could be why my duffel bags were so heavy), and with the added cache of what nick sent, i’m good to go! anyway, yes, i miss pearl jam, but actually, they were somewhere in the vicinity of me in december, doing their latin american tour....yeah, it’s over, but whatever....the important thing is that they thought it was best to follow me down here to latin america, if only for a couple of months. i’m sure stone gossard was the one who suggested this to the rest of the band. and i’m sure once the band heard about how i was going on this super long journey to help the world understand that the united states isn’t ALL bad, they immediately cancelled all their plans and came up with the whole brilliant latin american tour plan. either that, or they just wanted to go to latin america because it’s really cool here and they could make some more $$$ by playing to sold out crowds. but i’d like to believe the first scenario, as crazy as it is.

in any event, last night, i was listening to their halifax, novia scotia show and eddie’s talking about this canadian beer that he wants to try because everyone’s telling him to try it....it’s called “keith’s” i don’t know the beer, but i think that’s what it’s called....just not sure on the spelling. anyway, he’s going on and on about it.....and then he says something like “uh, what period is it?” “i don’t know, bring me another keith’s.” you know, mocking hockey players and all that. and i realized that i haven’t seen a friggin’ NHL hockey game in forever....i left right before the season started, after being DENIED for a whole year because of that asinine lockout or whatever it is they officially called it. and hockey really isn’t something that’s covered a whole lot – well, NEVER, - here. i can tell you the soccer scores of every team known to man, but unless i go to the internet place and do all kinds of searches left and right for hockey news, i get nothin’ down here. other than the couple of e-mails from my friend bryan about the status of the red wings, i’ve heard basically nothing about hockey. (FYI – it may seem like i have a ton of time on the ‘net because my blog entries are always of war and peace length, but actually what i do is type up this shit on my laptop when i’m trying to figure out what to do between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. and then i just save it on a flashdrive and then copy/paste it! i feel like i’m in the “age of technology peace corps.” but i can’t help it....i’m in the peace corps in the year 2005. it’s just not the same as the peace corps in the 70’s, which i would have probably LOVED.

one thing i don’t have is an ipod [which a ton of volunteers have] and i don’t have a television. or a lot of other things, like an iron - which should be designated the national household appliance here, even if the irons aren´t actually electric. everything gets ironed here, i’m not even kidding. most of the time, this makes me feel like a hobo because i’m usually wearing a t-shirt that i’ve already worn once before without washing. pants? forget about it. i could go weeks without washing pants. why would i do something like that, you ask? because i really, really hate washing clothes by hand in the lavadora/pila. i would gladly go back to having a latrine if i just had a washing machine. adding to the difficulty of washing clothes by hand is the fact that i simply cannot do it right, let alone with any kind of ease. i look like an asshole, pretending i actually know what i’m doing when i’m standing there in front of the pila with a bar of laundry soap and a brush. have any of you ever tried to rinse jeans of all their soap using a guacal of water over and over again? seriously.....it has to be one of the worst tasks i’ve ever had to do. i sometimes think nina teresita is going to reprimand me because there have been times where i’ve seriously lowered the level of the water in the pila, and i still haven’t gotten all the soap out of ONE PAIR of jeans. the only good part about washing clothes by hand is it gives me some time (lots of time) to just think about things....the fact that i’m in el salvador, getting sunburned almost every day, eating some of the best food i’ve ever had, meeting really cool people, learning another language, living a lot more simply than i could have ever imagined, getting to hike all the time, and basically just doing everything i’ve wanted to do for a really long time. so add “washing machine” to the list of things i don’t have.

i also don’t have a car. nor have i driven one in almost 5 months. crazy. i hope my dad doesn’t junk my car back home just because i have kerry/edwards and grateful dead stickers on it. my car rocks! but the more and more i am here, the more and more i want a pickup.

one piece of technology that i cringed when i had to buy it....a cell phone. i’ve never owned a cell phone in my life, and here i HAD [read HAD] to get one......our director made us get them because we wouldn’t have landlines and because this country is so prone to natural disasters [remember the hurricane, volcano, earthquake trifecta earlier in september?] we are required to have them in order to be contacted in times of these emergencies. so for all y’all who are laughing out of your seats right now because i actually own a cell phone, and it took me going into the friggin’ PEACE CORPS to get it.......shut it.)

most of the reason i wanted to bring a laptop is because i wanted to take tons of pictures and with film it’s hard because you can’t really get it developed here because the developing system here sucks...and to cart around crazy amounts of film for two years and then have to take it all back to the states is ridiculous. so i went the digital route (yes, more technology), but you can only fit so many pics on a digital card, so the computer is the best option because then i can download my pictures from the card onto the computer. and it has worked out for me fantastically! and i can post pics of all my stuff on the blog, which is cool. so all in all, yeah, it may seem like everything’s way more technological now, but in all honesty, i have to admit, i like being able to take all these damn pictures and document everything....because yes, while i can write about this stuff and remember it, it’s still pretty awesome to have a photograph. plus – what’s really fun is documenting drunken gringo outings where people make asses out of themselves and then there are photos of those good times.

although, i read something in this book shortly before coming here, which has kept me pretty level-headed during times when my camera decides not to work (my previous digital camera), leaving me without a camera at all....or the batteries run out or i fill up the card. this woman was talking about how she was traveling somewhere in southeast asia and had to take this little plane into an area where it wasn’t really that safe and the plane was dangerous – and there were all these things that made the trip pretty unsafe. it wasn’t something she could do over and over again. anyway, the plane touched down in this remote jungle area and she walked around a while, looking for a way to get to this secret area that was hard to get to, but supposed to be one of the most beautiful places ever. she found this old man from the village that told her he could take her in his raft/boat and she was all excited. but then she realized she didn’t have film, or something was wrong with her camera - i can’t remember what the problem was - but in any event, her camera was useless and she was so far out of the way and had gone through all this trouble to get there, there was no way she could get more film or batteries or whatever it was. in other words, she wouldn’t be able to take any pictures of this cool spot that she had wanted to visit. and she was disappointed and told the old man that it wouldn’t be worth it because of her camera problem. and the guy was like “what are you talking about, you still have your eyes!” that story made me really emotional!!! but it’s totally true....regardless of how many photos i take, nothing really compares to actually being here and seeing whatever it is i’m seeing. i mean, even on my trips to the lagunas, or on any of the hikes – sure i have all these pictures of these flowers and the lagunas and me standing by some coffee trees or whatever – but dudes, you should see these friggin’ awesome butterflies that are all over the place up in the cerros....on the way up, at the top, on the way down. there are ones that are green and black striped, and other ones that are red, yellow and black, others are this bright flourescent blue – like these amazing bright colors that you wouldn’t even believe existed, let alone on these tiny creatures. they just won’t sit on a branch or a flower or anything....they just keep flying around, so i can never get a picture of any of them. but who cares because i actually get to see them, right? i’m not even going to get into the orchids, because they are just so amazing. and even taking pictures of people....it’s like yeah, i have pictures of what they look like but man, you cannot capture their personalities or how funny they are or how nice they are. you only get that by actually talking to them. the kids at the school....they are so awesome!

it’s like in the end, photography kind of is a big giant joke you’re playing on everyone you show your pictures to. sure, i can tell you all “this here’s a view of volcan izalco” but nothing compares to riding the bus from san salvador to sonsonate and seeing it’s size looming on the right side of the bus, knowing that i’m on my way back to apaneca....knowing that volcan izalco, and volcan santa ana are kind of the barrier between the hot, humid south and the awesome climate of apaneca and juaya and san jorge and once i get past volcan izalco, i’ll be able to breathe again..... i could take photos of all this food i’m consuming but man, nothing would ever compare to seeing nina flor come to the school and shouting up to me where i’m working in the huertos “laura, comida!” and then seeing what she made for us that day and it’s something totally awesome like chimol, arroz, pollo and tortillas, with aguacate. photography is awesome, but it’s also deceiving. so in any event, i love having my camera, and my computer to put the pictures on....but i suppose if either of them broke i’d still have a great time here.

so anyway, what i was trying to say is this: i miss hockey!!!

all that being said about photos, i have a photo bonanza below......miscellaneous stuff like kids from school, orchids and other flowers, and cerro apaneca which i hiked this very morning! check ‘em out!!!!

so antonio and i were walking up the trail on cerro apaneca (aka ¨chichastepec¨) and these horses came out of nowhere and started galloping down the trail around us. it was super weird!!!



view of apaneca from the top of cerro apaneca

view of san jorge (left) and ataco (upper center) from the trail going down cerro apaneca

border="0" /> same photo that i labeled so you can see where stuff is

from the top of cerro apaneca, you can see the ocean!


two kids from school - kevin and his sister wendy

everh

nehemias and maria leticia

some of the kids in the first and second grade

me with my new machete!

some of the orchids nina teresita has growing at the hostal

more of nina teresita´s orchids

tree in cerro apaneca....the dark spots on the branches are all orchids that haven´t bloomed yet....the trees in this area are covered with these...even the pine trees!

laguna las ninfas

last weekend i finally hiked laguna las ninfas which was amazing. there is this huge bosque surrounding the actual laguna that has the biggest trees i´ve seen yet. we started out pretty early, and i was really unhappy because the wind was fierce. it had almost kept me up all night, and i was just coming off a small cold, so the wind was not making me happy at all. but once we got into the actual forest it was ok. there really isn´t much to the laguna itself, most of it is obscured by the many plants growing in the middle of it. but the views from the trail up to the laguna were fantastic. because laguna las ninfas is one of the communities that antonio works with, we stopped at a bunch of houses along the way so he could check on them. basically his job entails going to a few select houses in one of the five communities he is assigned to and he checks on the kids to make sure they´re healthy and then looks at their medical charts. then he talks to the moms about nutrition and stuff like that. so anyway, we hiked through the forest and i´m telling you, it was unbelievable. nearly every tree had orchids growing on the branches. there were signs of earthquakes of the past - humungous boulders that had fallen down the side of the mountain and were now being held up by one single strong tree. just amazing. i think by the end of the hike antonio thought i was officially crazy because i just kept wanting to look at the trees...they were just so friggin´ cool. i kept saying ¨trees are our friends!!!!¨ and he´d just laugh like i was some crazy person.

later, as the trail ended and merged into a small ¨road¨ we heard the sound of what we thought was a car or something coming up the road. it turned out to be one of those all-terrain vehicles and the dude driving it was the owner of the land on that side of the mountain. he stopped the atv and introduced himself and we talked with him for a bit. he started speaking to me in english and explained that he was married to a german woman and his mom is from somewhere in the states which is why he could speak english. after he left, antonio told me that the woman he married has tons of money and he´s basically a kept man. they both live in this huge house on the top of the mountain, and it just so happened that one of the families that antonio checks on as part of his work is the family that takes care of the house and land of this rich couple. they live in their own separate house on the property as well. which is why the guy wasn´t pissed that we were traipsing on his property when he met up with us. so we hiked up to this dude´s house and before we got to the gate, eight gigantor german shepherds came out of nowhere on the other side and were barking up a storm. the man and woman who care for the big house came to greet us and let us in and we hung out there for a while. the house that the rich couple owns is crazy in comparison to the normal houses here. it´s just so odd to me to see something that ornate and excessive in the middle of a country where 85% of the people can´t even afford a proper roof on their house. it was a beautiful house - all stone - but i was kind of irritated by the whole thing. we had a great time hanging out with the family that takes care of the land though. their kids were awesome and they fed us and it was really nice. the views from their house were unreal. you could see juayua, ataco, apaneca, ahuachapan, guatemala....all in this line and it was just really cool to see everything laid out.

we ended up going down to this other house halfway down the cerro where some other rich woman lived. i swear, antonio knows everyone. we talked to the gardner and he let us onto the grounds where we had the most awesome view of ahuachapan. he told me the names of some more of the flowers and plants. we could see the huge house where we had just been which was kind of cool as well.

after we left there, we hiked down through the coffee forest and around the cerro. unbeknownst to me, we ended up hiking about five cerros, but i had no sense of direction and finally i asked antonio irritatnigly ¨donde vamos!?¨ he told me that we were taking a ¨shortcut¨ up and down the cerros because the road was too long. he apparently wanted to go over to san ramoncito because he needed to visit another family there....some girl of one of the families had an eye infection of some sort he had to look at. so i was less irritated when i found out why we were going all the way over to san ramoncito - which is seriously on the other side of a string of cerros surrounding juayua, apaneca and ataco.

we finally made it and wound up at the house of this really cool couple who were just amazed that i was from the states. the woman especially was really preoccupied with the fact that i was this far away from my family in the states and i must just be soooooo sad. i tried to explain how it´s different and my parents understand and all this, but she kept bringing it up. anyway, they wanted to know if i wanted to see this ¨tree¨ house down the road, which had amazing views of guatemala and ahuachapan. so we went over there and the guy who owns the place was fawning all over me. it was so crazy! we all went up into this house and it was soooo friggin´ windy and they were all watching me look through these binoculars. then the guy gets out this chair and tells me to sit down and i´m like ¨nobody else wants to sit down?¨ and everyone else is like ¨no, no....go ahead.¨ it was SO embarassing. then i could have killed antonio because he´s like ¨do you want to eat lunch here?¨ and i´m thinking - why is he asking me this in front of everyone??? because i didn´t know if they had invited us, or if antonio was just suggesting it. so i said yeah, because it´s rude to decline an invitation to eat here, and so we all climbed back down from the house and went back up to the other house and sat around. the first couple went back to their house so the mom could cook the lunch and i felt really bad. and stupid. because that left me, antonio, the guy who owned the tree house and his son. and we were sitting in this room and the guy kept asking me all these questions - one after the other about the states, about my family, my life, everything. and it was basically ¨the laura show.¨

later we sat down to eat outside and the one guy kept trying to get me to eat sardines....and i couldn´t do it. i´ve eaten just about everything here - no questions asked. but i couldn´t pull the trigger on the sardines. i don´t like fish anyway, and sardines in el salvador is not something i even wanted to sample. then all of a sudden i hear this low growl and i turn around and there is this tree stump that is sitting on the railing of the porch and there´s this chicken in there that apparently didn´t like that i had been sitting so close. everyone thought this was the funniest thing ever. i just rolled my eyes and ate my lunch.

later, the guy told me to come out back and so we all went out there and he wanted to show me these crazy white chickens that he had. they were indeed crazy. then i understood something he was telling me earlier. he had told me that i should come back another time and he would make ¨pollo indio.¨ and i´m thinking ¨what the hell is that? chicken from india????¨ then after i saw these crazy white chickens i realized that he was talking about these chickens and the reason he was calling the dish ¨pollo indio¨ is because there is this chicken flavor stuff that everyone puts in soups or on fried chicken or whatever here and the brand is ¨pollo indio.¨ and the chicken on all the advertising signs is white and looks crazy like the chickens this dude had. anyway.....

needless to say, at the end of the day i was dog tired. at one point, antonio and i were at the edge of apaneca and he pointed to the string of cerros behind us and was like ¨we climbed from there to there...¨ i was amazed. i am getting tons of hiking in here, which is awesome!!

yesterday at the school, i was yawning and telling the teachers i was really tired and next thing i know mirna is telling me to go into one of the classrooms. she had arranged the desks so that she, elba and i could take a ¨siesta.¨ i was laughing at the thought of crawling up on these desks and actually napping, but they were dead serious. elba turned on the television and they were like ¨laura, alli...¨ pointing to a little made up bed of desks on the other side of the room. they had instructed bessy to notify us if anyone came to the school - because bessy had just gotten there that afternoon. i´m not even kidding. so we all took siestas and then all the sudden bessy goes ¨gente viniendo!¨ and we three shot up and elba was like ¨el televisor!¨ so i quick shut it off and then we were all like ¨buenas tardes!¨ to this woman who had come to get the list of school stuff that the kids need for next week. later that day elba told me that the teachers were going to go to the casas in the town that had kids in the school. and they wanted me to go to. so i thought ¨ok, no big deal.¨ so around 4:00 we left the school and went to a few houses, then the teachers started talking about some other houses on the other side of the forest and next thing i know were hiking through the coffee forest on the other side of the school. two hours later we returned and we had visited a total of 3 houses in the bosque. it was sad, really, because of the three houses we visited, only one was sure the kids were going to go to school on monday. in one of the others, they were soooo poor....i felt so bad for the kids. and the grandma was making all these excuses why the kids couldn´t go to school. anyway.....i think we´re going to do that again in another location on monday after school´s over.

in any event....this weekend it´s fiesta time in juayua. i´m excited. i looooove juayua. i can´t wait to eat all kinds of food!!!!!!

adios for now!

(with the pictures, i think you can click on them and they will open in another window and you can make them bigger so you can actually see them better.....not sure, but worth a try!)

view of apaneca from the trail on the way up to laguna las ninfas

i was so sad when i saw this huge, old tree had fallen on the trail!!!

view of volcan izalco (center) and volcan santa ana (with the smoke/clouds on the top)...this is on the trail up to laguna las ninfas

me standing almost INSIDE the trunk of this awesome tree....(yes, i´m wearing a fleece...in el salvador).

view of the coffee forests on cerro las ninfas...at the very top you can see the house of the rich couple whose caretakers we visited. this is a view from some other rich woman´s grounds....

view of volcano in guatemala from cerro las ninfas....the city of ahuachapan is just to the left of the photo.

bamboo forest on trail between cerros

view of center patio of my school.......centro escolar, caserio san jorge!!!

si, yo estoy soltera

the word around san jorge is that i´m not married and have no boyfriend. this is important to the people of my town. more than anything else. little kids ask me if i´m married. old women ask me if i´m married. every man wants to know if i´m married. i´m surprised the dogs and chickens and cows haven´t figured out a way to ask me if i´m ¨soltera.¨ i went to a fiesta on sunday in san jorge that was thrown by this rich woman – nina claudia – who is from san salvador and donated the money for the school in san jorge. each year she throws this ¨fiesta para los ninos¨ at the beginning of the school year where the kids get to play games, eat cake, and eat massive amounts of candy from the piñatas that nina claudia brings. nina claudia is hilarious. my counterpart – elba (who is one of three teachers at the school, and also its principal) told me to come around 9:30 or 10:00 on sunday for the fiesta, and when i arrived, everyone was hanging out at the school waiting for the grand arrival of nina claudia. when she finally did arrive, about an hour later, she had a friggin´ entourage, complete with, i´m not kidding you, a dj. at the end of the fiesta, nina claudia started asking me questions about myself in english. and you guessed it – one of her first questions was ¨are you married?¨ when i told her no, she told me – no, she promised me - that she was going to find me a salvadoran guy to marry so i could stay there forever. i just laughed and she thanked me for my work that i was doing in the community and all that. then later, when she was leaving and saying goodbye, she came up to me and goes ¨believe me, that was not a promise that is going to go unfulfilled!¨ i was really embarrassed because, of course, everyone else is laughing and agreeing. seriously??? this is my life here….nonstop questions about my marital/boyfriend status. in fact, not only does everyone ask me about this when i meet them, they also talk about it behind my back. elba told me today that some of the moms at the fiesta asked her if i what my deal was regarding the husband/boyfriend thing. ugh!

i had a great time at the fiesta though….i met a ton more people and the best part was getting to finally meet all of the kids from the school. they are all so awesome and i´m really excited to actually start working with them. another highpoint of the fiesta was that i was talking to this woman that i had met at one of the meetings that antonio took me to, and she was asking me if i found a house in san jorge yet. i told her i hadn´t and she started telling me about this house that she knew was for rent. i didn´t want to get my hopes up because i´ve had a couple different people tell me the same thing – but then found out that the houses didn´t have water or electricity and our director wants us to have houses that have at least one or the other. so anyways, this woman – her name is kenia – told me that the owner lives in apaneca and she was going to try and talk to him the following day. i have to admit i was a little excited because i really want a house now that school is starting. plus i´ve met more of the farmers here and i really need to be in town in order to try and get more information from them about the adesco and all that.

this morning i got off the microbus at the far end of san jorge and started walking up the road and i ran into kenia and she´s pointing to the side of the street and goes ¨that´s the house!¨ so we looked at the outside and it looks fine and she says it has a bathroom (no latrine!) and a pila/lavadora and so now i´m even more anxious about it. so basically, i´ve just got to wait until she talks to this guy and then if he says he wants to rent it, then i have to see the inside. and if i like it, then i have to get approval from the peace corps to move there. who knows, though. things here have an amazing way of working themselves out. but they also have an amazing way of falling through. so while i´m excited by the prospect of finding a house in san jorge, i´m also reminding myself that i´m content in apaneca for now and if i don´t get this house, there will probably be another one soon!

the good news is, i´m busy! i have official places i have to be!! i´ve been working at the school since last week, helping the teachers (elba, bessy and mirna) get ready and trying to get the huertos ready in the plot of land above the school. i´m also going to see how much abono organico the huertos are going to need so that i can start some wormboxes...but i´ll probably wait to do that when school starts so the kids can help. the first day of school is the 16th, but sadly, most of the kids won´t be there because they´re out helping cut coffee. that´s how important education is down here. it´s so frustrating. and when i say i´ve been ¨working¨ at the school - don´t picture the three teachers and i frantically trying to get things done before monday. here´s a run-down of what we did today:

i got to the school around 8:00 and only elba and bessy were there. we chit-chatted for a while, and started cleaning one of the classrooms. then we sat down outside in the sun - it´s been amazingly warm here all weekend - and chit-chatted some more. then elba decided we should go up to one of the houses at the top of the street where the grandfather had died last week. they were having the final day of the ¨tierra¨ and doing hail marys (no, people weren´t passing footballs, they were saying prayers....) in the main room of the house, around the casket during the morning. so we went up there and since i don´t know how to do hail marys in spanish, i kind of just stood in the doorway and looked around at stuff. then elba decided to leave, so bessy and i followed, and mirna was just getting there, so she stayed for a bit.

elba, bessy and i stood outside on the street and chatted with some other woman who came up and we talked about how sometimes people die, but still have reflexes and move after dying. i´m not kidding you - this conversation lasted a good half hour. then mirna joined us and we talked about the family of the man who died.

about another half hour later, everyone started coming out of the house and then they loaded the casket on the back of this pickup truck and put all the flowers around it. so we decided to follow the funeral procession (when i say ¨we¨ decided, i really mean the rest of the teachers...i just go along with what they´re doing). so we walked out of san jorge and onto the main road, but since the cemetary is in ataco, we decided to turn around and walk back to san jorge. it was about 10:30 at this point.

on the way back up the street to the school, we stopped at the molino and told the woman there - nina flor - that we wanted some food, so we put in our ¨orders.¨ we walked back to the school and i helped bessy clean her classroom for a little bit. a little while later, nina flor delivered the food. i thought when we stopped there, we were telling her what we wanted for lunch...but it turns out it was just a snack. so we stopped everything we were doing to eat our plates of frijoles, huevos, tortillas and queso. mmmm.

around noon, elba busts out this television and we watched the news and a telenovela. ????? then nina flor came back with lunch at around 1:00. bessy left, so mirna, elba and i worked on some bulletin boards for a couple hours.

at 3:00, we sat around chatting again, and then elba got out some chocolates she had and we sat there eating them. around 4:00, we cleaned up from the bulletin board stuff and then packed up and left.

so when i say we ¨worked,¨ that´s what i´m talking about.

adios for now!

bessy, mirna and elba at the fiesta

the girls playing musical chairs (at the fiesta)

breaking the pinata

nina claudi and the DJ

feliz navidad - christmas in el salvador

well peeps, i´ve got three REALLY LONG entries for you all to peruse while you´re back on the job after the holidays. hope everyone had a great christmas and a happy new year!!! read on......the entries are ¨where i´m living,¨ ¨places i´ve visited,¨ and this one, ¨feliz navidad.¨ and when i say they´re long, i really mean it. get yourself a cup of coffee and plan to spend some time here!!

so christmas 2005 was unlike any other....mostly because it was my first christmas without snow, cold, wind, ice, accidents, questions of whether i should come into work or not (like last year at my stupid job where they waited until we WERE ALREADY AT THE OFFICE to tell us we could go home because of the bad weather), crazy christmas commercials, annoying christmas carols (except for feliz navidad), presents and did i mention snow? i awoke friday the 23rd at the early hour of 5:00 a.m. because i needed to leave apaneca by 6:00 a.m. to meet anna in cara sucia which is something like 3 hours from my site. we had been invited to have a somewhat american christmas dinner with emily – a volunteer not in our group whose site is near san francisco menendez/cara sucia. also invited were carly and allie (both from mine and anna’s group) and emily’s girlfriend, kiva, another volunteer from the previous year’s agroforestry/environmental ed group – her site is somewhere in cabanas. anyway, we were all supposed to meet in cara sucia by 9:30 because the only pickup going to emily’s site left at 10:00. so i left apaneca and by the time i got to sonsonate, i was baking in the heat. there were a gazillion people trying to ride the buses for the holidays and it was almost unbearable when i got on the bus headed towards cara sucia. i was sitting next to some dude who definitely had a couple of screws loose, but it was the only seat, and everyone probably thought i was “the crazy gringa” for sitting next to him, but i could have cared less.

cara sucia is exactly what it translates into in english......dirty face. anna agrees, and basically all of the volunteers whose pueblo is cara sucia say the same thing. it’s nothing but a huge market stretched along the main road. it’s loud and dirty and just generally a crazy, crazy place. i had to ask some random woman where the post office was and when i finally got there and saw anna, i was like “seriously, this is your pueblo?” when i say “your pueblo” i’m referring to the fact that all volunteers have a “pueblo” which is the town where they go for most of their stuff. most of us are in caserios or cantones, where there are only tiendas – no real place to buy things or send mail or go on the internet or whatever. i happen to live in my pueblo (for the time being) – apaneca. anyways, kiva and emily finally met us and when we called allie, as usual, she was out of it and was going to have to meet us later. carly’s site is close enough to emily’s that she was just going to walk, so we four headed out on the pickup and rode to emily’s. on the way there in the pickup, these three teenage girls kept staring at me and laughing. well, they had been laughing at me since i had to run to get the pickup – they don’t stop, you just have to run after them and hop on. anyway, finally one of them was pointing to one of the other girl’s hair and i was like “yeah, muy bonita.” and then the one girl kept touching my hair and telling me how pretty it was. FYI – it wasn’t. i had been sitting on the bus for forever, wind blowing it, it was dirty and greasy and gross. but the thing is, here they think anything other than black or dark brown hair is the most beautiful thing ever in the world. my hair could have been in dreads or all ratty (which it was close to) and they would’ve thought it was pretty.....so comments like that aren’t really as flattering as they sound.

so we got to emily’s house and dropped off our stuff and then went to walk to meet carly. emily told us we were going to go swimming, so anna and i had to scrounge up some sort of swimming clothes because we had no idea we were going to be swimming. we walked across this meadow/forest with these two kids from emily’s caserio and met up with carly on the path. then we headed over to another main road that led to san francisco menendez – a larger town near cara sucia. we hopped on a pickup and rode all the way to the entrance of el imposible and started our trek. it was so awesome. there were all these really cool flowers and trees and carly kept picking up seeds and telling us to eat them. at first we’re like “no way,” but then after she kept eating them, we finally tried them. i mean, i knew what seeds these were, but i didn’t know we could just eat them right off the ground – or right out of their pods. anyway, then we continued up this huge ass long hike to the top of one of the cerros in el imposible, and from this one clearing you could see the ocean! it was so cool! we continued through the forest and came upon this little hidden waterfall, that dropped into this deep part of this small river. we had a great time trying to get emily to jump – she must have tried for 20 minutes before she finally jumped when nobody was looking. anyway, we just chilled there for quite a while just swimming and hanging out.

anna getting ready to jump - emily´s waiting for her turn next, which took like 20 mins.

the entrance to el imposible

finally we headed back because emily kept saying she needed three hours to cook this turkey she had killed for us. well, she didn’t kill it – she had it killed. like she “hired” someone to kill it.... a turkey assassin or something. we made it back to her house and i was dead tired, man. but we started getting all the food ready for the dinner and we made the most amazing stuffing i’ve ever had in my life. either that, or it was because i hadn’t had any of this kind of food in so long. i mean, at one point anna and i were just eating the uncooked stuffing and it tasted unbelievable! it was then that emily told us she had poured uncooked turkey juice or whatever into it. after we almost threw up we were so grossed out, we moved on to some other kind of food to pick at....i think mashed potatoes were next.

allie finally made it to emily’s house and she helped us finish up the food. the chicken and turkey were both stuffed and we had put them both into emily’s adobe oven and over the next couple hours we were checking on both of them and finally the chicken was done. there were all these kids that kept coming in and individually, carly, allie, anna and i were thinking – there’s not going to be enough food for us!! which we all felt bad about thinking, because, these people are poor and don’t get to eat food like this ever, and here we were worried that WE weren’t going to get fed. but man, we were starving.....and more and more people that emily had invited kept coming in. so we started serving up plates of food and then we checked on the turkey, and the top was almost black. so we cut into it and checked it to make sure it was done and then started cutting pieces of it when anna suggested we turn it over and when we did, the whole bottom was not EVEN cooked. it looked like defrosted turkey. i guess it was because the way the adobe oven cooks is wierd – there’s no real heat at the bottom or something. i’m not sure. i had never used an adobe oven before that day. it was hilarious because carly took one of the legs and pulled it back and it was literally bleeding and she’s like “oh, that’s not done at all.” you have to know carly to really get how funny that comment was. she’s always really chipper and happy and optimistic and her saying that about the turkey leg, in her enthusiastic voice was just really super funny. anyways, on top of that, all the mashed potatoes we’d given to the salavadorans went uneaten because for some reason they don’t like mashed potatoes. ugh! anyway, in the end, there ended up being enough food for everyone and we ate the rest of the turkey after we cooked it more. we even ate some of the mashed potatoes off other people’s plates. yeah. i’m telling you, i’ve eaten things here in el salvador that i would’ve never dared to eat in the states.....

the not-done turkey and the chicken....neither of them look like real food

anna and allie finishing the last of the chicken

then we made a chocolate cake and while we were waiting for that to bake, allie accidentally poured tea into one of the cups that i had used to measure the oil for the cake mix and drank it. so for the rest of the night we were in hysterics because allie drank “oil tea.” then emily fell out of the hammock and i’m not kidding it was just all around good times laughing all friggin’ night. then i think we all got bit by chinches in the night....i slept in a hammock with no mosquito net and i’m sure i got bit by a million different bugs. but chinche bites are the worst....cause they give you chagas if they have the disease in them. basically they poop on you right by where they bit you and if you scratch it, then you scratch their crap into your blood and if they have the disease then you get it. and really you don’t have any symptoms, but in 30 years your heart explodes! isn’t that the craziest? but you can get a chagas test and if it says you have it you can take some kind of pills that get rid of it. what’s wierd is that i was reading this book a couple weeks ago about this guy who traveled down the orinoco river in venezuela and he was talking about chagas. here’s his description (the author is redmond o´hanlan), from his book “in trouble again:”

there is chagas’ disease, for instance, produced by a protozoan Tripanozoma crusii, and carried by various species of Assasin bugs which bite you on the face or neck and then, gorged, defecate next to the puncture. when you scratch the resulting itch you rub the droppings and their cargo of protozoa into your bloodstream; between one and twenty years later you begin to die from incurable damage to the heart and brain

anyway, so the next morning anna and i were convinced we had chagas....because i had a million bites on me, and i couldn’t tell what they were from because earlier in the week i got attacked by ants and had a gazillion ant bites on my feet, legs and arms. and if you think i wasn’t scratching them, you’re crazy. i scratched them and scratched them until it wasn’t possible to do so any more.

but whatever. anna and i left early the next a.m. for san salvador. anna had to go to the bank to get her new pin # and i wanted to go into the office to check my mail. neither of us had taken a shower or bucket bath or anything, my feet were caked in mud and dirt and did i mention that finally, four of my toenails fell off from my hike to the volcano a month ago. yeah, oh, and only half of the nail on my big toe came off, so picture the both of us wandering around san salvador, dirty, me with 3 ½ toenails missing, hot as all hell because it was like a hundred million degrees.......not a pretty picture. my pants were so dirty – i hadn’t expected we were going to hike el imposible and only brought one pair of pants and a skirt. i had to change at the office into the skirt, but in doing so, revealed the thousand ant and chinche bites i had scratched to bloody pulps on my feet and legs. again, not a pretty picture. by the time anna and i boarded the bus for molineros, we were exhausted and feeling the grossest we had felt in quite some time. i ate a strawberry popsicle on the bus and at one point i told anna that i probably looked like “that kid” who has koolaid mouth and is all dirty from playing outside. the only difference is that i’m 33 years old. and seriously, my family was probably going to think that i can’t take care of myself since leaving them. the bus was packed with people – after all it was christmas eve. anna and i like to say when we’re in crazy situations the phrase.....”a year ago______” (fill in the blank with whatever it is we’re doing). like when we were at her house for her host sister’s birthday and we had to wear party hats and at one point i was pouring us cups of salva cola from one of the 3 liter bottles and anna burst out laughing and was like “a year ago, did you think you’d be wearing a party hat in a house in el salvador pouring cups of salva cola from that huge bottle?” and it’s just really funny to say that whole “a year ago” thing. so when i was on the bus, holding some woman’s cake for her, and anna had two fat ladies’ guts in her face because the bus was so packed, we were both like “a year ago???”

my family did not care that i was a dirty mess. it was like old times and it was so great to be at their house. the whole family was there and it was crazy as ususal. sindy had gripe – the term for all things related to the sniffles, coughing, upset stomach, etc. so she was a bit out of it. but other than that, it was awesome. ana gave me a huge plate of chicken and vegetables and then i took dayana over to visit mama viviana and she was sooooo happy to see me. she made me sit down and she fixed me two huge panes rellanos....which by the way, when she put the chicken on, she put the whole leg – bone and all. how are you supposed to eat that???? anyway – i hung out with her for a while then went back to the house and just chilled out. everyone was there and it was loud and crazy and awesome. ana let off fireworks and they were so obnoxiously cool. sindy did not like them one bit and kept grabbing my hand, trying to make me come back into the house. nobody went to bed until midnight, after they put the baby jesus in the nativity. oh my god, i can’t believe i almost forgot to include something.....so because it was the holidays and apparently molineros’s fiesta de patronales coincides with christmas and new year’s, there were all these stands set up around molineros selling carnival type food and there were rides and things like that. typical fair stuff. and when i took dayana over to mama viviana’s, dayana kept going “look laura, chicagua!” and she kept pointing over to the fair rides and there was a big ferris wheel and i’m thinking that chicagua is the word for ferris wheel in spanish. so i’m like “yeah, cool....” so later, i was back at my house and anna, her host family – her mom, monica and kevin – came over to the tienda. they were like “come on, we’re going to ride chicagua.” and i’m like “huh?” so dayana and i went over to the rides with them and i don’t know how or why it happened, but anna and i ended up – willingly – getting on the chicagua. which, by the way, is not the word for ferris wheel in spanish. they were saying “chicago” because on the front of all of the cars was the word “chicago.” big fat “duh” there. anyway, seriously, i cannot think of a more dangerous thing to do than board a ferris wheel in el salvador that was being run by a bunch of teenage kids. we got on this thing and they started it up, and i am not kidding you, this thing was going so fast. ferris wheels are supposed to be the tame slow rides at the fair, right? this thing was whipping us around and i thought my life was honestly going to end in molineros that night. anna and i were freaking out and these kids just kept it going for at least 15 minutes. finally, they slowed it down and let us off and i was dizzy. we stood there and watched it go around more times, and these teenage kids were getting on the cars and hanging from the front of them while it was going around and anna and i were just completely dumbfounded. oh, and the other rides? they were basically merry-go-rounds with little tyke toys bolted to them.....they weren’t mechanical at all. the teenage kids running the ferris wheel had to take breaks to go push the merry go round rides for the little kids. i mean, obviously, it doesn’t matter how high tech anything is because the kids were having a great time, but it was just so funny. there was a limp dog hopping around by the rides, and some crazy dude dancing to reggaeton all by himself in the corner. and the ticket guy for the rides was also the “DJ.” seriously, he had a microphone and everything. it was one of those “a year ago????” moments. so funny.

the next morning i went to church in vera paz with mama viviana and the church was packed because it was the first communion for all these 10 year olds. i don’t know why they have that on christmas day. we saw anna and her family there so we stood by them and died of heat from all the people in the church. after that, mama viviana bought me some pasteles outside of the church – these are nothing more than fried bread with some kind of vegetables in the middle....soooooo good. we then rode in a pickup back to molineros, where some small child lifted up my skirt in front of everyone. yay! when we got back to molineros, anna’s host mom invited me to the first communion lunch of brayan and catherine – two cousins of her family – so i went over there for that and ate so much food i felt sick. later anna and i went back to my family’s and had cafe and pan dulce and champagne. we were acting so crazy and dayana was cracking us up.

i just realized after writing this how much food i ate over those three days.....because later that night i went back over to anna’s house because her mom had invited me over for chilakilas....this unbelievably awesome food creation that defies explanation. anyway, we hung out there and played with the kids and finally i went back to my house and watched “el familion” with my family. i was so upset that night because i had to leave! it’s like everything was so nice and i had my bed (sans mosquito net) all waiting for me. and hearing ana ask me in the morning “quiere pan?” was enough to almost make me burst into tears. i’m not even kidding. i mean, i love my site and all, but i really do feel like ana and mama rosa and all of them are my family here. so it was kind of depressing having to leave. but i did so and promised to be back soon. which i most definitely will.

in the morning i met anna at the bus stop and we were waiting for the bus and saw don orlando – melissa’s host dad – and he was cheerful as ever. our bus came and totally passed us because it was so filled of people going back home from christmas. so don orlando waved down this huge truck leaving molineros and anna and i had to literally climb into the back of it. so we did that and it took us to the desvio #51 where we waited for another bus to take us to santo domingo. we were meeting up with courtney – another volunteer and one of my good friends - to go buy hammocks and blankets in san sebastian. i was so excited to get more blankets for my site because it’s so damn cold at night.

anyway, so we did that and decided not to return to our sites that day, but to spend it in san salvador. we were all pretty wiped out and thought that if we went to see a movie and ate some good food in san sal, we’d be all set to return on tuesday a.m. so that was basically what we did. and when i got back to my site on tuesday afternoon i was less sad then i think i would have been had i returned the previous day.

dayana and mama viviana

ana lighting fireworks on christmas eve

sindy looking sad because she has ¨gripe¨

me, ana, sindy and dayana on christmas day

places i´ve visited

well, even though it’s only been a month, i’ve certainly been busy enough – which is surprising because that first week in my site, i felt like i was going to be bored out of my mind for quite some time. anyway, i’ve got a lot to tell you all about, but i don’t want to bore everyone, so i’ll just stick to the short versions of everything (we all know that this isn’t going to happen, because once i get started, i’m bound to go on for pages and pages and pages and......you get the idea). so courtesy of tonito – or antonio – i’m still not sure which i’m supposed to call him – i’ve seen a lot of the area where i’m now living.

ATACO: i’ve visited ataco on several occasions and now the woman at the pupuseria just makes me two pupusas with cheese everytime she sees me walk up to the place. there’s not much more to say about the place – it’s just another pueblo, but i’ve gotten to know some people really well there....mostly friends of antonio’s. they are super funny and i feel at home sitting at the pupuseria with them just shooting the shit.

JUAYUA: juayua is this pueblo about 20 minutes southeast of apaneca. it’s tourist-friendly and has this awesome food fair every weekend where people set up and sell food from all around the country, as well as other countries. there are artesan shops and stands all over and you can get a really good deal on a machete with a case in the market there. the day i visited i had these awesome chicken sandwiches called panes rellanos which have every kind of sauce you can imagine on them. it sounds kind of gross, but it’s some of the best food i’ve had so far. you can see volcan santa ana (the one that erupted two months ago) and there was still a bit of smoke coming out of the top. juayua is also home to the catholic church of the “black jesus.” there’s one in guatemala that’s more popular and more visited by latin americans, but both sculptures were made by the same guy. so if you’re ever in latin america and you want to see the famous black jesus (christo negro) come to el salvador instead of guatemala because they’ll be way less tourists and they’re basically the same.

the church in juayua

volcan santa ana

LAGUNA VERDE: my hike up and down laguna verde was one crazy day. it’s one of the two lagunas located near apaneca. it was kind of a hard climb, but i’m certain that nothing will ever compare to the volcano....so it didn’t seem that bad. there were times where i was like “again, why am i doing this?” it was a really pretty climb....there were houses all the way up, but it seemed like we were in a different world all together. a lot of the barrios seemed to be really poor, but the people were super nice, and seemed to be getting along just fine. when we got to the top of the cerro (where the laguna is located) we took a short sidecut to this place where you are walking on the peak of the cerro. there was literally no more than a foot on either side of the trail and it looked straight down – totally scary, but really cool. then we went back to the main trail and continued on to the laguna – which is basically a huge crater filled with water. once we arrived at the edge, the barrios ended, and we took this small road down to the water’s edge. it was super peaceful.....there’s only one small little gathering of a couple of houses on the other side of the laguna where something like eight people live. when we got down to the laguna we talked to some guy who was monitoring this pump system they had going on. i’m not sure what it was for. the guy was super friendly and we sat and talked to him for a while. then we started walking around the laguna. it was surrounded by coffee trees and these awesome, awesome flowers. tons that i had never seen before and i’ve already seen so many already in ahuachapan. so we just walked around to the other side by the houses and talked with a woman who told us the names of some of the flowers. then when we passed that area, we came upon a guy and his son and talked to them for a little bit. other than those few people, there wasn’t a single other person around. because there was nobody else there, it was really quiet...really peaceful. we walked down by the water and i took a bunch of pictures before we got back on the trail and finally ended up back where we had started.

me amongst the cafe trees surrounding laguna verde

a cafe tree with half its beans ready to cut

the laguna just before fog rolled in

one of the most amazing flowers here - fuscia

i don´t know the name of this flower yet......

on the way back to apaneca, we took this different route and ended up in this little caserio and we stopped at a tienda (FYI – there are “tiendas” all over the place here. i swear to god, i’m not kidding you – in a town of say, 100 houses, i bet 30 of them run some sort of a “tienda” out of their home. i put tienda in quotes because half the time, the home that calls itself a tienda, really has nada inside it. for example, one time, anna and i were somewhere and she needed a tigo card....tigo is one of the companies that sells phone cards for telemovil cell phones. most EVERY tienda has a tigo sign on the outside – advertising that they sell tigo cards. well, anyway, we go into this tienda that has a tigo sign, and ask if they have any tigo cards and the woman looks at us like we are out of our minds. she’s like “no, nooooo. no tiene tarjetas de tigo.” and just gives us this “what would ever make you think i have tigo cards here” look. i’m not basing this whole tienda thing on that one experience though – this kind of thing happens all the time.....whether its with tigo cards, gatorade, agua cristal, anything...you name it. the people in a house could have been selling tigo cards 2 years ago, and now they’re not....now they’re only selling two things – pan dulce and coca-cola - but you better believe they’ve got that 2 year old tigo sign on the front of their house. sometimes you go to a tienda that you think is going to be bigger, but when you get up to the door, and ask for bottled water or coke or something, you realize that you’re in the person’s kitchen and they’re getting your stuff out of their own fridge. anyway....it’s just so funny that so many people have these little tiendas all over the place....)

so we get to this tienda and tonito gets us some sodas and pan dulce. so we sat on the porch of this house/tienda for a while and all of a sudden the dogs of the house all start howling in unison. i was like “what the ----?” then they just stopped. and i’m confused and laughing and tonito’s just sitting there like it’s totally normal and i’m the one who’s crazy for thinking it’s a little weird. i’m telling you, the most bizarre things happen here at the most random times. so we move on and start walking again, and we come upon this other house and tonito goes up to the gate and he’s like “buenas dias! buenas dias!” like five times. i’m like “who lives here?” and he said his friend. so finally this woman comes to the gate and she’s super nice and tells us to come in and we go in and sit down and tonito tells her who i am and all that. then she calls one of her kids in for a second and says something to him, and then he leaves. so we’re sitting there talking about whatever, and after a while the one kid comes back with this humongous bottle of salva. salva is el salvador’s version of coca-cola. oh, and by the way, they don’t just sell 2-liters of soda....no, that’s not enough. they sell these gigantor plastic bottles of coke, salva, pepsi, fanta....i swear they are like 3 ½ liters at least. and it’s like .50 or something a bottle. anyway, the kid comes in with this and two pieces of pan dulce and the mom gives us each a piece of pan dulce and two cups of salva. let’s just say the amount of sugar i consumed that day was of unheard proportions.

anyway, so we are still sitting there talking and then the mom has to go do something, so tonito and i are just sitting in this room while the kids (she has three kids – two boys; one girl) – are running around and chasing each other. we were there about ½ hour and then she asks us if we want to eat lunch there. so we said yeah and so i tried to help her make tortillas – i’ve “tried” to make tortillas on several occasions....they always end up being the entertainment of the day. they’re always lopsided, too small, too big, you name it. but i think salvadoran women generally like it when you try to make tortillas or pupusas or anything really with them. so i did that and i asked the mom what the kids’ names were and she said the girl was abigail, one of the boys was kevyn and the other was – get this – elvis!!! she kept saying “like elvis presley!” and it was just totally cracking me up. anyway – tonito and i ate, alone, in some random room in the house while the mom was doing laundry and housework. it’s really awkward eating at other people’s houses because they are all about the service. like if you eat a meal at someone else’s house, you eat all alone at a table while everyone does other stuff, or they watch you because you are a guest. so most of the time we were there, i’m not kidding you, tonito and i were alone while the kids were playing and the mom was doing other stuff. i kept thinking we should go because she obviously had a lot to do. but i have to remember that i’m not in the states sometimes. here it is totally normal to show up at someone’s house, unexpectedly, and just sit around their house...regardless of what they are doing. people expect you to just stop on by. and they expect you to eat at their house. hell, by the end of the visit, tonito’s friend kept saying that if i ever needed a place to sleep, i could always stay the night!

me ¨making¨ tortillas

the family we visited on the way down from laguna verde - that´s elvis on the far right!!

anyway, after something like two hours of being there, we left and continued down the same road which kept going down and down and down and down. and i thought that there was no possible way we had climbed up that far when we had gone to the laguna. but we were on a different path, so i figured that maybe it hadn’t seemed that high because we had taken more of a switchback path the first time. the road we were on the way down was more direct. but sure enough, we got to one area and i see that the road we’re on is now going uphill. i’m like – “seriously????” i was really tired, and friggin’ full because of all the salva and the lunch and pan dulce (twice). so we get about halfway up and this pickup truck comes by and the dudes are like “need a ride?” hell yes we needed a ride. we hopped in the back and rode a ways. then the pickup truck stopped to give a ride to these three old, old women who were carrying wood on their heads up the hill that i was complaining about climbing with only a backpack. pickups, by the way, are one of the greatest inventions ever. sometimes it’s better than the bus for short distances because you can just hop in the back of some guy’s pickup who is going to the same place you are and it doesn’t cost anything. they usually come by bus stops or desvios and will wave their hand and say where they’re going. it’s probably not the safest thing ever, but neither are buses. and i would never do the pickup thing unless i was with someone else OR there were women (particularly old women) getting in the pickup too, or there were women already in the pickup. i resisted doing the whole pickup thing at first. but one time, on my way back from my site visit, i was at the desvio #51 on the pan-american highway and needed to get to molineros. there were no buses coming – and i knew the one i needed wasn’t going to come until 5:30 and it was 2:30. so a pickup came by that was going to vera paz and i hopped in and in 10 mins. i was in molineros. in any event, tonito and i rode into apaneca and i returned to my cuarto to soak my friggin’ feet. and that was my trip to laguna verde.

TAZUMAL and SANTA ANA: tazumal is one of the mayan archaeological sites here in el salvador. it’s nothing compared to the sites in guatemala, but it’s really impressive nevertheless. and again, like all things el salvador, there were relatively few people visiting the day i went. it’s weird because walking up the road to where it’s located, you would never expect an archaeological site to be situated right there. you pass a cemetery, some houses and next thing you now, you see the big pyramid from behind some trees. and at the entrance, there’s no huge sign telling you where you’re at. there’s simply some words tacked up on the wall that say, i’m not kidding you, “sitio archaeologico.” isn’t that funny? they have a nice little museum at the entrance which has tons of diagrams and explanations of what and where everything is, as well as some artifacts recovered from the site. they had this really cool incense burner with a puma’s “hand” sculpted onto it and i was trying to explain the significance of the incense burning to antonio, because i’ve studied a lot about this in my anthropology classes, but trying to explain something like that, in spanish...or at least MY spanish, is just a lost cause. so i gave up and moved on to the ruins themselves. most of the top of the pyramid was closed for excavation or for preservation – not sure which – but that was ok. the stone looked to be made out of volcanic rock, which makes sense given that the entire area here is surrounded by one volcano or another. in fact, on the way to tazumal, i could see volcan guatemala from the bus. then there’s volcan santa ana, volcan izalco and volcan chinga all within relatively close proximity. it’s just so hard to imagine that at one time the only thing here was this site, no other structures. and some of the trees surrounding the site were most certainly there at the time that the mayans were walking around the area, going to and from their homes and doing their daily tasks.

the sign welcoming people to tazumal

a photograph of an aerial view of tazumal in the small museum





the incense holder with the puma ¨hand¨

so that’s just a little bit (well, a lot) about the places i’ve visited so far in my area. oh, i also got to hike el imposible, but that was during my christmas....and i’ll write about that later.

where i´m living

so let me tell you a little bit about the place i’m staying. it’s officially called “hostal rural las orchideas,” and i’ve had several people ask me if i have to stay with other people in the same room as me because i’m staying in a hostal. it’s somewhat confusing because of the name, but actually a lot of hotels or backpacker places in latin america are called hostals, when in fact, they might not actually be the same the places where you are in a room with 6 other people. the hostal i’m staying in has single or double rooms, but no six people rooms. In any event, right now i’m living at the hostal, but i have my own room and my own bathroom. in fact, where i stay isn’t even in the same general area as where people stay who are just passing through for a night or two. there is a woman who lives in a cuarto similar to mine, next to me. her name is elisa, and she works in a clinic in ataco and everyone calls her “doctor” but she’s really not a doctor. not sure why or what to make of that, but i just go along with it because there are so many things that don’t make sense in el salvador that it’s best just to go along with them!

anyway, here are some of the frustrating moments i’ve learned to deal with since living here.......

the electricity here goes out at least once every day for an hour or more which at times is annoying, but for the most part it’s not even really an inconvenience. i bought myself a couple of those virgin mary/jesus religious candles (which are everywhere, and you can get them for super cheap) and i’m good to go.

my cuarto happens to be situated on the end of the hostal, right next to the driveway, where roberto, nina teresita’s son, drives his gigantor metallic blue pickup truck through at least five times a day, each time, having to unlock and open the gate that doesn’t quite clear the ground, resulting in the loudest sound ever - metal on cobblestone.

roberto´s pickup

the loudest gate ever (my cuarto is just behind the wall on the left)

nina teresita has what i thought was some kind of weird parakeet/parrot bird that lives right here in the hostal and which squawks a lot of the time, particularly when there are people in the lobby trying to talk to each other, or when nina teresita is on the phone, or early in the morning. it was only recently that i found out that there are, in fact, two birds. don’t laugh, even though i know you will.......one is a parakeet, and one is a parrot. i know you all must think i am the stupidest person alive, but the parakeet was the only one i could see...the other cage – the one with the parrot – is seated lower and the parrot hangs upside down from the top of it...so every time i looked in the other cage, i never saw any bird. and since i didn’t know there was a parrot also, and the squawks coming from what i thought was the parakeet’s cage were so loud, i thought there was NO way that the bird i could see was a friggin’ parakeet. i thought it had to be some kind of rare breed of ½ parakeet (because of it’s size) and ½ parrot (b/c of it’s loud squawk). duh.

the parakeet (that i thought was a parrot-parakeet)

the parrot that i couldn´t see

and if the whole bird fiasco isn’t enough, my cuarto is also right on the street where there is a small bus stop at the corner, where the #249 bus from sonsonate to ahuachapan (and back) goes by every day, every 15-20 minutes, from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., meaning i get to hear the cobredors for both buses either yelling “ahuachapan, ahuachapan, ahuachapan!!!” or “sonsonate, sonsonate, sonsonate!!!” (oh, and when the buses – or really, anything bigger than a bicycle - actually go by the hostal, the whole place shakes...and sometimes i’m fooled into thinking there is an earthquake.)

finally, probably the most annoying thing of all is this. i have some sort of gang of bugs (i’m convinced they are cockroaches) living somewhere in the vicinity of my cuarto that have a bedtime of about 5:00 a.m. the sound they make is similar to a cricket, but instead of a “chirp, chirp,” (which is annoying enough), it’s just one long-ass “chirrrrrrrp.” i know it sounds gross....to have cockroaches. my friend jen will be the first to agree with this. she had quite the cockroach problem back in the states a couple summers ago (not at all her fault...it was a gross neighbor problem). but you know, those cockroaches led to me getting lots and lots of margaritas (bought by jen) that summer, not only because jen was so stressed out by the nasty bugs, but also because i helped her go through and clean her stuff when she high-tailed it out of her apartment. i think we spent at least two nights a week for the entire month of july at mi pueblo in cleveland....which is also where i learned the victory song for brazil’s soccer team. so maybe her cockroaches were really a blessing in disguise. ANYWAY.....

cockroaches down here in el salvador aren’t really that gross. mostly because they are huge – like 2-3 inch diameter big. huge bugs don’t really bother me. most bugs don’t bother me. however, small cockroaches DO give me the creeps. the big, gigantic ones - no. when i worked at the natural history museum, we had some madagascar hissing cockroaches that were huge – and i loved them. and it’s not like down here you can avoid the whole cockroach thing anyway....it’s not like only people who don’t clean their houses have cockroaches. everyone has them at one point or another. we had them in my house in molineros sometimes – not very often. but at my house there, the wall didn’t completely meet with the roof, so there really was no way of avoiding cockroaches or any other bug from coming into the house – which is why i had bats flying over the top of my mosquito net, as well as every other bug you can imagine. but i had the mosquito net, so it was all good. here, i don’t have my mosquito net up....mostly because i don’t really need it. it’s so much cooler here that most bugs (think mosquitoes and scorpions) really can’t live here. that’s not to say there aren’t some....but for the most part, i don’t need the mosquitero. and here in the hostal, the walls DO meet the roof, and i have a screen in my window so there’s really not a huge chance of FLYING bugs/insects getting in my room.

the cockroach thing is another deal altogether. they are attracted to water and bathrooms and those kinds of things – and in molineros all that stuff was outside....none of it in the actual living space. but here, they climb up the drains and there is a space between my door and the floor, so it’s possible they could get in that way too. the other night i went into the bathroom and saw a nice, big, fat cockroach on the sink....and at first i was amazed at its size, and then realized i should probably off him. so i did...no big deal....went back to sleep just fine. although, that brings me to another story. have you seen that movie “brokedown palace” where the one girl is sleeping one night and a cockroach crawls in her ear and she gets all sick?? well, before i saw that movie, i had heard of that happening, but i always thought it was an urban legend kind of thing. and i just thought they put that in that movie because it took place in thailand and it made the thai jail look even worse than it was already supposed to be. well, there is a girl here, who is a volunteer now, who told us this story about how she was staying at the estancia in san salvador earlier this year, and this very exact thing happened to her. she went to irma, our medical officer, and told her she could feel something moving around in her friggin’ head, near her ear, and it took like two or three examinations to actually find it and get it out. WTF????? so i suppose i should lose my lackadaisical attitude toward the big cockroaches, but whatever.

that is, if these ARE cockroaches. i only realized this problem about a week or so into my stay. what drives me insane is the frigging chirping sound. it doesn’t matter if they’re cockroaches or any other bug......their chirping is like a leaky faucet and it drives me absolutely nuts. i tried listening to my music, but i eventually have to take off my headphones. so that doesn’t work. the first week here, i think i was so tired, that i didn’t even realize it was going on. that, and i was still going to bed at 8:00, before they actually start up. but i started to go to bed a little later because i’m on my own schedule (unlike at my house in molineros...i went to bed when everyone else did and that happened to be about 2 hours after it got dark). here i can go to bed whenever i want, and lately i’ve been reading or whatever until about 9:00 or so. well, by that time the chirping has already begun, and i can focus on nothing else. a couple weeks ago, i was up the entire night, with a flashlight, trying to catch the damn things in action. the thing is, i couldn’t tell if the sounds were coming from the inside or the outside of my cuarto. the walls are made of adobe, so they are nothing close to being sound-proof. so i’d lay there and wonder “is it outside...is it inside? wait, that definitely came from inside. then again, maybe they’re just inside the walls. ok, goddamnit, where are you????” and then i’m trying to figure out why these bug sounds never bothered me in molineros. first, i think it’s because i went to bed earlier, and second, there were so many other animal noises (roosters, cows, pigs, fighting dogs), the bugs could never get their volume up high enough to escape being drowned out. here i only hear roosters and the occasional cow that sounds like it wandered down the wrong street.

so that night i had my flashlight next to me and every time i heard a noise, i’d shine the light in the general direction. and i’d get nothing. i searched every crevice of my room and could not find these assholes. meanwhile, they continue chirping and calling each other. they are probably also laughing their little bug-laugh – that’s really just a much louder chirp. anyway, ‘round about 5:00 a.m., i realized they had stopped. it was quite the feeling of happiness and i imagined them not as the asshole cockroaches that had pissed me off all night (and every night since). in my mind they suddenly became these eric carle bugs that have cute faces and babies and missions they’re on and now they were closing their eyes and going to sleep all day (although, i don’t think eric carle has ever written a book about a cockroach......worms, caterpillars, crickets, ladybugs....no cockroaches). i laid there trying to go to sleep and get at least 2 hours in, and the first ahuachapan-sonsonate bus went by and i’m not kidding you, i was thinking “noooooooo, the cockroaches are going to wake up!!!”

and then i realized that i am, in fact, a crazy person. seriously, though...it’s not my fault! i’ve since come up with a solution as to how to drown out the sound and it’s sleeping with a blanket over my head. yeah.....nice solution, huh? but i can sleep, which is all that really matters anyway. eventually, i realized that they are in the roof. i have that type of ceiling with the panels, and i’m convinced that they live right above those panels. i DO NOT want to know what else is up there. there have been a couple of nights where i was laying there and could actually hear something running around up there. what, i don’t know....but i have several ideas.....mice, rats, cat, birds.....whatever it is, it’s something. seriously, if any of those panels fell down, i’d have a circus of critters crawling everywhere, i just know it. so i just hide under my covers and pretend i don’t hear anything.

so if any of you can find me a pair of earplugs that would be fantastic. i don’t have the slightest idea of where to look for earplugs in a country like this. i have enough trouble asking for things that people here have actually heard of, let alone something that doesn’t even have a spanish translation (that’s right, i already looked it up).

but what i’m really saying is this: despite all of the above things, I LOVE IT HERE!! i have hot water (when the electricity is on), i have an awesome courtyard where there are the most interesting and colorful birds i’ve ever seen, as well as lemon, lime and orange trees, there is a pupuseria ON THE PREMISES, and occasionally gringos stay at the hostal, so i get some gringo time in. finally, i’m living and working in in the most awesome area of the country!!!!!! coffee forests as far as the eye can see, clean air, cool people......my site absolutely rocks!!!!!!! it’s easy to point out all the faults, but it’s hard to capture the awesome moments and write them down. they by far outweigh the stupid idiosyncrasies that i’ll get used to in a matter of weeks. everyone is nice and friendly and i’ve had no trouble with anything major. so i’m happy here and no amount of cockroaches or loud noises or no electricity is going to make me unhappy!

the back porch behind my cuarto - that´s my hamaca!!

the lobby area of the hostal