Fijese Que

Excuses, we all have them. I have to walk my dog. I need to wash my hair. Peace Corps won't let me.  Whatever your excuses may be, we all use them. Salvadorians are no exception. Here almost all excuses start with the phrase 'Fijese que', which loosely translates to 'It looks like...'. For example, a couple of days ago I ran into a woman who said she was going to come to my woman's group meeting, and then didn't. She had seemed excited about coming when I spoke with her before so I asked her why she did not come. "Fijese que estaba lloviendo muy fuerte, entonces no podía salir la casa." Translation: "I am about to give you a ridiculous excuse, but it was raining very hard, so I could not leave the house." This particular woman lives 4 houses down from me. It takes less than 3min to walk from her house to mine. I wanted to get all up in her grill and confront her about her obvious lack of umbrella, because why else would you not walk down 4 houses to attend my lovely meeting? And you all saw the picture of the women I posted last week, didn't they all look elated to be there?

Last Friday was a parade to celebrate the corn harvest in my pueblo. Many of the local community schools came to walk and represent their areas. That is the extent of my knowledge on the event. My community participated and so did Joelle's, so of course we watched. Some things in this country never cease to perplex me. For example, there was a girl, who was some kind of corn princess (and like 12 years old), and was wearing a midriff-bearing shirt on her corn float. (Picture below.)  

The grocery store in my pueblo has an imported foods section. There are about two dozen items in this section and almost all of them are wildly overpriced. Some things are slightly more odd than others, but most of it is sold in super-sized packs. Like the giant container of candied almonds for $12 or two gallon jugs of cranberry juice for $10 or a three pack of alfredo sauce jars. My favorite part of this section is that they sell pudding packs that are not that expensive. I have never been a pudding fanatic, but I guess because it reminds me of home, I love pudding here. Unfortunately I think I may have hit a wall. A pudding wall. My life is hard (please read on to the next paragraph where my life is actually hard).

I keep promising to tell you all about my water situation in detail. And I promise I will, eventually. I want to dedicate a whole post to it's ridiculousness. But as a teaser, I will tell you that I just went 4 days without having water in my pila. Four days of not washing laundry, not cleaning dishes and worst of all, not bathing. Ugh. You do not have to tell me how gross that is. I am well aware. Today we got water and it is brown. I guess brown water is better than no water? I have bathed, done dishes and washed clothes. I feel as though there is some order in my life again.


People I woke up yesterday morning and found this petrified frog in the middle of my floor. Now I just did a major clean of my house a couple days ago and nothing. Did it fall from the ceiling? Did the wind blow it through my window? Is it actually a ghost of a frog, back to haunt me? I suppose I may never know the answer. It is gross though.

Fijese que I have to go now because.... um I need to wash my hair... again. Deal with it.

Cutie- patuties from my town :)

Corn princess and a 5yo with a beard. 

Love.

Sibling cuddle sesh?