i'm also learning to play the guitar

today a guy came in to the clinic with his wife and daughter. he is starting a cooperative down the road that will take in ex-convicts and parolees and give them a place to live and teach them skills. apparently, when you are out on parole, you are barred from regular employment or something. his project isn't off the ground yet, but he works at a call center for AT&T, speaks good english, seems determined. they came to the clinic because his daughter had a few scratches on her face and it slowly came out that her mother had been hitting her with a stick. hitting your kids is normal here, but i think the stick is not. they also brought in a one month old siberian husky puppy named tricia with lil blue eyes and she was all fluffy and she ran across the yard and fell in a hole and i scooped her out.
this morning about 500 soldiers marched past the clinic and no one knew why, but most guessed "exercise." the soldiers were coming down the hill in two columns on the street about 20 feet apart. a woman with a red umbrella and her little daughter with a little yellow umbrella were walking up the hill between the columns and i thought it was very beautiful. the soldiers were very casual, smiling, laughing, twirling their rifles all about.
last night we went salsa dancing. the band was called salsalvador, get it, salsa, san salvador, i love this stuff. it was a ginormous band and quite a posh scene. friday nights at this bar are "high heel nights" where ladies with high heels drink for free. needless to say, i wore chacos. next time i will bring a man in high heels and see how they feel. i talked a bit with a korean-brasilian karate instructor who was in san salvador because his students were in an international karate tournament here. i did a bit of dancing, but the caliber of dancing was quite high and the gentlemen dancers were not as tolerant of my whimsical moves as they are in dc.
as far as work, i've been helping to give some talks about dengue fever to different sectors of the community. this month is budgeting month in the micro health insurance program YAY!! i am confident that i can spread my passion for hoarding money to the women in the program. we're also going to plan some talks on HIV/AIDS and sex ed for young people because their mothers are asking for it ("not sexuality, just, you know, information"). most people marry the first person they have sex with. 95% of women in our community have their first child between the ages of 14-19. WHOA HEY.