in the dark of the night

chriiiiistmas. i stayed with morena and her family in las delicias for christmas. we did the typical salvadoran christmas things, like eating chicken sandwiches and bashing pinatas and setting off fireworks. morena's father in law climbed this mango tree and brought down a backpackfull of mangoes.

jungle CHRISTMAS

mango CHRISTMAS

beans + avocado + cheese + CHRISTMAS

i was excited to see las delicias at night. darkness was everywhere. it is easy to forget that night should mean that you can't see where you're going. i was concerned about the large piles of animal poop that i happily avoid during the daylight. there was a half moon. you pay a lot more attention to the moon when you see it as a source of light. and lots of stars, mmm, many stars. it renewed my desire to spend at least one lunar cycle in a place where you can see all of the stars, very far away from cities. apart from the darkness, the village was very much as i expected. the biggest nightlife hotspot was the evangelical church, which was much more popular than the catholic church, probably because they have better music. i went to the catholic mass with morena and her family and i zoned out real fast. i stopped kneeling during the kneely parts and clapping during the clappy parts because i really hate clapping. after clapping for about a minute i usually get nauseous or dizzyish and have to stop. i also did not participate in the part where everyone lines up to get their cookies. man now i sound like a church party pooper. the proper praying pose here is to rest your forehead on your hand and look pained, but it's hard to tell who is moved by the spirit and who is asleep.

soccer practice CHRISTMAS

fernando jose, morena's son, plays with a sparkler

GOOOOO CHRISTMAS

mostly we ate and chatted and napped in hammocks. then morena's father in law, rupe, starting telling stories of yore about how he escaped a gang massacre where 120 people were killed, some by decapitation. he continued describing various atrocities, such as finding human heads in trash piles or watching someone get shot down from the top of a tree and falling to the ground. was this during the civil war? i asked him. no, he said, this was 2 years ago, maybe 3. uhhh what. apparently it happened in sonsonate, where i've been a few times. fernando jose, who is 4, wandered in while rupe was telling this story, and morena sent him away saying "the adults are talking." it just struck me as such a quotidian normal thing to say when adults want privacy, but i haven't heard it in the context of talking about surviving a mass gang murder.

a fruit is worth a thousand words

look how cute these bananas are! fingerling bananas!

remember the paint cards from my old house? i started putting them up on my wall here and then all the power went out and i spent half an hour taping them up in the dark. this is what it looked like when the lights came back on. i can't tell whether i like it. i think i do. it reminds me of tetris.

the guy who lives next to the clinic came up to me very determinedly as i was leaving today, shook my hand, and handed me a guayaba, a fruit which he grows in his yard. i asked him if it was ripe, and he said yes yes yes. then he shook my hand again. people often give me fruits and vegetables, but it's generally it's multiples, not a single unit of fruit all alone. on the way home, as i was examining it for ripeness, i noticed that there were some letters on it.

as far as i can tell, the letters spell "ME OTS." what the hell does that mean? i also tried to read it upside down as "STOEW" but the E is backwards so it cannot be. OTS is not a word in spanish. or english i guess. if the O was supposed to be a G, it could be some kind of shorthand for ME GUSTAS ("i like you"). this is pretty likely. what other messages do you carve into fruits? "thanks for helping me move?" "your baby needs to see a doctor about that rash?" maybe he ran out of space. why not choose a larger guayaba? improperly executed. i don't think i've ever received a fruit with a cryptic message carved into it before. now what do i do? i really don't think it's ripe yet, for one. he also added that anytime i want another one he will pick it for me. maybe i have to pick another one to get the vowels for this one? maybe it was because i wore a normal bra today instead of the usual sports bra.

dashing through the snow

my organization started renting a house for volunteers and i moved in too. the house is gorgeous and clean and breezy and light and i float through it with gusto. i am so delighted. sure, i am giving up some privacy to live 24/7 with volunteers, but come on, look:

this is my new secret garden

look how much fun!

the house is in a very tranquil neighborhood where instead of waking up to roosters i wake up to some other kind of bird, but i'm sure it's a more refined bird, since this area is fancier. also, we can see the brand new skyscraper called "the future tower" from our backyard. the future tower lights up at night just like philly's cira center. it is quite pretty. the future tower unfortunately emanates muzak during some evening hours. however, the next-door neighbors have a very elaborate fountain/waterfall system in their backyard which provides the soothing sound of moving water.

the most important part of the move is my new location relative to a special landmark. today i went to get a lighter and on my way back chatted up the guardian there. his name is ruben. they were having a party with diplomats and i asked him to invite me next time. he laughed but i was serious. i told him i can be the diplomat of a tiny, ethnically ambiguous country so no one will doubt my presence in such an esteemed hall. i bet christmas will be a big deal there.

comes from somewhere

i have recently discovered what lou discovered on his trip to china in january 2001: poinsettias are trees. like lou, i was overflowing with smiles. poinsettia trees are in full bloom now in el salvador. of course they are trees. of course they are trees that bloom in december. this is obvious now, but i had never spent much thought on the origin of the ubiquitous christmastime poinsettia-wrapped-in-cellophane. the more you know.

today a woman in the community was telling me excitedly about how her 4 year old and 7 year old daughters went with her to cut coffee. sure, that is amusing, children make amusing day laborers. she then excitedly showed me pictures of the event on her cameraphone. i thought, this is some kind of moment of clarity. you might ask, why does she have a cameraphone if she makes roughly $1.50 an hour cutting coffee, a job that will not last more than a few weeks? do not ask that question. she has some other inconsistent sources of income of course - selling handicrafts, maybe money from family in the US. but the moment is typical. people with dirt floors may have televisions, and sometimes dvd players. this confuses americans who visit. do not be confused. if you live in a house with a dirt floor in a village in el salvador, your desire to connect to the larger world is probably very strong. best way to do that? radio, tv, sweet american pirated dvds and their fanciful worlds of pretend. it's the easiest way to connect to the outside reality and also join in the outside fantasy, the promise that with all your new shoes and gadgets and t-shirts you can forget about the fact that you went into early labor from shock because you saw someone get shot outside of your house.

yesterday i met an 11 year old girl named marta. she was very bright, going into 6th grade, but she said sometimes she didn't have time to study. why's that? she gets up at 5am so she can make coffee for her mom before she goes to work. then she has to make breakfast for her siblings, clean up, soak the corn, go to the mill and get the corn milled, make tortillas, etc etc. 11 year olds - busy little beavers! she has an older brother but obviously he cannot do any of that as it is girl work. she said she liked drawing, and that although some people found it difficult, it was quite easy for her. i snuck her two big H1N1 posters from the training we were giving and told her to do some drawings on the blank side and come show me. i asked her what she drew with, and she said a pencil and sometimes colors but she didn't have any colors right now. it's hard not to feel guilty that at her age i was taking weekly art lessons and my mom brought me to meet the town watercolorist and i had all kinds of brushes and pastels and colors and encouragement and marta has a pencil and no time to draw. well, now i have a box of colored pencils with her name on them, and depending on how the epidemic goes, a lot more H1N1 posters.

smattering

today at the grocery store there were free samples of vodka and tonics. pretty ample as well. but there were also samples of butter cookies. i had 3 kinds of butter cookies and zero vodka and tonics but i appreciated the offer nonetheless.

the grocery store was also offering an interesting sale combo: some kind of lysol spray taped together with...pantiliners. how is that for gendered marketing. there are also some really irritating new fashion billboards up that say "buy something just because you are depressed!" or "feel like a goddess when you put on high heels!" or feel like a cripple. just saying.

whilst frolicking at the clinic, carolina, who you may remember from before, asked me "what is that on your face?" hm, i thought, i must have smeared a something on my face. here? i asked. no, there. oh right, there is a zit on my forehead that i had considered barely noticeable really, but carolina has eagle eyes apparently. i told her, oh, that is a zit. what is a zit? she asked. ummmm. ehhh searching for culturally appropriate answer that will make sense to a 4 year old "it is like a volcano," i explained. she made a weird face. i did not elaborate.

apparently the guys at basketball were asking where i was the last two weeks because they want to bring their female friends too. ballller.

no fly zone

so i went home for thanksgiving. i flew out of guatemala, not el salvador, because the airfare is roughly twice as expensive from el salvador. on my way back to the states, the bus stopped at the border in el salvador and an immigration official came aboard and looked at passports. it seemed he didn't like mine when he looked at it. then he took it and reassured me "i'll be right back." yeah take your time WHAT ARE YOU DOING OH NO AHHH. then he came back and said "can you please get off the bus." no i won't get off FLOOR IT AHH. as it turns out, my completely faulty assumption that aug 20 - nov 19 was fewer than 90 days slapped me real hard. $114.85. why the 85 cents? really? i was two days over my tourist visa. i was very angry but i really could only be angry at me, and that made it worse. plus, the whole bus had to wait for me. it took a shockingly long amount of time. they stamped my passport with a very unfriendly stamp that said "you have 5 days to get out of the 4-country zone." then they released me and we drove across the bridge into guatemala and they stamped my passport "you have 4 days to get out" and the official asked "when are you leaving the country" and i said "today" and she said "good." thank you for your hospitality, central america.

it was chilly in america, and sometimes even cold. i did not appreciate that. i did, however, enjoy casually tossing toilet paper into the toilet, slurping greedily at public water fountains, ordering tap water at eating establishments, and pie for breakfast and lunch and later. i liked that there were no flies. i accomplished little and didn't see all of the people i meant to or do all of the tiny errands and collect all the small things i yearned for. i distributed the horchata i made with vilma, and people liked it or did not like it.

but most importantly, i learned how to change a tire. i heard a loud bang while driving in dc, the car got clunkety and made sounds of stress, and the tire deflated. i pulled over safely and all that and stared at it for a few minutes, seeing if perhaps it would transmogrify. nothing. i called roadside assistance and they estimated 50 minutes. while waiting, i decided to fiddle about with the tire, because i had that one experience where creepy whatshisface private investigator kinda taught me how to do it but wouldn't let me actually do it ("id hate to see a woman changing a tire by herself") yeah, well id hate to see a man get punched in the face. the tirechanging in dc went swimmingly. various dudes on bikes and in pickup trucks approached to rescue me but mumbled "oh you seem to have it under control" and shuffled off. when the geico dude got there, he said, i just want to shake your hand, you are the first woman i've ever seen take the initiative to change it yourself. well, i'm glad he'll never be able to say that to any women changing tires from now on. all he did was screw the lug nuts on tighter, probably because my fragile lady hands were too slippery what with all the scented lotions. i admit that he tightened them much more thoroughly, but he also used a drill, and that is cheating.

now i am back in el salvador. i am wearing a purple dress and flip flops and i sweated a little bit on my way back from getting groceries. the guardians on my street were extra enthusiastic today. however, i am probably moving soon. anyway, blogging hiatus is OVER. oh, an update in the spending money on good food campaign: today i spent $19 on groceries and $11 of that was a 2.5 pound bag of prunes. yayyy!! next time, almonds.

this is what i did at home!
i broke the cork and almost totally ruined this bottle of wine which had been brought from spain by my family's spanish exchange students
but it turned out fine

i wasn't even hungry in this picture