Expect The Unexpected

I have been living in El Salvador for almost a year now. I had two months of Spanish classes, but other than that my language learning has been very hands on and not so much hitting the books. I am not fluent, but I am light years ahead of where I was when I first got here. I feel pretty confident with the Spanish I know, and most people go easy when speaking to me. I appreciate this. But everyone has miscommunications in any language, fluent or not. (Remember the time I thought I was going fishing with people in my community? And I show up at their house only to sit with them for 7 hours and then be asked to kill a chicken for their entertainment? Classic.)

It had been a while since I had had a serious translation confusion. This brings us to last month. I was visiting my friend, Joelle, in her site. She lives very close to me, only two communities up from mine, so I visit her often. She lives with her host family, and when Joelle left the room they called me over and in hushed voices told me of their plan to throw Joelle a surprise party for her birthday that was coming up. They asked me to invite our other friend Carolyn. I told them I was in. I explained the plan to Carolyn and she said she was in as well.

A week ago I was in Joelle's site again for an unrelated birthday party. Again when Joelle had left me, her host family came up to me and we confirmed the plans. Carolyn and I would head to the community around 4pm on Friday, bake a cake with a woman, Judith, in the community and then head to the surprise party. This whole time Joelle is in the dark. Everyone was so good about keeping the secret.

Friday rolls around, and Carolyn and I take Joelle out to lunch in Santa Ana. She thinks this is the end of the birthday celebrations. Joelle heads home. Around 4pm Carolyn and I head to Joelle's site. We are lucky and get a ride all the way to the house where we are making the cake. Judith shows us in and tells us to put our bags in the bedroom. This was weird, but we just figured she wanted us to get them out of the way. We are hanging out making the cake and talking about the lunar eclipse that is going to happen the next morning. We want more information so I call my mom. While she is telling me the results of her lunar eclipse google search, Carolyn is chatting with Judith. All of a sudden Carolyn shoots me a look and mouths 'I need to tell you something!' I hang up with my mom. Carolyn informs me that while talking to Judith about the eclipse, Judith says that we are going to be able to see it as we will be up at 4am the next morning. Needless to say we were confused.

I decided to call Joelle's host family and clear the matter up. I call and Carlos answers. I tell him that Carolyn and I want to know what time the party is starting. He tells me 4 am. This is the first time I have heard this. Apparently the plan the whole time was for Carolyn and I to stay the night at Judith's house and then get up in time to wake her up by singing at 4am. I am sitting there on the phone thinking to myself, I know my Spanish isn't great, but I really didn't think it was this bad.  

So for lack of any other plan, we spent the night at Judith's. She had known what was going on the whole time, so the only people that were surprised by this were Carolyn and I. We had pupusas for dinner and went to bed early. We got up and by 4am we were headed, with other members of the community, to Joelle's house. Once we got there, we were greeted by Joelle's host family. We stood out side her door at 4:10 and started singing. There were about 20 people there. Carlos played the guitar. Another man played the base guitar. Another man shot off fireworks. All while we were singing a very long birthday wake up song outside her door. Joelle emerged from her room and was appropriately shocked to see Carolyn and I standing there with her community.

When the song finished, we all sat down and had cake and coffee and told her the story. Carolyn had to catch a bus back to her site at 9. So we walked her down to the bus stop. I stayed another night and celebrated with Joelle for the rest of day. I may never figure out how that miscommunication occurred, maybe I should crack my Spanish books open again....

Tis The Season

It has been three weeks since my last post. There are reasons. Good reasons. My beautiful computer finally sighed it's last breath, leaving me all alone. And as I have discussed before I dislike internet cafes in this country. But I have sucked it up and am at one now. I hope you all forgive my absence and enjoyed my last post. (And for all who were wondering, my dad did confirm a toilet paper competition of sorts at the beginning of my parents marriage.)  Lets begin by talking about my Thanksgiving, or Accion de Gracias (quite the literal translation).

Leslie and my one curl. 

I celebrated Thanksgiving this year in San Salvador, the capital of El
Salvador. The American embassy has a great relationship with Peace Corps in El Salvador, and every year volunteers get invited to spend Turkey day with the American families who work at the embassy and live in the capital. So I headed to the capital to stuff my face with turkey and pie in an air conditioned house and speak English. Hello nirvana? Is that you who was knocking on my door? Yeah I think it was. It was a fantastic weekend. We started off by celebrating my friend Alexandra's birthday. On Thanksgiving morning Joelle, Mike and I met up with Leslie, the embassy worker we would be staying with. Leslie is about my age and had a fantastic apartment. She was so kind and hospitable the whole time we were there. We did some cooking (I made an apple pie, which was so fantastic. I miss having an oven and being able to bake whenever I want.) We took our pies, cranberry sauce and potatoes to Leslie's friend Gerldine's house for dinner. She had prepared the turkey, stuffing, salad, more potatoes and lots of wine. It was a great evening.

 Melida

The next day I headed to the Embassy for a craft fair. My host mom, Melida, made a bunch of dulces for me to sell for her. I will write another post about dulce making at a later time. We did ok, but did not quite sell out all of the sweets. Turns out Americans don't care for sweets that consist of mostly sugar. Go figure. No worries though, Melida was more than grateful for all that I did sell.

When I got back to my community, a friend of mine gave me a call and asked if I wanted a Christmas tree from his property. I said yes, and he delivered it to my house the next weekend. My host sisters, Josslyn and Katherine, and I decorated it with construction paper. I also attempted to make a popcorn string, but gave up quickly. Those things are deceivingly hard to make. So even though it is 80 deg outside right now, this tree makes it feel a little more like Christmas.

Speaking of being 80 deg, it is now the dry season. I officially love the month of December in El Salvador. It is hot enough during the day to dry my clothes the same day I wash them, but chilly at night.  I will say though it really does not feel like Christmas time. School is out for 'summer vacation' and it is hot all day making today feel more like June 12th than December 12th. Two weeks ago I got the worst sunburn I have had in years. Like the deep red, blistering kind of sunburn. Not pleasant. And now my body is quitando a layer of skin. Again not pleasant and not very wintery. On the other hand I have a pine tree on my front porch and just got sent a vanilla sugar cookie candle which help create a Christmas ambiance.

In kind of related news, I am coming home soon! One week from today I will be headed to San Salvador to catch my 2am flight back to the Oosa. I am very excited. I will be with my family in northern, pan handle Florida for most of my trip. We are also going to make a trip to Atlanta to visit our family up there. If you will be in either location let me know!

More posts to come as soon as I feel like heading to an internet cafe again....