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....

More Than You Wanted To Know

Growing up my family has always used Quilted Norther toilet paper. I don't know why, but we always have. Was there some type of toilet paper competition at the beginning of my parent's marriage and Quilted Northern won? What were the criteria for this competition? Smell? Texture? Thickness? Cost? Who knows, and I am certainly not asking for the details. I have never really given this much though, not even in college when I was living in an apartment with two other girls. Truth be told we never really bought toilet paper that often because people bought it for us. It was almost as if our parents and well meaning relatives were afraid that we would forget to buy it for ourselves (what with all of the studying going on and all).

So now that I am living alone here in El Salvador, I have come to the conclusion that there is NO good toilet paper in this country. First of all 99% of toilet paper down here is scented. Gag me. You are literally going to put poop on this paper, giving it a scent is not going to cover it up. Also the scents are never as pleasant as the companies who produce them think they are. I have to hold my nose whenever I go down that isle at the store.

Also down here there is no medium type of toilet paper. You can either buy the expensive kind (for $3.99 a 4 pack) or the cheap kind (for .80c a 4 pack). Now let me just stop your scoffing right there. A dollar a role does not seem that bad, but remember that my budget is $50 a week. I have to make that stretch as far as I can.

So a couple of weeks ago, I had a little time so, I decided to compare every type of toilet paper the grocery store near me carried. This is a very important issue to me. I spent 20-30 min in the isle and I could only find ONE type that was not scented. ONE. I mean, clearly this is what people want, but really?? The unscented type I found was really cheap quality, but at least textured. So I settled on that, but when I went back last week, they were out! Such a dilemma. I just don't know what I am going to do if they don't restock.

(Semi-related side story: As I was examining all of the different toilet papers, an employee came up to me. I thought he was going to ask me if I needed any help or tell me other customers were weirded out that I was spending so much time in the isle or accuse me of trying to steal toilet paper or something. I was ready for, yet another, awkward and embarrassing conversation as I tried to explain what I was doing. Turns out this kid wanted to know if I spoke english, and if so if he could speak to me in english to see how his pronunciation was. Keep in mind I am holding like four types of toilet paper while speaking to this kid in english. I kept wondering when he was going to tell me that I needed to leave the isle. It never happened, he just wanted to speak english. I was back at the grocery store yesterday and he came up to me while I was looking for cinnamon and goes 'HELLO' and scared the bajesus out of me.)

Thank you for listening to my toilet paper rant. Aren't you glad you stopped by today?

Word of the day- Toilet Paper = Papel Higiénico

Hoja: A Memory

So after 9 beautiful, chaos filled months together, my time with Hoja has come to an end. It culminated when she chewed my host mom's cell phone in to 128 pieces. I was already thinking about finding a new home for her as her behavior was still out of control and I am headed stateside for the Christmas season, but this just pushed it over the edge. I told my host family I needed a new home for her, and they agreed to help me find one. An hour later, my host dad told me he found a family to take her in, and he would take her the next morning when he left for the corn fields. This husband of this family works in the mountains and my host dad said he would take Hoja with him so that she could run all day and be too exhausted at the end of the day to cause any trouble. So my host dad took her the next morning and all that his story implies. I am just going to let it go, because as much as it pains me to think of the reality of her fate, life is just different down here. Especially for a dog. There are no animal shelters or websites dedicated to finding dogs new homes. If a dog is misbehaving, it is taken care of in a very country sort of way. So this post is a dedication to the adorable, mischievous life of Hoja. 

First bath. Adorbs. 

Being bi-lingual is hard. Even harder when
you're just a little puppy. Gotta study hard.

Chores are also hard. For some reason she
 loved sleeping on this broom. 

All the sibs. She was one of 7. 

Doesn't every dog go through a chicken
eating phase? No? Hello?

Always on the look out. 

Bonding with Clay.

Holding court.

Look at that belly! So many spots :)

Rocco and Hoja: siblings, best friends.

Life is so hard when you are genetically
disposed to cause mischief.

I miss ya already, little buddy.

Mischief managed. 

Why Didn't I Go To School In Georgia?

One of the many questions I was asked in a recent conversation was why I did not attend college in Georgia. Strange right? This conversation has to be one of the stranger ones I have had in country. I was waiting for the bus last week with a woman from my community and her sister. The sister is from El Salvador but lives in Athens, Georgia. She is a legal US resident, (I find I don't meet too many people who are legal residents, so it is always a surprise when I do.) visiting El Salvador because her brother died a few weeks ago. She has lived in Athens for 28 years. She does not speak very good English, so our conversation was in Spanish. I will now give you our dialogue (in English) for your reading pleasure. We will call her Rosa.

(Conversation started as soon as the sisters came up to the bus stop.)
Rosa: Who are you here visiting?
Me: No one, I live here.
R: But why are are you HERE?
Me: I am waiting for the bus to go to the pueblo to buy groceries....
R: OK but you're not visiting any one?
Me: No, I work here, and am living in in this town (Her sister confirms this)
R: But WHY would you EVER want to live in El Salvador? You actually LIKE it here??
Me: I do like it here, and work brought me here. But yes I do like it.
R: I prefer the US. It's much better. Who do you work for?
Me: Peace Corps, it is a government organization that works in development
R: I have never heard of it, but you must make a lot of money. How much do you make?
Me: I actually don't make that much, just enough for housing and food
R: Ok but how much do you make? (she was very persistent on this question, and I was very persistent in not answering it.)
Me: Enough to live on. (This went on and on, she just did not want to drop it.)
R: Where do you live in the community.
Me: (I tell her)
R: Do you live with your husband?
Me: I don't have a husband, I live alone.
R: YOU LIVE ALONE? (She looks at her sister) SHE LIVES ALONE?! (She looks back at me) YOU LIVE ALONE?!
(Side note: people think it is really scary to live alone, and no one can ever believe that I do.)
R: Well I have a nephew you can marry, so don't worry about living alone and not being married yet.
Me: I wasn't, and no thank you.
R: Oh is it because you have a boy friend or because you don't like latin men?
Me: No, I have no problem with latin men, I just don't think I want to marry your nephew.
R: That's fine, we will find you someone.
Me: .......
R: So are you still in school?
Me: No, I graduated.
R: Which school in Georgia did you go to?
Me: (Confused) Um, I did not go to school in Georgia, I went to school in Massachusetts.
R: But why? All of the best schools in the country are in Georgia. Are you not smart enough to go to one of them?
Me: (Unsure of how to respond as I can see she will not be convinced that there are other good schools in the country.)
R: No matter. Have you ever lived in Georgia?
Me: No, but I have family in Atlanta.
R: Oh that's nice, Athens is better. Great colleges there too.
Me: Ok....
R: So you really live alone??

The conversation went on like this for 30 min, as the bus was late. I am pretty used to people being forward with their inquires here, but she was the most forward. And possibly the most amusing. Her shock at just about everything I said was so genuine as was her insistence that she was always right. She is here until mid January, I can only hope there will be more of this to come.