muchas cosas

well, it´s been a couple of weeks and much has been going on. i just got back from a week of training in both san vicente and san andres followed by a night of salsa dancing (where i didn´t so much dance the salsa as i did laugh and basically just move around and try and fit in) in san salvador on friday night. during the san vicente part of training, i was able to visit my family in molineros. during the san vicente training, we had went to language and SPA grant training. then we had like three days of technical training in san andres where the escuela naciónal de agronomía is located. i got some really good training in both language and technical sessions and the school in san andres was beautiful. anyway, before that was earth day and i did some stuff with the kids at school which was really cool. today i went to ataco and they were having a coffee festival in the park and i got to try more of the local coffee. i also ended up eating the best yucca of my life and took some pictures of other things. i know this is a super random post, but my brain is still trying to sort out the past couple of weeks. i´ll post some pictures for you to look at and meanwhile, i´ll try to organize my thoughts so i can write a more insightful post later. sound good? bueno!

adios for now!

- dayana (in her school uniform) and sindy

- sindy, dayana and me

ana, sindy and dayana (and el nino...this ceramic replica of jesus as a child. sindy brought this over from mama rosa´s house and was carrying one of the arms in her hand. then every time someone else took it she´d say ¨la mano!¨ meaning, we´d forgotten to take the arm too.)

me, sindy and dayana

los viejos (old men)....i haven´t exactly solved this mystery yet, but when i was at my family´s house in molineros on sunday night, ana kept telling me that the viejos were coming over to dance. and this is what ¨the viejos¨ are...a bunch of guys, and a kid, wearing crazy masks. and they brought a little four-member band too. they danced for like 5 minutes and then left. good times, huh!

- more of los viejos...check out ¨the diablo¨ on the far right

- the band of los viejos

- this is at one of the coffee vendors at the festival de café in ataco. they set up these four dishes of café to show the process of taking the bean from the tree to the final product we use in coffee machines. the first is after it´s dried and taken out of the pegarmino, which is what it grows inside. the second is after it´s taken out of the cascara (shell). the third is after it´s dried again. and the fourth is the final product - the polvo.



- this is one of the coffee vendors at the festival de café in ataco. i really want one of those cool coffee bags that show the crop year and everything and the name of the beneficio. all of the coffee at the festival was grown and processed right here in ataco or nearby.

- this really cool band played at the festival de café.

- another photo of the band

- this is what most places to get yucca or pasteles looks like. the black barrel is where they cook the yucca and they basically just have plastic table and chairs set up for you to sit at and eat, right on the street.

- me in the parque having a good ´ol time!

la procesión

good friday was the last night of the procesión through apaneca so i went out and tried to get some photos. obviously, it was dark, so the photos are what they are...but, you know, whatever!

the beginning of the procession

i wasn´t going to include this photo, but then i saw the kid in the left hand corner grinning and it just made me laugh

more of the procession (FYI, the spots on the photo are specks of dust/polvo that is blowing around because of the strong wind)

the casket of jesus - the guys carrying it would change every block or so, it looked really heavy.

more of the procession...these statues were carried behind the casket of jesus. notice how there are people wearing winter hats and coats. it was probably about 85 degrees during the day and at night we seriously need fleeces and hats! (and i just noticed that that one dude is wearing a leopard print jacket??)

this is an alfombra (not sure if i´m spelling it right), but the procession followed along the streets of apaneca, and where the procession went there were these ¨paintings¨ on the streets of various scenes related to the death of jesus. the material is some kind of finely granulated salt and then they dye it different colors to draw the pictures. some were really detailed and some were not, but they were all really cool.

a romero shrine outside someone´s house (if you didn´t already know, romero was the catholic priest that was murdered - allegedly by the u.s.-backed salvadoran military - during the civil war)





this is one of the more detailed alfombras, as you can see, in comparison to the previous ones

roberto, nina teresita´s son, helped decorate this alfombra

i think this is supposed to be the virgen de guadalupe, but it was dark and i couldn´t really see it that clearly at the top

happy april!!

honestly, i cannot believe it´s april! april 11th no doubt. i´ve been here going on 7 months! weird.

ok, well i’m not sure how to start off this entry – because there is just so much going on. first off, it´s semana santa and everyone in the entire country goes on vacation for a week. a lot of people go to the beach, but i´m staying put in apaneca. it´s supposed to be pretty dangerous to travel during semana santa, plus there are just too many people there during holidays. and i´m not a big fan of the huge crowds. i visited the cascades outside of juayua yesterday. i had a great time, despite falling on my ass not once, but TWICE, in front of a bunch of people. but who the hell cares. antonio thought it was funny, along with probably everyone else who saw me. my pants were filthy (front and back) and i ended up ¨washing¨ them (while i was still wearing them of course) in one of the cascade pools. it was so hot that they were dry, even when i was still wearing them, in about 15 minutes. the cascades in juayua are basically made up of about four or five natural waterfalls that have pools for swimming at the bottom before the water is then carried down the valley further. the pools actually then have man-made connectors whereupon you can be swimming in one pool, then take a clausterphobic journey underneath part of the mountain through a tunnel and end up in the pool of another cascade further down. they´re situated in a way so that there´s not much room to actually ¨look¨ at them, because they´re on a cliff area that drops off about twenty or thirty feet from the bases of the waterfalls. and yesterday they were packed with people, including this group of canadian tourists, so it was hard to take pictures and all that. actually, though, it was safer to be there when there were more people because banditos and pandilleros love to prey upon people walking the trail, so i guess it was ok that there were a bunch of people there.

¨la sirena¨ - this is a mermaid statue that is kind of in the middle of nowhere in juayua, but kind of also on the way to the cascades, depending on which road you take.













yours truly after wiping out twice. here i am washing my pants in the lower pool of one of the waterfalls. i´m just too graceful for words.

not sure what i´m doing the rest of the week, but it should be pretty cool just to be a part of the culture here during this religious week. they´ve been doing ¨tres cruces¨ through the streets of apaneca every friday night which is really, really cool. it´s basically the stations of the cross and different houses around town every friday decorate outside of their houses with a little alter dedicated to one station of the cross. then at about 8:00 pm there is a procession of people dressed up like shepherds carry a big huge statue of jesus to these different stations. the pastor of the catholic church is there as well as a bunch of members and they take this procession around town. it´s kind of funny too because bringing up the rear of the procession is a guy dressed up as a shepherd as well, but riding this bicycle that has a generator on the back which is attached to the jesus statue which has these huge lights around it. and then there are two other guys dressed up as shepherds and they kneel in front of the alters and read out the passages about each station of the cross at each house that has been decorated. and then people sing these sad songs about the whole thing. it´s really quite cool, and i´m gonna miss the procession once easter is over.

there was an earthquake/temblor sunday morning that was really quite strong. i was still in bed (yes, i was still sleeping….it was sunday!!!) and it felt like someone was shaking my bed and at first i was scared because i thought ¨who the hell is in my room?¨ and it went on for quite some time and then i realized it was a temblor and waited for it to end. i read in the paper yesterday that it was a 5.8 and the center was somewhere off the coast in la libertad. it´s not a big deal, though, i suppose. it´s getting ready to change over to the rainy season and there are always earthquakes in between the seasons. it´s just really a weird experience.

oh, i also visited my friend courtney up in chalatenango a couple weekends ago. dudes, it is HOT there. well, it´s really super frigging hot everywhere else in the country, while in apaneca it´s just frigging hot. anyway, she lives in a town called dulce nombre de maria which took me something like 6 hours to actually get to. she´s got some c-r-a-z-y people living there which were really entertaining. which reminds me, i have to tell you all about the crazy lady of apaneca next time. anyway, i had a great time at courtney´s site but i was so glad to get back to the relatively breathable climate of apaneca.

that´s all for now.
adios!