Birthday Week

Lastimosamente, Hilary's birthday week has drawn to a close. But what a week it was. I had a delicious sushi meal (with Sake, because i can! well, I always could here. But it seemed like a triumph) on wednesday. And tempura ice cream. And birthday cookies. mmmmm...

Friday i went with a friend from NYC now living here to the volcano in Guazapa, where we hiked with her family. Our guide was an ex comandante, and he showed us craters from the US-made bombs that drove out the town that once lived up there in the hills, and the foundations of the destroyed homes and churches, and the holes in the roadside where families would hide from the armed forces and death squads that terrorized the area. He showed us the guerilla encampments that sprang up once the guerillas took the area, and the cemeteries where many comandantes were buried. It was a very cool experience; my friend's uncle, who lead the expedition, is a school administrator in San Salvador and takes groups of students up there all the time, maintaining the historical memory of the war. Our guide explained how the area was repopulated after the war, and the guided hikes are one of several efforts help support the community. The hike itself was pretty intense; we started out around 8:00 AM and got back in the van (microbus) around 1:30. We hiked way up to an amazing panoramic view and stopped to swim in the river on the way down. It was lovely.

Saturday we headed out to El Zonte. We had lunch in the port at La Libertad and bought sandwich making materials which we ate down on the beach that night for dinner so that the hotel/restaurant folks wouldn't kick us out for bringing our own food. We spent sunday morning on the beach and headed back around noon. My sunscreen had spilled in the bottom of my bag, however, and even the early morning sun was enough to absolutely roast me. Luckily aloe grows here. Still i think soon I'll have an antire new skin. Maybe a new face.

FMLN 30 Aniversario

This Sunday, 10/10/10 (spooooookyyyyy), marked the 30th anniverary of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional. The FMLN comprised the popular forces that fought the Salvadoran armed forces (armed, I might add, by the United States) between 1980-1992, and with the signing of the Peace Accords in 1992 laid down their arms and became an official political party. In 2009, the FMLN ran non-FMLN militant Mauricio Funes as the party's presidential candidate, and won the nation's presidency for the first time, ending 20 years of ARENA rule. Basically, the 30th anniversary was a big deal, and a big show of force in terms of sheer numbers aimed partially at reminding the nation's right that any coup-attempt like that in Ecuador or Honduras would be met with massive popular resistance. Here's some photo's from the event: 

(it was pretty hot out; i threw this guy in here to demonstrate the cheapest, easiest way to get clean cold water here, which is sold in these little baggies...)

If you've neglected to check your calendar, I'd like to remind you that today marks the commencement of my birthday week...just putting that out there...more later!

Day Trip: From the Road

Yesterday we drove out to Cabañas, a department in northern San Salvador. It's super rural, and very green thanks to all the rain we've been having. Also thanks to all the rain we've been having, we spent most of the drive swerving into the other lane to play chicken  oncoming traffic in order to avoid the gaping potholes in the road. I'm very sorry to say that I don't really have any pictures of San Isidro or San Miguel, where we spend the afternoon, so I'm leaving you with some shots I grabbed through the window of the car to and from Cabañas. 

That's it for now, enjoy!

October

This weekend we finally saw the sun! It was so lovely outside that my bedsheets were dry just a couple hours after I washed them. It’s been quite a trying week, all told, but this weekend made up for it. Laura and I decided to see a movie on Saturday afternoon to spend a little time with an airconditioner. We settled on the sub-titled “Todo sobre mi desmadre,” which I later realized was “Get Him to the Greek,” and spent the hour or two before the next showing at the Photo Café, a really pleasant little café nearby with yummy coffee and groovy photo exhibitions. 

I’m not (very) embarrassed to say that I laughed aloud throughout all of “Todo sobre mi desmadre.” That evening, my host mother showed me how to prepare tortilla soup: with cheese, cream, avocado and fried tortilla strips. It was delicious. Later that night I caught up an old amigo who actually lead my high school delegation to El Salvador in 07, and with whom I stayed as an elections observer in 09.

            I spent Sunday in the Centro with Laura and a couple amigos. We were lured in by tales of a free theater performance by some folks from the National University. We bused to the centro, which was pretty deserted, as it was Sunday. We weaved through the still ample vendor stalls that lined the narrow streets between what would be stunning old colonial buildings that stand in precarious disrepair, through the plazas peppered with women I had to be told were prostitutes, to the national theater, one of the few buildings downtown with its glamour still intact. It turned out that the next showing wasn’t for another couple hours. We wandered into a beautiful church, Iglesia El Rosario, that folks thought I’d like to see. It’s beautiful, super 50s(ish)-modern and really breathtaking. Then we wandered into a little panderia for pastries and coffee and conversation. 

               We stepped out into the plaza in front of the national cathedral and spent some time watching a collective of circus performers/clowns; they weren’t bad at all, a bunch of scruffy looking dudes that easily could have stepped out of Olympia, juggling and making jokes, riding unicycles, etc. The play itself was interesting. It was like a portrait of daily life for the majority of Salvadoran, taken from recent headlines: a 12 year old raped by her professor, a deported gang member, a homophobe, an abused wife, a drunken and underpaid husband, a neglected grandmother, a prostitute and her baby with AIDS, a drug-runner…All portrayed very well but to no real end, there was no real message, and indeed much of the audience laughed at the sexist remarks made by the machistas in the play, and the homophobic character was portrayed in a very homophobic manner…All in all, the whole experience seemed to authentically encapsulate Salvadoran culture, perhaps in an unintended way.