agostinas

well, believe it or not, there´s a week of vacations (called agostinas) again this coming week. no school all week, so i´ll have some time to finish some of the activities i´m working on for the kids. not sure what else i´m doing except going to san sal because i think i have parasites STILL. i was fine for most of july, más or menos. but this week has been a little reminiscent of may and june. what if i have parasites for the rest of my life? holy moly. that would really, really suck. no, i mean REALLY. maybe i don´t have them and i´m just being paranoid. because, in the past, my stomach would act weird and i wouldn´t think anything of it. but now that i´ve had parasites, i think every little stomach ailment is parasites. i hope i´m just being a paranoid freak. aahhhh, el salvador. how my heart loves you and my stomach hates you at the same time.

and believe it or not, i´m planning on hiking another mountain. ok, before you tell me to go back and re-read my post about the LAST mountain i climbed, let me explain. this one is at york´s site, in upper chalatenango. supposedly, according to york, it´s only a couple of hours to the top. and in honduras, york and i had a little talk about climbing mountains. he drunkenly explained to me that everyone hated that mountain and that everyone is not having a good time when they´re climbing. it´s not just me. and he also said that we actually made good time on that hike at kate´s site. kate said the same thing when i last talked to her....so i don´t know. at the time, i thought i was the only one who was cursing that climb...which is so egotistical. so i´m going to go on this next one. yes, i admit, it only being 2 hours is the biggest factor in my agreeing to go, but whatever. we´ll see. it´s not until the 9th - it´s another ¨full moon hike and bluegrass party¨ (that´s what we´ve officially named these hikes) - and hopefully it won´t be raining.

oh, remember that crazy turtle shell i told you about? the one in the pupuseria? well, tonight we were sitting there eating and i felt something on my foot - i had on my flip-flops - and i about screamed. i was like ¨what the fuck is that!¨ and antonio´s like ¨qué pasó? qué pasó?¨ and i look down and it´s that damn turtle, who must be blind, because it was attempting to crawl through the back of my foot. seriously? is that the turtle´s home? i mean, if i were that turtle, i´d pick another place to settle down because underneath a bench in a pupuseria can´t be the most tranquilo of places. damn, was i freaked out though. because here in el salvador, turtles are not the first things you think of when you feel something crawling on your foot......

anyway, check out national geographic online (www.nationalgeographic.com). there is a cool photo history of photographer tom abercrombie´s work. not only do i wish i could visit the places he visited during his life, but i´d give anything to be able to photograph those places as well as he did.

that´s it for now. megan and anna are coming to visit tomorrow...another molineros reunion. yeah!

adios for now!

juayua: el cementerio

here are some photos i took at the cemetery in juayua.

one of the pathways through the cemetery





virgen de guadalupe gravestone



this looks like a gravestone you´d find in paris, or old england, or in savannah, georgia or something

the same gravestone from the front



during day of the dead, every gravestone is adorned with tons of these plastic or paper colored flowers

more pics from la playa (monterico, guatemala)

bayron and courtney in the spanish school where bayron works

the playa



the catholic church in monterico



courtney and the tostadas!

indecision insanity

hey dudes..... i´ve been doing some thinking lately. well, not just some....let´s say A LOT. and despite all of that thinking, even away from all the distractions living in the states can present, i still feel like i´m no closer to making any decisions about what i want to do ¨with the rest of my life¨ after the peace corps. seriously. i´ve been undecided for pretty much all of my life (except for those few years in jr. high and high school where my best friend and i SWORE we were gonna meet professional baseball players and marry them and live these ridiculous lives....). yes, despite that little deviation from uncertainty, i, at 33 years of age, still have not found any one thing that i feel is my calling. it´s not a lack of things i´m interested in, or have strong feelings about. it´s not that at all. if anything, it´s that there are too many things that i want to do. and being 33 and not having a husband or kids, most of those things that i want to do are certainly within my ability.

what frustrates me the most is the fact that i can change my mind in a day. one day i´m certain that upon my return to the states, i´m gonna go to graduate school, study anthropology and latin american history. then the very next day, it´s a 6-month viaje to south america that is calling my name. then the next day i´ll be working on environmental stuff and think that i could get a job working with some rainforest action group (seriously, we are for real fucking up the environment) or something like that for the rest of my life. or some kind of humanitarian work - amnesty international or something similar. but then i´ll be working at the school with the kids and some mom will show up at the school to pick up one of her kids, or to make refrigerio, and she´ll have her little baby with her and i´m like ¨awww, maybe i should just forget all this nonsense about traveling the world and get that family started.¨ ugh, it pains me just to write that - get that family started. that and phrases like ¨it´s time to settle down...¨ or ¨my biological clock is ticking.¨ that´s just bullshit. my biological clock has never been ticking. i love kids, and i do think i want to have one someday, or adopt one, or whatever road i go down. but the problem is the ¨some day¨ part of that. i don´t feel like that ¨some day¨ really is here yet. but i´m 33. not an old lady (well, in el salvador i pretty much am b/c of the no kids, no husband thing..) but let´s face it, ¨some day¨ is only getting closer. let me just say this - having a family is one of the above things i´ve mentioned that crosses my mind as an option upon my completion of time in the peace corps.

am i ever going to be able to escape the persuasion of travel? as most of you (who know me well) are aware, travel is like a lifeline to me. i´m not just talking world travel, but next-door cities and towns in the states as well. there isn´t a place in the world i don´t want to visit, and if i wanted to do that with the rest of my life, well it´s an option. i could make it happen. but what about all that other stuff?

this morning, i awoke to the sound of somebody knocking on my door. i was like ¨sí?¨ and because my fan was on i couldn´t hear what they were saying, but i could tell it was a guy´s voice. i threw on a sweatshirt and opened the door to find this australian guy that i had talked to the night before for a couple of seconds. he was staying at the hostal with his girlfriend - the typical backpackers i see come through apaneca every now and again. anyways, he´s like ¨i´m so sorry to wake you up, but i need your help. is your spanish any good?¨ and i say, half-questioning, ¨well, i guess it is?¨ he goes on to tell me that his girlfriend lost her passport on the bus from guatemala city to san salvador. they had no idea where she lost it, they got off the bus in ahuachapan and took a microbus to apaneca and she didn´t realize she didn´t have it until this a.m. on top of this, there is no australian embassy in el salvador. or in guatemala. or honduras. or nicaragua. the only one is in mexico city, but since the girlfriend - her name´s aileen - didn´t have a passport, they couldn´t just go to mexico city. so we three sat outside on the back porch of the hostal thinking of what they should do. they wanted me to call the bus company and ask to see if anyone found the passport. i told them that it was highly unlikely as passports for america, canada, europe and australia are like gold to people here. it´s basically a free ticket out of el salvador. anyway, i called and of course, nobody had turned it in. finally i just told them they should probably go to san salvador because it was likely they were gonna have to go there anyways to work things out...plus it´d be a lot easier than trying to figure it out in apaneca. plus i thought they should call the australian embassy in mexico city, or even go to the mexican embassy here to see about getting to mexico city. whatever. anyway, they decided to do that. (i know, this all sounds like something that would happen to me....losing my passport, being stuck in some faraway place..)

anyway, we sat out back talking for a while and they talked about how they had lived in london for a bit and the boyfriend - his name´s tristan - had sent his passport to the british gov´t for a visa to czechoslavakia and they sent it back to him, but he never got it. and he and aileen had this weekend trip to prague all set and didn´t know if they should risk going with just a new passport and no visa or what. anyway, my point of this whole story - other than it being a little story about the kind of random day i´m likely to have living here in el salvador and at a backpacker´s hostal - is that hearing them talk about living in london and making a weekend trip to prague is just the kind of diversion i´m talking about when it comes to making any real plans for the future in my life. before i quit my job at the law firm (seems like years and years ago) to finish my last semester of school and get ready for the peace corps, i kept annoying the hell out of my friend brandy with my bright idea to use my peace corps readjustment allowance to fly to europe and rent an apartment in paris for like 3 months. i´d travel all over europe, but always have paris to come back to, right? how friggin´ awesome would that be. i know, i don´t speak french, but i could learn. what with all the time i have on my hands here.

see what i´m talking about? i believe it was in my last post that i was talking about ¨how cool it would be¨ to live in monterico, guatemala. that should be my parting words...you know how some people always put ¨peace¨ or ¨take care¨ or have some kind of witty quote in their e-mails? mine should be ¨how cool would THAT be?¨ that paris idea would work in any european city...possibly spain, but i think spain´s too far away from eastern europe so maybe spain wouldn´t work. plus i just love paris so much. or i could go to australia and new zealand. when tristan and aileen and i parted ways at the esquina after my bus came, tristan says ¨thanks heaps!¨ and i was like ¨man, i want to go to australia!¨ tomorrow it´ll probably be china. i could teach english in chile for a year. or anywhere, really.

anyway, this is just a glimpse into my crazy mind, and probably the reason i have such a hard time falling asleep every night. i don´t know. what worries me is that i´ll never get my head out of this mode. i´ll be this batty 65 year old woman who´s trying to walk the great wall of china and thinking to herself the whole time ¨i wonder if NOW´s the time to decide on a career.....¨

seriously though, is there a problem with never getting my head out of this mode? it´s all about making decisions, right? what do i love most? living in ohio? the idea of having a family? a boyfriend? traveling? what? and so begins the cycle of insanity that has overtaken my thoughts this past month.

at least i don´t have parasites anymore......

good times in guatemala

before i start writing about my little viaje to guatemala, i have to let you all know that as i’m sitting in my cuarto typing this entry, niña teresita’s son and her son-in-law are out in the hostal lobby watching a kung-fu movie at the loudest volume possible. kung-fu movies can be really tranquilo – like if they’re at a low volume, they’re something you can fall asleep to on the couch. but at the highest possible volume, they’re out of control. especially in spanish. have you ever seen a kung-fu movie that’s been dubbed in spanish? it’s really funny. even funnier than it normally is dubbed in english. i bet they’re even funnier dubbed in german or some language like that. ahhhh, kung-fu movies......what fun.

so where to begin...... courtney and i had a GREAT time in guatemala even though we didn’t do everything we planned on doing. the beach we visited is called “monterico” and is about three or four hours from the border of el salvador. the reason we went there is because when courtney was visiting el tunco (the beach in la libertad in el sal) with her friend kevin from the states, they met this guy from guatemala, bayron (pronounced “byron”) who was there with one of his friends. anyway, bayron invited her to come visit him in monterico whenever she wanted. he lives there with his parents and other family and works at a spanish school there – teaching spanish to tourists. so that’s why we went there. and basically, we stayed in monterico the entire time because it was so beautiful and we were having such a good time. what’s different about guatemala? first and foremost – the spanish. it wasn’t until i went to guatemala that i realized how much el salvador’s spanish is campo. it’s like how sometimes in the states you can’t understand people from the south, or from way back in the hills in appalachia or something. that’s basically what all of el salvador is like. in guatemala i could understand everybody and they could understand me. they used proper conjugations, they used direct and indirect objects where they are supposed to be, they didn’t use caliche. ashley, our tech trainer, apparently went to the states to interview for grad schools because she wants to study spanish and one interviewer was like “where did you learn your spanish?” and she’s like “uh, el salvador?” and the interviewer said he could totally tell because it was so campo. rolando told me once that i should take advantage of the fact that i’m working with teachers, who generally have better spanish than farmers or regular people in a community. but honestly, half the time when they are having a conversation i can’t understand 50% of it because it’s all slang and campo. i can’t imagine if i had to work with farmers all day. at one point i asked bayron if courtney and i spoke like salvadorans and he said that i had a salvadoran accent and that courtney had an american accent. i was like “nooooo! i don’t want to have a salvadoran accent!” and he said it wasn’t my words and gramatics that were salvadoran (thank god) but the way i said things like “con permiso” and “buen provencha.” ugh. anyway, that, to me, is the biggest difference between el salvador and guatemala. i didn’t really notice that huge of a difference between honduran spanish and el salvador spanish – but there was a slight difference in that honduran spanish was somewhat clearer, but not as clear as guatemalan spanish. anyway, more about the trip.....

courtney came to apaneca on thursday night because she’s so far away, it would’ve taken her forever to get monterico if she would have done it all in one day. the trip from my site is only about 6 hours or so, so it definitely made sense for her to come to apaneca the night before. so on friday we left and i still didn’t even have permission to actually go. i had e-mailed rolando a couple days before telling him i’d just made the decision to go and on thursday he e-mailed me and told me i had to get permission from the country director (the guy in charge of everything peace corps el sal) before i could go because i didn’t have an actual vacation form filled out. so i e-mailed him, but since we were leaving friday a.m. pretty early, i wasn’t sure how i was going to actually get this permission. i asked him to call me, so on friday a.m. i kept waiting to get a phone call. we got to the border at la hachadura and still nobody had called me. courtney kept telling me to call mike (the country director) but i felt like an idiot and didn’t want to. but finally i did and he’s like “i haven’t been in san salvador so i didn’t get your message, but oh, sure that’s totally fine! have a great time and be careful at the border!” so then i felt like even more of an idiot that i didn’t want to call him in the first place. so we cross the border which was a lot less organized than at the honduras/el sal border. we exchanged our dollars for quetzales (which were simple to understand after having already gone through the lempira craziness) and then had to walk really far to the actual guatemalan frontera. so we get there and some dudes tell us where the bus is and it doesn’t leave for about 20 minutes so we chill out outside of this tienda, and it’s like it is everywhere else. we sit down and five guatemalans decide it’s time for them to stand outside the tienda too and stare at us. it’s really weird, even after having been in latin america for so long, when people – normally guys – just sit there and stare at you like you’re animals at the zoo. but whatever. so then there’s this other guy who pulls up in this car and comes up to the tienda to drink a coke. i make a comment that he looks like aaron, one of the guys in our volunteer group, only older, shorter and guatemalan and we’re laughing hysterically. then after he finishes his coke he asks us if we are coming from el salvador. and he’s really jovial and nice and then after a while he tells us he’s going to be passing through taxisco, this town where we would have to catch a bus to monterico, and if we need a ride he can give us one. and at first i was like – no way – that would be just stupid. so courtney’s like “what do you think” and i’m like “i don’t know.” so we asked him his name and he says “mario,” like that was some kind of security question. but it was like i was 85% sure this guy was completely harmless. but i was thinking the whole time, this is everything they tell you not to do. and i looked around and it was like there were 10 other guys there that i would have DEFINITELY not even had to think about taking a ride from because i would have known they were shady. but this dude just looked like an everyday 50 year old guy. i don’t know....i mean, even the bus driver and cobredor that were hanging around looked way shadier than this guy did. so in the end, courtney and i decided it would be ok – just going on instincts and common sense. so we get in mario’s car and he’s got this country CD of songs like “the gambler” and “rhinestone cowboy” and he turns it up and he’s all like – i love this song! it was funnnnny. i never once felt like we made the wrong decision or anything and he delivered us to taxisco in about 45 minutes instead of 2 hours like it would have taken us. he was super nice and in taxisco he let us use his phone so we could call bayron to tell him where we were.

so courtney and i waited for the bus for monterico and discovered that in guatemala they make tostadas – something that el salvador doesn’t have – at least all the time. mmmmmmm. we got some from this women selling them on the side of the street and ate them on the bus and hoped that they’d have them in monterico too. so finally the bus leaves and we get to la avellana which is the little town where we have to get a ferry/lancha (small boat) to monterico. monterico is actually on an island, the chiquimulilla canal separates the island from the mainland which is surrounded by mangroves. anyway, so we get on this boat and take it for about 15 minutes and then get to the monterico side and bayron meets us there. we walk to his house, which is actually in the campo part of monterico – separated from the beach, tourists and everything. his house is pretty big, and i guess at times students from the spanish school stay there, so there’s a room for me and courtney with two beds and mosquito nets. so we hang out there for a while and while we were there, mario calls bayron’s phone (he had the number because we had called bayron in taxisco from mario’s phone) and asks bayron if we made it ok to monterico. and we were like “that’s so nice!” anyway, then we go down to the beach to check it out. you really can’t go wrong with a beach.....it was beautiful. there were tourists there, but it didn’t seem like it was crazy. we walked a ways down and saw some tourist hotels and stuff then walked back and through town to bayron’s house. it was really hot and the mosquitoes were nuts and all you really wanted to do was sit in a hammock and fall asleep.

anyways, his mom makes us rice and shrimp – apparently it’s shrimp season there and shrimp’s super cheap so there was A LOT of shrimp. and it’s not shelled or anything so it takes us forever to eat this dinner because we’re breaking the heads and shells from the shrimp. then because we were taking so long to eat, bayron said he was going to go over to his friend’s for a little bit because he was supposed to be there earlier, and then he’d come back and get us. so we ate, showered and bayron came back and took us to his friend’s house – oliver, a hungarian dude who’s been living in monterico for a couple years. his girlfriend, eva, had just arrived about four days ago and didn’t know much spanish, but was taking classes at the school. bayron’s other friend victor was there and they were all drinking cuba (rum/coke) and so courtney and i joined the festivities. let’s just say we drank a lot and after a while we headed out for the beach. it was awesome because there was this lightning storm off a ways and just seeing it light up the ocean was so cool. we bought these huge 40 oz. gallos (guatemalan beer) and just sat there on the beach arguing about soccer and talking about other stuff. then we shuffled back through town and ended up sitting in front of this tienda until 5:00 in the a.m. drinking gallos and talking to the police. ?????

the next a.m. i was feeling way shitty, but walked down to the beach to find courtney. she had gotten up earlier than me and i figured she’d headed down there so i found her hanging out taking in some rays. i didn’t have my swimsuit with me because i didn’t know if she’d be there or not, so i hadn’t brought anything with me. and it was such a long walk back to bayron’s – well, at least it’s a long walk under the sub-tropical sun – that i decided i’d swim in my underwear (again, for the second time in two weeks). whatever....my underwear looked like a swimsuit bottom anyway, and i had a tanktop, so like i said, whatever. it’s hard to swim in the ocean. i mean, first of all it’s a little scary – it’s the ocean and all, with currents and all that shit. plus, the sand is just out of control. it gets everywhere on you when a wave comes and there’s nothing you can do. anyway, it felt good though. we hung out on the beach for a while and then decided to walk back to bayron’s and de-sand ourselves. we had gotten a lot of sun and i still had a little bit of a hangover. but we saw this woman outside this tienda near the beach selling – you guessed it – tostadas, and we made a bee line over there and parked ourselves in front of the tienda at this table and ate tostadas. then after a while, when normal people would have left, we ordered more food. we people watched and it was hilarious seeing all the different tourists walk by and look at us like we were crazy because we were sitting in front of the tienda eating the local food and not in one of the restaurants that all the tourists were eating at. then we see this one guy by himself walk towards the beach, then back again, then back in front of the tienda and he finally orders food from the lady. he sits down and i start talking to him, then he comes over by us and orders a gallo. he turned out to be one of the coolest people i’ve ever met. his name was william, he’s 39, a first grade teacher in the south bronx in new york city, and is spending a month in monterico before he has to go back to new york to teach. he has been to monterico three times now and he says it’s such a great place to visit and stay for long periods of time. i’m thinking he’s got that right because yeah, there’s tourists and whatever, but most of them come on saturdays from antigua and leave on sunday and you don’t see a lot of them again until the next weekend apparently. anyway, we sat out in front of that tienda all damn afternoon people watching with william and meeting more of the guatemalans who live in monterico. i swear, we met half the town and the whole time we were having a great time. i think i ended up eating something like 7 tostadas and two tacos (which are actually what in mexican food are flautas) and that lady running that little stand must have thought we were crazy. plus, there was this little tiny guatemalan lady that courtney and i saw on the beach who was carrying a guacal around selling quesadilla. it was weird because she tried to sell it to some of these tourists and they looked at her like she was crazy, and we were like – hell yeah, we’ll have quesadilla! so anyway when we were sitting out in front of that tienda, we saw her again and she asked us if we had change for 100 quetzales and i didn’t and neither did courtney. then william gets out his money and he’s counting it and he goes, “i don’t have it either.” and that little old lady’s like “you have it” pointing at his money, and we’re dying laughing because william’s getting told off by this 4 foot tall little old lady. finally, he convinces her he doesn’t have it, but man, was that hilarious.

anyway, at about 5 that day we finally all left the tienda and william went on his way – he had to go to guatemala city the next day to get money and he was going to take a little vacation up to the guatemalan caribbean coast and come back down through the rio dulce, so it was sad having to say goodbye to him because he was hilarious. anyway, courtney and i walked back to bayron’s and when his mom asked us if we wanted dinner we were like – ugh, no! because we had eaten so much food.

bayron wanted to go do something again that night, so we dragged ass and finally showered and all that and we three and victor went down to some bar on the beach called “animal.” it was ok i guess...seemed to be filled with lots of tourists and pretentious party-goers. we had a couple drinks and then bayron decided we should go down to this other bar where there was salsa dancing and stuff. i drank enough that i wasn’t feeling like an asshole when bayron wanted to teach me how to for real dance salsa. it was soooo fun! and now i can pretty much half dance salsa and merengue. anyway, after a while we just sat around watching people and that was getting boring for me, so i wandered down to this hotel near the bar that had hammocks out front and i chilled out for a minute. but i was on my guard because there was this dude with a flashlight over a ways and i’m like – who is this asshole? then he comes over by me and says hello (in spanish) and asks me some stuff, and then he says he saw me and courtney outside the tienda (god, probably the entire town saw us) and then he says that i gave him quesadilla. and then i remembered who he was – i had some of that quesadilla leftover from when we got it on the beach and i didn’t want anymore after eating those tostadas, so i asked the owner of the tienda and his buddies if they wanted some. but it was all crumbled up because it was in my bag, so it was funny when they took some because they needed a bowl or something. ha. anyway, so this guy had been one of the guys i gave quesadilla too – so i didn’t feel all weirded out that he was talking to me. i guess he works security at night at the hotel where i was hanging in the hamaca. so i talked to him for a while and then went back to the other place and danced some more. we were all pretty tired, so we decided to head back to bayron’s house. there, we sat outside for a bit and watched the gazillion bats fly around us, swooping down inches from our face. that was weird. especially when you’d look up at the sky and the palm trees were silhouetted in the moonlight and you’d see these bats outlined as well flying from tree to tree.

the next a.m. was slow.....we decided on another day at the beach. oh, before we left, the most embarrassing thing happened. so, i went to use the bathroom which was off of the kitchen. the door was just this shower curtain, which was fine because i’ve used bathrooms with NO door before. and at least it was a bathroom and not a latrine. anyway, so i go in there and bayron’s dad and mom are in the kitchen, and through the shower curtain, i can see the dad coming over towards the bathroom so i cough really loud and fake-like to “warn” him that i’m in there. and he pulls this towel that was hanging over the shower curtain door and i think “oh, he was just coming to get his towel.” well, as i’m in mid-thought, he sweeps the shower curtain to the side, sees me there and it takes him like a second to register that i’m there. meanwhile, i’m trying to get out the words like “i’m in here” but trying to say it in spanish, and with that he’s like “ah!” and shuts the curtain. oh my god. WTF???? then, i have to go outside and use the pila out there to wash my hands because the mom was at the one inside. and the dad is out there in the outside shower, so i have to look at him again and i’m thinking – like i haven’t been embarrassed enough these past 9 months.

anyway, back at the beach - it was hot and despite the sunscreen we had on, you could just feel that sun penetrating down on the beach. before we walked down to the beach, we approached the tienda with the women selling tostadas and when she saw us coming she just started laughing. so we ordered more of those and told her we wanted to take them to the beach and so she lent us this big plate to carry them on. after eating those though, i pretty much had my fill of tostadas. more sand and ocean followed and we headed back to bayron’s pretty early because it was just so damned hot. later, courtney and i decided to walk back through town and get cerviche – this really good dish, it’s kind of like soup, but it’s made with tomatoes, onions, cilantro and shrimp. i don’t even know if we have that in the states. anyways, we got that to go because we had to meet bayron’s family back at their house because we were supposed to go to this other town and get licuados. so we rush back and of course, everyone’s just laying around in hammocks and we don’t even leave for like another hour. so we take this pickup to this other town and then there is no electricity so we can’t get licuados because you need a blender. so we eat more fried food and cokes and then go back to bayron’s. the family’s getting ready to go to bed and courtney and i decide to walk back through town, even though it’s pretty dead because it’s sunday. we make it down to the beach and there’s this one cantina open, but we’re not sure if we should go in there because it looks like just local guatemalans and they’re drunk and we’re not about to go in there with a bunch of drunk guatemalans. so we hang out in front of our favorite tienda on this table. we called bayron and told him to come meet us so when he came down we just hung out talking. then some big, huge guatemalan dude comes over and starts talking to bayron and then he asks us if we want a beer. so we all four go into that cantina. apparently this big dude is working security at another hotel and so after a couple beers he’s like “i’ll be back” because he has to go “do his job.” so he comes back and then some other idiot drunk comes over and he’s just so ridiculous. like i can’t imagine my life being a drunk like that. he’s just wasted, and being totally stupid. but he was kind of making us laugh because courtney and i would say something random or normal like “man, i’m tired.” and that guy would bust out laughing like we just told the funniest joke in the world. so that was amusing. anyway, i’m not even sure how many beers were had there, but i don’t even think i drank half of what was bought for us.

the next a.m. courtney and i had to leave pretty early because we had long trips back to el sal. the trip was pretty uneventful, except that it seemed to be 20 degrees hotter than it had been the past couple of days. maybe it was because we were on buses or something. anyway, when i finally got back to apaneca i was like “i miss monterico!” it was cold and raining and weird. i think we’re going back to monterico for our birthdays in september. i mean, you can’t go wrong knowing someone who lives in a really cool beach town like that. courtney and i kept saying that we should try to get third years in peace corps in or near monterico. there was also this house that nobody was living in near bayron’s and we kept saying we could buy it with our peace corps readjustment money and live in monterico for a couple years. can you imagine????

i don’t know, as much as i love the beach, there’s something about living in the mountains too. i like having my fresco nights here, even if i had to go buy a winter hat (that has a fake PUMA patch on it – hey, i’m playing the part of a salvadoran, i might as well do it in style...). i feel like i live in this little mountain hideway town amongst the pine trees and ceibas, separate from the rest of the country. that’s the cool thing about living down here in central america though....you can be at the beach one day and that night you can be in the mountains. but living on the beach in central america is something i think everyone should do once in their lives. you know? it’s cheap, it’s beautiful, it’s a really good time, and at least for now, monterico isn’t that touristed. leave that to cancun or acapulco. it’s taken me a couple days to get readjusted to apaneca though. it was raining like a banshee when i rolled back into town and it was really cold and i was thinking “how was i EVEN talking about how hot it was in monterico?”

you know, and i hate to make this entry longer, but i’m gonna anyway...... courtney and i were talking as we were sitting on the beach about how this is basically our life now. we don’t hang out with any of our friends from back in the states....they’re all living their lives as if we were still there, going about their business with their families and what-not. and yet we’re so far away, our lives are so changed, we’re doing something completely different than we were a year ago. we’re living down here in central america, speaking another language, eating food that’s different from what we’d be eating back in the states. things that were not part of our lives a year ago are now embedded in our lives now to the point that it’s just normal. like getting on a bus and having latin american music playing and it being packed with people with machetes and chickens and canastas full of corn and mangoes. and it taking forever to get anywhere. and saying buenos días and buenas tardes and things like that to everyone you pass by.

or even our peace corps lives....we can pretty much come and go as we please. if i want to go to mexico next month, all i have to do is fill out a form, have my counterpart sign it and turn it in. it’s that simple. if i wanted to go to brazil it’s just as easy. i can live on a few dollars a day, i’m used to all the cockroaches and community bathrooms and other fun surprises you find in the cheap-ass hostals down here, so it’s just a matter of filling out a form and figuring out how to get from one bus to the next. it’s just all normal now. i mean, how weird will it be to return to the states? when i have to have some kind of job where i show up for a specific set of hours and have to wait a year to have a couple weeks vacation. here we officially get 2 days of vacation a month, plus we get paid for those vacation days – even if we use them. and if we need them ahead of time, all we have to do is ask. then, technically we get one night a week where we can be out of our sites overnight without it counting as a vacation day. they set up this policy where we call this number and say where we are so that if there is an emergency, the security person knows where we’re at. but the policy is, she’s not allowed to tell anyone else, because in the past, lots of people wouldn’t call the security person because she had liberty to tell our APCD’s (in our case, rolando) that people were out of their site a lot. so people didn’t want to get in trouble from their APCD’s, so they just wouldn’t call – and that wasn’t safe. so the peace corps said, well it’s the volunteers safety that comes first, so we’re implementing this new policy where the volunteers can call this number and just say where they are. even if you’re out of your site for two days, or three days in a row...as long as you’re still in country, and you call the number, the security person can’t tell anyone, and the only way you’re going to be contacted is if there’s some kind of emergency. and so the only way you can get in trouble is if you DON’T call the number and say where you are and there happens to be an emergency and they can’t find you. so basically, it’s all up to us now. i mean, it’s all about what kind of volunteer you want to be....one that’s always out of your site, or one that’s in your site working. so we have a lot of freedom here. and i do think the more freedom you have, the more you’re apt to do what you’re supposed to be doing. i mean, sure, there are probably going to be times where i’ll call out of site a couple of days in a row, but for the most part i’ll be here unless i take vacation time.

but anyway – i was talking about my life here vs. my life in the states (past and future) and i really can’t imagine what things are gonna be like when i return to the good old US of A. i’m thinking that house in monterico is the way to go....... it’s possible. so stay tuned.

i have more pics than this to upload, but it takes forever and blogger´s being a bitch right now, so i´ll post more in another entry later!

saludos!



the dock where the boats from la avellana leave for monterico

playa monterico just before sunset

fisherman´s boat on the shore

guatemalan kids swimming in the tide pool

victor, me, eva, courtney and bayron

courtney, victor, bayron, oliver, eva

me and courtney

fisherman out in the sun

courtney, bayron & me

the lempira mindfuck

so i just got back from a weeklong vacation that i hadn’t planned on taking, which was nice. it’s always nice to get away from home, but it seemed especially nice to get away after all the things that had been going on here in apaneca the previous two or three weeks or month i guess i should say....me being sick, all the rain and mold, craziness at the school, etc. i was ready to get away and so when the opportunity presented itself, i kind of just stumbled into jumping on it. like i said in my previous entry, i was going to go back to molineros for dayana’s birthday on the 4th. that was my plan at least. the week before the 4th, one of the guys in our group sent us an e-mail saying something about some 4th of july party in honduras with some honduras peace corps volunteers. i didn’t really pay that much attention to it because at the time it seemed like such a long trip and i knew i was going to go to molineros for the 4th, and anna had mentioned something about having a 4th of july party on the 8th at her site on the beach, so i was like – whatever – when i got that e-mail. then i had an extremely tough week at the school...just frustrating...and by friday night was really not feeling good mentally. anyway, courtney text messaged me and asked me if i was going to the 4th of july party in san salvador the next day and i thought about it for a brief second. i didn’t want to go to that party because i knew it would probably be lame – just a bunch of embassy people and volunteers and it was at the sheraton hotel. and you had to pay to get in and i just thought – yeah, right. so i told courtney no and asked her if she was going and she told me no because she was going to honduras for the 4th party, then said that i should go to honduras. and then she called me and said there were only like 5 el salvador volunteers going and i should go because it would be fun. i seriously considered it and then realized that i should really go. it was a chance to see honduras and meet other people and just to get the hell out of here for a couple days. i figured i could go to molineros on the 5th for dayana’s birthday and stay there for a couple days – it wouldn’t matter what day i was there. dayana would just be happy to see me. so on saturday i decided i was for sure gonna go to honduras, so i had to run over to elba’s house and tell her and she was totally fine with it.

so saturday i was all excited about going on the trip and in-between going to ataco to use the computers at the cyber cafe there and returning to apaneca, some asshole stole my cell phone out of my bag. i’m pretty sure it was on the bus that it happened. antonio came to apaneca because we were going to go get pupusas and i told him my cell phone got stolen. anyways, we tried calling my phone from his phone and nobody picked up. so we went back to ataco just to make sure i didn’t leave it in the pupuseria. i had stopped there because it’s by the bus stop and since i know the people who own it, they always let me and antonio sit there if we’re waiting for the bus even if we’re not eating there. anyway, so we went back there and don gerardo said that he saw me put my cell phone in my bag at the pupuseria when i was talking to him and it wasn’t there. so we tried calling it again and then of course the person who stole it kept picking up and hanging up right away. asshole. i was supposed to call courtney to tell her i was going with her and that i was gonna be at her house on sunday. and i didn’t have her number written down of course, it was in my cell phone that somebody else had now. plus i had to call rolando (my program director) to tell him i was going to honduras and i didn’t have his number either. ugh. so antonio let me use his cell phone that night and back in my cuarto i found rolando’s # and had to call my other friend for courtney’s number. but it all worked out in the end. sunday morning i went and bought another cell phone in sonsonate (yeah, like i have money for this shit) and blocked the other number. seriously, what a hassle though.

so i made the 4 bus, 5+ hour trip to courtney’s site in dulce nombre de maria in chalatenango on sunday and that night we decided that we were gonna go up to honduras without meeting up with york, eric and mark the next day. they wanted to leave el poy, the el salvador town that is one of the honduras/el salvador border crossings, at noon. and we were thinking that we would be on the bus the entire day and not get to gracias (the name of the town in honduras we were meeting these other people) until night and be all tired when we got there. so we called those guys and told them we’d just meet them in gracias. so at like 5:00 a.m. on monday we left courtney’s site and headed on up to el poy. it was about a 3 hour trip to el poy and once there we decided to get breakfast at some comedor. i had to go to the bathroom really bad so i asked the woman there if they had a bathroom and she said yeah and pointed at this door with a curtain in the back. that’s the thing about places here...unless you’re in a chain establishment (like pollo campero, something similar to kentucky fried chicken) most places are run out of people’s homes. so using the bathroom in a comedor means you’re just using the family latrine or bathroom in their house. so i go through this curtain and i’m now in this family’s home and i walk through and there is this other woman sitting on this bed with no shirt on or anything – she’s just sitting there, boobs and all, and i’m like “um, buenos dias” and walked super fast out the door in the back of that area. seriously! what the hell?? so then i’m out on this patio and i’m guessing the bathroom is somewhere on the other side where this other “room” is and then i hear this kid yelling in spanish that i have to wait a minute because he needs to pour water in the toilet. that’s another thing – lots of places here don’t have running water, so to flush the toilet – if there even is a toilet - you have to pour a couple guacals of water in there to manually flush it. so finally he comes out of there and i go in and it reeks big time. there’s not even a door on this “bathroom” – it’s just a cinderblock room with a toilet. whatever, though. what an ordeal. i felt like it took an hour to get that whole thing overwith. anyway, so back in the comedor i see the woman that i had seen shirtless on the bed now behind the grill cooking tortillas and beans and i’m like – how weird is this?

so courtney and i left there about an hour later and headed for the border crossing and after some confusing directions were finally in honduras. we exchanged our money – i exchanged $60 and got something like 1,100 lempiras – the honduran money – back. which was fine because before we got there i did the math and it’s like 18.50 lempiras to $1 (el salvador uses the u.s. dollar as its currency – that’s another story altogether...seriously, how can another country have money that says another country on it??). so we found the bus for nueva ocotepeque which was the town we needed to catch the bus for santa rosa copan, and from there another bus to gracias. so on the bus ride we’re like – so how much is this bus ride. and it’s like 15 lempiras or something and we’re thinking – is that right? you should have seen us. it was like the most difficult math problem – i don’t even know how to explain how confused we were. and it got even worse when we got to nueva ocotepeque because we had to buy tickets from this office for the bus to santa rosa copan and that ticket cost 50 lempiras. then i bought a gatorade and it was 20 lempiras. and it felt like we were just throwing these huge amounts of money away. it was such a psychological thing because it was like we couldn’t get around thinking that 20 lempiras was 20 dollars. the entire trip to santa rosa copan and on to gracias we were so preoccupied with whether or not we were going to have enough money to get back to el salvador. because in courtney’s travel book the hotels that were in there – backpackers places – were like “rooms are 250-350 lempiras a night” and even though we each had around 1,000 lempiras, it seemed like 300 lempiras a night, for two nights, was going to be a lot. then our bus ride from santa rosa copan to gracias was like another 30 lempiras. and we were so freaked out. but it was super hilarious at the same time. so when we got to gracias we walked around and found this hotel and the guy said he would give us a room with two beds for two nights for a total of 360 lempiras...and we were like “huh?” so like a bunch of idiots we finally just said “we just need to count our money” because it was hard to figure all that out while the guy was standing there. and once we sat down and counted our money and looked at the value of the lempira in dollars it was ok. because it was basically $20 total for two nights. i just had to look at the 100 lempira note and think of it as $5.00. and they don’t really use coins there – i mean, we saw a couple people with coins, but things are all even lempiras. something doesn’t cost 1.50 lempiras. it’s all in even amounts – like 20 lempiras or 100 or 50. but talk about a psychological issue – it was such a simple thing to do, because we knew the exchange rate, and it all added up, but it was so hard not to think in terms of dollars. i’ve traveled to other countries before and used other currency but it was always similar to the dollar. like the british pound and the euro – it’s easy to figure those because they are along the same lines as the dollar, even though they are worth more than the dollar. this lempira thing took some serious thinking and the more we analyzed it the worse it was to figure it out. i felt like such a dummy, using my calculator on my cell phone every five seconds to try and make sure we weren’t getting ripped off. so stupid. i’m sure it’s totally easy for other people, but for us we were totally dumb.

so after that whole thing, we decided to walk around and try to find some food or something. it was around 3:00 p.m. and we knew york, mark and eric wouldn’t be there for a while because it had taken us almost 5 hours or something to get to gracias. plus honduras is an hour ahead of el salvador (so is guatemala....it’s not daylight savings time or anything. york explained it to me, but i didn’t really get it. i guess they go an hour ahead because of the length of the day and tiendas can stay open later or something...but i don’t know why el salvador doesn’t observe it. i guess they do this every three years here in central america – not sure about the rest of the world...i know, a crappy explanation, but once i get a better grasp of it, i’ll explain it better). so courtney and i are walking around just checking out the place and this woman is walking down the street selling cookies and courtney decides to buy some and the woman says they are 10 lempiras. so courtney gives her a 20 note and then we walk away and we decide to sit down on this curb and eat them. then i ask courtney if they were 20 lempiras and she says they were 10 and i said that i didn’t think she got change. and courtney was like – yeah i did. and she checks her pocket and she didn’t get change. and she’s like “i just walked away from her didn’t i?” and we were dying laughing because after all that preoccupation with not having enough lempiras, courtney’s just “throwing lempiras away.” ha. so we walk around more and find this place called “don quixle’s” or something like that. we go inside and it’s small, but kind of cool – like a normal bar in the states or something. it had all this cool latin memorabilia and photos on the walls. you don’t really see many of these types of places in el salvador (other than san sal). i asked the woman working there if they had food and she said yeah so courtney and i took a seat at this table. we were the only females in there except for the woman working there. there were two tables of honduran guys and courtney and i were like “well, this is interesting.” so we ordered a couple of beers and food and waited. at one table of guys i think they were having some kind of drinking contest. there were like, i swear to you, 50 empty beer bottles lined up on the table and the guys there were totally wasted. then at the other table, there were probably like 6 guys and they were talking really loudly. and on the television were these old 80’s american videos – like huey lewis and the news, a-ha, madonna, michael jackson, toto, etc. courtney had to go back to the hotel to get something and so i sat there feeling really weird waiting for her, but thinking – what the hell ever. so she gets back and after being back for like 2 minutes she realizes she left her phone at the hotel and she’s waiting for mark to call her when they get to gracias. so i tell her i’ll go back this time because i wanted to get more money. so i walk back and come back and there’s like 6 beers on our table, courtesy of the hondurans. then our food came and it was overwhelming because it was this huge plate of rice, fries, carne de la plancha, chimol, avocado, tortillas, queso, and we had all these beers. then the woman working there keeps bringing us more beers. courtney and i are like – seriously, this is so funny. the whole scene – the crazy 80’s videos, being in honduras, these crazy guys. the nice thing though was that these guys weren’t harassing us. in el salvador it would have been a different story.....guys in el salvador would have been totally trying to talk to us or whatever, or being totally vile. here, though, the guys were just buying us rounds and totally leaving us alone. i think the only thing one of them said to us was when he asked courtney if he could bum one of her cigarettes. so later, courtney told them that she wanted a picture of them with us because they were nice in buying us beers. then they were all chatty and wanting to pull the tables together. so we did that and it was funny. we had a super good time, but in-between all this craziness, mark had called and we were supposed to meet them in the park at 9:00. at that point we were kind of drunk, but knew where the park was and all that. so we went to leave there and i asked about paying for our food and the woman said that those guys had paid for everything. oh, and we also found out that one of the guys was the owner of the hotel we were staying at. so a couple of them walked with us through town to the park and i think they were mad we were leaving. so i told them we’d call them the next day or something. so we met up with mark, eric and york and took a mototaxi out to this hot springs where the first party with the honduran volunteers was.

it seemed like forever before we got out there, but once there it was really cool. they have about six or seven natural hot springs and at first courtney and i didn’t go in because we didn’t have swimsuits – i didn’t know we were gonna be swimming at these parties. but after a while we decided it was dark enough that nobody was gonna see us if we just wore our underwear and shirts in. it was sooooo nice and tranquilo in the hot water. i didn’t want to ever get out. there were some honduran families there too, and we met these two girls – they kept saying they were cousins – but one was chinese and the other honduran. they could speak english really well and told us they went to some english school in honduras. and the chinese girl could speak english, spanish and chinese and we were like – way to make us feel stupid. then the chinese girl said her dad or mom or someone in her family owned this chinese restaurant in gracias and she kept telling us to go there the next day. and we’d be like “well, we don’t know if we’ll have time.” and she’d say, “so i’ll wait for you all day. i’ll be there all day long.” and we’re like “no, you should play or do homework or something.” it was funny. we ended up being there until like 12:30 in the a.m., which is super late for rural latin america. that chinese/honduran family were leaving when we were and that girl was still yelling “see you at the restaurant tomorrow!” we got a ride in this pickup back to gracias from this dude, and i don’t know how it always works out this way – but i always end up sitting right where the stick shift is and i end up having to sit with my ass half in the air for most of the trip. ugh.

the next day we basically just got up in time to meet the guys in the park at 11:00 and head out to the second party which was at this hotel which was a little ways out of gracias. while in the park we kept seeing all these kids dressed in traditional indiginous clothing. it was the coolest thing. i think, though, that it’s something they do to keep the town interesting for tourists. i don’t think people normally where these clothes in their homes or whatever. but in any event, the clothes were traditional style, and at least they are embracing their cultural roots, unlike almost all of el salvador. the park there in gracias was really pretty too. it had this relatively new structure in the middle of it – kind of like where a gazebo would be – and several really interesting statues. we ended up having to walk all the way out to this hotel and it was god awful hot. when we finally got there and saw it had a pool, i was damn jealous of everyone who had their swimsuits. the first thing i did though was eat a hot dog. these were real american hot dogs and were woefully smaller than the buns that jamie (the honduras volunteer that invited us salvadoran volunteers, and whose site is in gracias) had had a honduran woman make for us. but they were real american hot dogs, with ketchup, mustard, onions, relish and all that good stuff. that with a beer was like the best thing in the world under the hot, hot sun. we hung out playing frisbee and listening to music – i felt like i was at a college party actually – for a while. then i decided to go over to the pool and at least stick my legs in. then megan and maria showed up so there were more of us salvadoran volunteers there. the cool thing about meeting the honduran volunteers was that there were about 5-6 of them from our staging back in washington, d.c. in september. the volunteers from el sal and honduras had staging together. then the honduran volunteers left a day before us. so that was the last time we saw all of them. so it was cool to get to see some of them again and find out how things were going with them. everyone seemed pretty cool and i met some really nice people there. we had fireworks and lots more beer and then megan, maria and i decided to leave to go get something to eat in gracias. we got a ride in a pickup back to gracias and during the trip, at some intersection the driver stopped really fast. we were standing up in the back and when he stopped, i kind of fell down and slammed my wrist on the side of the pickup and damn did that hurt. it’s super sore even now....that totally sucked. anyway, we found this place to get really good food and we got the most amazing chocolate and banana con leche licuados. you really can’t go wrong with a licuado here in latin america.... well, i suppose you can, but damn they are good. then we met everyone in our group at this other restaurant. then we went to he park around 9:00 and headed off to some other place that was lame and then back to the same restaurant we had just been in. that was where the party kind of ended, i headed back early with megan and mark. mark walked us both to our hotels and i crashed. courtney came back and we were up for a little bit and she told me she gave a cigarette to the night watchman at the hotel. ok, whatever. then when we were both about ready to go to sleep, we heard this dude talking outside our door and he was saying that he was the night watchman and he wanted another cigarette. and courtney’s telling me in a low voice that she’s scared. and i’m just like – what is going on. so finally i was like “no tengo más cigarillos” and he was like – oh, ok. and left. and we were freaked out. so we pulled this table in front of the door. we were like, well if he tries to get in, at least we’ll have a little bit of time to get up. duh. but i was too tired to worry about it any more and i was out like 10 minutes later. it had been a long couple of days.

the next morning courtney and i left on the 6:00 bus headed for santa rosa copan. i was totally not looking forward to the day because i had to go all the way back to molineros. i slept most of the way and when i finally made it to molineros i was dead tired. i had such a good time hanging out with my family though. it was so tranquilo there, even if it was a million degrees. you don’t even understand how damn hot it is here. just a sun that seems to be a hundred times more powerful than in the states beating down on your face and head, and seeming to go through the roof and walls of the house. it’s crazy. that night i was drifting off during one of ana’s telenovelas and finally i hit the sack around 8:00 and had the best sleep of my life. i’m sure there were bats and insects and whatever else flying all around me all night, but i wouldn’t have noticed if they had all bit me in the face. i was so tired.

the next day i woke up at 9:30 and i had to take a bucket bath over at mama viviana’s house because apparently molineros hasn’t had water in like 25 days or something. i kept asking why and everyone just kept saying that the water tank doesn’t work. yeah, and???? and it’s like they just accept that they don’t have water. mama vivana has a well, so she has water. but everyone else who has chorros has to fashion some kind of system on their house to direct rainwater into the pilas. and if it doesn’t rain, well then their screwed. so i go over to mama viviana’s house with dayana that afternoon and i realize i have to pretty much bathe out in the open. mama viviana tried to string up these blankets and stuff so that i was shielded from the people on the road next to and in front of her house, but it was like there was no way to be completely shielded. so then mama viviana brings out this old white nightgown that she says i can use. so i quickly pull this thing on and of course, it’s white, so it doesn’t even matter that i have it on. once it’s wet, i might as well of had nothing on. but then i was like – who even cares? so people see my ass or whatever....what’s the big deal. i think one of the most tranquilo things though is taking a bucket bath under that hot salvadoran sun. seriously, it sounds like it’d be so uncomfortable, but i’m telling you that sun is so hot...it’s so refreshing taking a cold shower or cold bucket bath around noon or so in el salvador (well, except for maybe in my site where it’s definitely not as hot).

anyway, the rest of my time there in molineros was as relaxing as ever. the only thing that was troubling me was the fact that san salvador was a mess at the moment. there were all these protests on wednesday and some police officers got shot and killed during the whole thing. when i got up on friday they were still continuing. i was planning on leaving my family’s house at 9:30 a.m. and before i did, i got a message from someone from the peace corps saying that we weren’t supposed to travel into san salvador that day because of the protests blocking all the roads leading into san sal. so i ended up staying a bit longer, but thought it’d be ok to leave on the 12:30 bus because usually what happens with these protests is they are all fired up in the morning, but then lunchtime comes and then everyone’s tired after lunch, so the protests kind of fizzle out. so i chanced it and went into san sal that afternoon and there were no problems. i ended up staying there because i didn’t feel like riding buses again. san sal was the same as always....hot and muggy and dirty. but i did finally get to see that movie “crash.” it’s weird here how they have movies here – sometimes they’ll have movies in the theaters here that are relatively new in the states as well. and sometimes it’s months before a movie comes here. anyway, that’s about all i did in san sal.

back in apaneca i pretty much chilled out on saturday, and on sunday went to juayua to eat food. i’m feeling way better now, the only problem is that i think my stomach shrunk. i don’t even know if that’s possible, but it sure as hell feels like it. i’ll have this huge appetite, like i’ll be starving....and then when i go to eat, i can only eat a little bit. and i’ll be all bummed out because i want to eat more, but i can’t – i’ll feel literally stuffed, like i just ate three plates of thanksgiving dinner or something. so i was bound and determined to eat a ton of food in juayua. i told antonio that i didn’t care if i felt full because i was craving mexican food and juayua is pretty much the only place you can get authentic mexican food around here. on the weekends they have the feria gastronomica which is food from around the world – argentina, mexico, colombia, brazil, france, sweden, the u.s. – everywhere. it’s more expensive than normal food from a comedor...$3.00 - $5.00 a plate as opposed to $1.50....but every once in a while it’s worth it. so first i go to the mexican food stand and get three tacos and nachos with frijoles and guacamole for $3.00. i scarfed those things down man. then, antonio didn’t want to eat there, but wanted to go to this comedor called “laura’s” because they have a television and it was the final game of the world cup. (also, everytime i’m in juayua with someone and we see that place they’re like – “look, it’s called laura’s...hahahaha.” and i just roll my eyes and say “yo sé.” like, seriously, so it’s called laura’s and i have the same name, what’s the big deal???) so we go there and they had some good lookin’ carne and chimol and i was like – i can’t turn this down. so i totally got a plate of that and i’ll admit, it was hard to eat it all, but i worked my way through it as we watched italy vs. france on this television, with the bee gees playing on the stereo in the background. yep. so by the end of the normal game, it was a tie and we decided to leave there and i felt like i had to be rolled out of there i was so stuffed. then we found this tent where some tables and chairs were for people eating at the feria gastronomica that had a television, so we sat outside and watched italy beat france in overtime penalty shots. seriously, i think that’s a dumb way to end a game. it really doesn’t even show who played better or anything – it’s all about luck there i think. anyway, so italy’s the champion. i can’t believe france beat brazil. that was a real shocker. and it deflated everyone around here. everyone loves brazil because brazil has ronaldinho who plays for barcelona all other times. ronaldinho is a really friggin’ good soccer player. anyway, it’s stupid though because during the first rounds of the world cup, when the united states lost, people would say to me “what happened to the united states? why don’t they ever win?” and i’m like “i don’t know, why don’t you tell me what happened to el salvador’s team? they’re not even playing in the world cup.” it’s like people here don’t even make that connection. they think because they all like ronaldinho then it’s automatic to like brazil and in turn that makes them all brazilian nationals or something. i asked antonio about this and he’s like “tiene razón laura” (i’m right) but it still doesn’t explain why people here don’t root for they’re home country. i wonder what would happen if el salvador did have a good enough team to play in the world cup. i wonder if people here would root for el salvador or if they’d continue to root for brazil and ronaldinho. that’d be really interesting. i don’t have any grand reason for not rooting for the u.s. in soccer.....i just don’t root for them. maybe because soccer in the u.s. was virtually non-existent for half my life. i don’t know. i’m not gonna pretend i’ve got a really good reason for rooting for argentina. i did tell someone here that, well, i’m living in a latin american country and argentina has one of the highest german populations outside of germany in the world, so maybe that could be a reason since i’ve got a lot of german in my family. they’re a latin american country with a bunch of germans living in it. whatever.

so anyway, back to me stuffing my face with food in juayua. we walked around juayua a while and then decided to get ice cream...mmmmm. after eating that we walked around some more and looked at stuff in the market. some couple of hours later, i decided that i hadn’t eaten enough food that day and we ended up going to this mexican restaurant and i ordered more tacos with guacamole. antonio wasn’t that hungry so he ordered a quesadilla and café and i was like “it’s not the same kind of quesadilla as in el salvador.” i explained that quesadilla in mexico is a tortilla with cheese and onions and whatever else. quesadilla in el salvador is type of bread or cake. it’s made with cheese, but it’s like cake and it’s really friggin’ good – especially if you get a thin piece. antonio’s like “yeah, it’s fine.” so after the waitress left he’s like “explain to me what the difference is again?” and i’m laughing hysterically because he still thinks he’s getting the salvadoran quesadilla. but he ended up liking it anyways. as for me, i was absolutely beyond help stuffed. i can’t believe i was able to eat that much food. i think i was just excited that i was able to eat without feeling that i was gonna get sick from parasites again. and it was mexican food, my absolute favorite in the whole world.

anyway, to end this long post – i’m going to guatemala this weekend! (i think...we´re still trying to make plans....) it would just be for three days or something, but i think we’re going to the beach, antigua and lago atitlan. i just hope figuring out the quetzal won’t be as mindboggling as the lempira!!!

adios amigos!

here are some pics of honduras....i have more of my family and stuff, but it takes forever to upload the pics...so here´s what i have for now...



little girl in the central park in gracias

this may look like just a normal pool to you, but to a bunch of volunteers who live in rural central america - it´s like gold

york and mark

courtney and mark doing the whole 4th of july thing

megan and maria

me, some honduras volunteer whose name i forgot and courtney

the el salvador volunteers - maria, mark, me, megan, courtney, york and eric

piñas in nueva ocotepeque

a mural on the side of a building in la palma, el salvador

a park in a pueblo in el salvador

NEW PICTURES (posted august 17, 2006)

me and courtney with the crazy hondurans

me trying on the fmln hat

me and courtney (that crazy looking guy on the side turned out to be the owner of our hotel)

me and one of those crazy smart girls - who was there with her family - we met at the hot springs



mark, me, york and some girl from the honduran group

these and most of the rest are of the kids dressed up in traditional clothing















the church in gracias at night (the neon cross seems to be a popular latin american thing on the catholic churches)







honduran house

view from the bus as we were leaving honduras