The Boda

Ok, so September 17th was a monumental day for my family and me. The first of my cousins got married, which means the first of this generation in my family. It makes it all that much more monumental that I grew up with my cousin and more than anything he is like a brother to me. I can’t seem to separate in my mind that kid that I always played sports and video games with and to this day we still enjoy an unhealthy amount of potty humor and drinking stories. But more than that, it was a crazy trek from rural El Salvador to the civic center of Baltimore and back in only 3½ days.

I started off by waking up before the roosters even started crowing, which in and of itself if an extraordinary feat, and made my way through the country on the first bus of the day out of my site. It was a big game of leapfrog from one terminal to the next and somewhere in the middle I found myself wondering through the shady central market of San Salvador where I saw some things that will be burned in my mind for the rest of my life. Eventually I made it to the airport before the doors of my airline even opened, so began the giant game of sitting around airports. I think I actually spent more time waiting in and around airports than I did in planes and certainly more than I did in cars or beds. Buses would be a different story altogether. Strangely it takes as much time to trek from the Airport to my house as it took both planes including layover from El Salvador to Maryland. But it was all worth it.

I got the honor of being in my first wedding party and I got to see many members of my family who I haven’t seen in much longer than the nearly 4 months I have been gone. I never knew how tiring it was to get dressed up and take photos then stand around in the front of a wedding, nor did I ever think how rewarding it was. I wouldn’t have traded that ache in my feet for anything on Sunday night. Through the whole affair I saw family, ate good food and took some lukewarm showers. (No, I was not mentally or physically prepared to jump from the freezing cold showers here in El Salvador to the hot massaging showers in the Hyatt.)

As I said to many people before I left I had mixed feelings about rushing back to the US so soon and for such a short period of time. But it turned out alright. It didn’t give me nearly enough time to acclimate to life in the US again, and therefore it didn’t give me the opportunity to really start missing my life there. All in all I came away with a bagful of stuff to use in my life here and when the whirlwind was over I feel more like it was a really exhausting dream than anything else. A dream that leaves you with great photos and some really comfy sheets.