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. 

Under the Weather

You'll be pleased to know that the title of this post is indeed an intended pun. I was feeling pretty bad a few days ago, have rallied, am well again. Aaaaannnd the payoff: 

Hurricane Matthew has been harassing centroamérica all weekend. The storm counts among its casualties one blue Samsung cell phone and a usb internet connection.  I left my window open a bit the Friday that the rains started and came home to a very damp library and some deceased electronics…The rains, predicted to end Sunday have now been extended through Tuesday. Which means that my laundry, which I so boldy hand-washed on Sunday, will never dry (honestly the extra rinse will probably do it good…I don’t think I did a very good job). Luckily my new raincoat protected my torso this afternoon as the rest of me was swept away in the rain during an epic seafaring adventure to Citibank.

R.I.P.

Inappropriate joking aside (too late!!), as of yesterday the floods had claimed one official victim in El Salvador. Considering the past tragedies that have resulted from similar floods and the lamentable emergency response system the new government inherited, this is actually quite positive. Still I think its important to remember that heavy rains, the likes of which many experience in the states as a large inconvenience (as I have), can be catastrophic to communities without the infrastructure to manage such emergencies. 

I think I’m making progress food-wise. Yogurt has been a big hit thus far, as has Special K, powdered milk, granola bars and trail-mix. I even bought some apples, although cleaning them is hardly worth it; I’ve gotten bananas a couple times but they come super ripe here, not the greenish way I like. Is that silly? Yes…Today at the comedor I had tortillas filled with cheese and fried (?) in…something…unclear. NOT the same as pupusas, for whatever reason. I also had pizza hut this weekend for maybe the third time in my life, at a graduation party for a newly licensiado. I also tried dorritos with beans. Nouveau comida típica, maybe. (I don’t want to capitalize the D in dorrito because I feel it gives them too much credit, but by not doing so am I letting them enter into the vernacular like Kleenex and Xerox and Band-Aid? Oh my.)

I’ll leave you with some good advice:

Murals at the National University

Algunas cositas más

Saludos todo@s!

All is well here, all is warm.Yom Kippur passed me by this year, desafortunadamente, but I've found comfort knowing that next year, just like this year, I can open up my prayer book and read that this year I was inadequate, next year I will be better.

I've just gotten access to internet at home now via one of those prepaid USB drives. I wont have it always because it doesn't belong to me, but I'm sure that the intermittent access to facebook and megavideo on evenings and weekends will really add a lot to my life.

I've settled into my room pretty well, with the handy edition of a mesita gracias a my landlords/house fam and nice layer of dog hair gracias a my new best friend. The food situation is a little complicada. At home, I'm not really up for cooking very elaborately thus far, plus I've experienced at least one power outage and I think the refrigerator experienced it as well, or so my carton of milk seemed to tell me. Luckily my yogurt is proving heartier than the aforementioned milk, and Super Selectos is fully stocked with over-priced dried fruits, nuts and granola. Eating out como vegenteriana, rice and beans and cheese on the side has become a lunchtime staple at the nearby comedor. On good days there's chili rellenos con queso, or tortitas de orroco (yummy little egg and veggie patties). In case you were wondering.

My cell phone has been experiencing technical difficulties, or rather my cell phone provider doesn't seem to be much up for providing. I may have to get a new one with a different provider, because so far there is at least one person (with a different provider) unable to call me but who I can reach just fine. And the problem has been diagnosed to be on my end---why would service problems mean that I can call someone but they can't call me, I ask you?? Insanity. We went to the mall to address the situation at one point, to no avail. But the mall, my goodness. Apparently it's the largest shopping center in Central America, though I'm not sure how to qualify that given that it's really a collection of the same handful of store multiplied throughout (these include: Mister Doughnut, Regge, and Pollo Compero among others), kind of like eight copies of the same shopping mall stacked on top of one another.

I've met some super cool folks, eaten some outrageously delicious homemade bread, and seen some groovy music. Workwise, I've already got my hands pretty full of things to do, all of them engaging/exciting/interesting and whathaveyou.So until next time...

Hilary