Christmas & New Year's in El Sal Take 2
Last year I spent Christmas in site and apart from attending a posada - basically a church service honoring the Virgen Mary in someone's house with lots of singing and chicken sandwiches afterward - on Christmas Eve, it was just like any other day. We hung out at the river and watched TV and that was that. This year I chilled with my old host family because, well, they are my favorites. Nuevo Cuscatlán changes every time I visit. The paved road to Santa Elena is finally complete and the new park is open; although I like the bottom part, I wish they would have kept the more traditional top with the cute little pavilion and murals. Construction is underway for the new library and the multipurpose space was just demolished in anticipation of a two-story building housing the mayor's office on top and a public space underneath. Santa Claus came out for the kids, and Christmas Eve meant a huge feast and lots of music. We dined on pork loin and turkey in some amazing tomato sauce with capers and green olives and I made new friends, one of whom does community development as part of the municipal government.
Roberto has added new items to his menu at La Granjita and we learned to make Teriyaki chicken wings, which will be added with the new year. He also has improved his salsa and guacamole, which I devoured for the three days the pupuseria was open as well as an inordinate number of jalapeño, garlic, bean & cheese pupusas, which are my favorite combination and great practice for my pupusa-making skills. I was really proud of myself when they lost my pupusa among the others on the grill - I must be doing something right!
Christmas day was my first ever on the beach, at a rented house in El Zonte. We went down with family and friends - about 30, give or take - and spent all day chasing waves, chilling in the pool and constantly throwing more meat on the grill. I called home and envied the real winter weather, then spent a few hours discussing conspiracy theories and ways to improve labor and security in El Salvador with new friends. I don't know what it is about people I make friends with, but they are convinced that the US government and anything that makes international news from the US is one big conspiracy. This has somehow become a common conversation topic for me in Chile, Argentina, and now here in El Salvador. The day ended with a gorgeous sunset painting the sky in reds and blues falling into the crashing waves of high tide as we all crowded back into our cars for the snarled traffic back to San Salvador and Nuevo Cuscatlán.
All too soon it was back to site for women's group meetings and the new year. I suppose they tried, but I'm not one for dances, definitely not down for hanging out with drunk teenage boys, and surely not a fan of crowds and loud noises. That all added up to a short visit to the center of town to show my face followed by a swift exit back to the blessed silence of the starry night. I figure I did my duty by attending the fiestas patronales the week before, staying until midnight and very publicly dancing at the Grupo Melao performance. I've been here a year and by now they all know I'm not much for the obnoxious public events. I made my host siblings tell me their good moments and their wishes for the next year as we trekked home, then the kids exploded their fireworks and we watched about half of The Lion King before everyone lost interest and I snuck into my room.
I thought New Year's went great - I made butter and brownies, finished Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, and watched the final two episodes of White Collar.
On the work side of things, I gave my first in a series of business talks to the women's group in La Suncuya, this one about teamwork and good communication. The end of these talks will see us buying sewing machines and putting on a fashion show (I hope). With the group in Monseñor Romero we had a blast making an entire oven's worth of banana bread. In case you're wondering, that's a recipe using about 60 bananas, 4 pounds of butter and 10 pounds of flour. It was delicious and super fun. I distributed some to my English class and kept some for myself and the host fam. I also got jell-o for the kids, which resulted in 16 cups of tasty blue goo carefully distributed throughout the day in equal portions for all. I'm always impressed that the kids are so concerned about getting exactly enough for everyone in the family - I'm pretty sure I would have hoarded my sweets as a kid. In fact, I'm absolutely certain I hoarded sweets. I also didn't tell my family when I was making cookies because they would steal half of the dough before it got in the oven and that drove me crazy.
My host dad is perfecting his bread recipe, so I got to put my butter on homemade bread tonight with dinner, and drink the horchata my host family makes. Edwin has been picking morros, cracking them open, emptying out the insides into a huge sack, pulping the fruit, picking out the seeds, cleaning the seeds and drying them for weeks. He must have at least ten pounds of seeds, which are then toasted and stuck in a blender with cinnamon and rice and various other ingredients to make horchata. My favorite is when they take the mix and freeze it in little bags as homemade popsicles. Incidentally, if you leave jell-o in the freezer because you were impatient and wanted it to set faster then promptly forgot, it gets weird and crystalline, then when it thaws it makes a mix of strangely-textured chunks and liquid jell-o. It still tastes like sugar water, but it isn't delightfully flubbery, which is, after all, the whole point of jell-o.
Other than that I'm starting to make a soccer net out of discarded plastic water bags and I downloaded an awesome app for geography from brainscape so that I can start becoming an informed world citizen by actually knowing where all the countries are and their capitals and currencies and flags. I clearly need to find more work to do in my community. The dogs are happy and the cats are catching mice and I'm getting fat. New Year's resolutions include daily exercise. Here's a funny post on resolutions my sister sent me. Can you guess what personality type I am?
New Books read: 72
Total Books: 108
Recommendations: Lysistrata by Aristophanes - this is a very short Greek comedy, free on project gutenberg, which is a hilarious account of how women stopped the war. If you like fantasy, anything by Terry Pratchett is fantastic in both senses of the word and Going Postal is a fun one about a con man who is hanged then given a job as the postmaster of Ankh-Morpork.
Roberto has added new items to his menu at La Granjita and we learned to make Teriyaki chicken wings, which will be added with the new year. He also has improved his salsa and guacamole, which I devoured for the three days the pupuseria was open as well as an inordinate number of jalapeño, garlic, bean & cheese pupusas, which are my favorite combination and great practice for my pupusa-making skills. I was really proud of myself when they lost my pupusa among the others on the grill - I must be doing something right!
Christmas day was my first ever on the beach, at a rented house in El Zonte. We went down with family and friends - about 30, give or take - and spent all day chasing waves, chilling in the pool and constantly throwing more meat on the grill. I called home and envied the real winter weather, then spent a few hours discussing conspiracy theories and ways to improve labor and security in El Salvador with new friends. I don't know what it is about people I make friends with, but they are convinced that the US government and anything that makes international news from the US is one big conspiracy. This has somehow become a common conversation topic for me in Chile, Argentina, and now here in El Salvador. The day ended with a gorgeous sunset painting the sky in reds and blues falling into the crashing waves of high tide as we all crowded back into our cars for the snarled traffic back to San Salvador and Nuevo Cuscatlán.
All too soon it was back to site for women's group meetings and the new year. I suppose they tried, but I'm not one for dances, definitely not down for hanging out with drunk teenage boys, and surely not a fan of crowds and loud noises. That all added up to a short visit to the center of town to show my face followed by a swift exit back to the blessed silence of the starry night. I figure I did my duty by attending the fiestas patronales the week before, staying until midnight and very publicly dancing at the Grupo Melao performance. I've been here a year and by now they all know I'm not much for the obnoxious public events. I made my host siblings tell me their good moments and their wishes for the next year as we trekked home, then the kids exploded their fireworks and we watched about half of The Lion King before everyone lost interest and I snuck into my room.
On the work side of things, I gave my first in a series of business talks to the women's group in La Suncuya, this one about teamwork and good communication. The end of these talks will see us buying sewing machines and putting on a fashion show (I hope). With the group in Monseñor Romero we had a blast making an entire oven's worth of banana bread. In case you're wondering, that's a recipe using about 60 bananas, 4 pounds of butter and 10 pounds of flour. It was delicious and super fun. I distributed some to my English class and kept some for myself and the host fam. I also got jell-o for the kids, which resulted in 16 cups of tasty blue goo carefully distributed throughout the day in equal portions for all. I'm always impressed that the kids are so concerned about getting exactly enough for everyone in the family - I'm pretty sure I would have hoarded my sweets as a kid. In fact, I'm absolutely certain I hoarded sweets. I also didn't tell my family when I was making cookies because they would steal half of the dough before it got in the oven and that drove me crazy.
My host dad is perfecting his bread recipe, so I got to put my butter on homemade bread tonight with dinner, and drink the horchata my host family makes. Edwin has been picking morros, cracking them open, emptying out the insides into a huge sack, pulping the fruit, picking out the seeds, cleaning the seeds and drying them for weeks. He must have at least ten pounds of seeds, which are then toasted and stuck in a blender with cinnamon and rice and various other ingredients to make horchata. My favorite is when they take the mix and freeze it in little bags as homemade popsicles. Incidentally, if you leave jell-o in the freezer because you were impatient and wanted it to set faster then promptly forgot, it gets weird and crystalline, then when it thaws it makes a mix of strangely-textured chunks and liquid jell-o. It still tastes like sugar water, but it isn't delightfully flubbery, which is, after all, the whole point of jell-o.
New Books read: 72
Total Books: 108
Recommendations: Lysistrata by Aristophanes - this is a very short Greek comedy, free on project gutenberg, which is a hilarious account of how women stopped the war. If you like fantasy, anything by Terry Pratchett is fantastic in both senses of the word and Going Postal is a fun one about a con man who is hanged then given a job as the postmaster of Ankh-Morpork.
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