Merry Christmas

For Christmas this year I accepted my boss's invite to an open house type party on the 25th not because I really wanted to celebrate Christmas, but because I wanted to see all my Peace Corps buddies and so that I didn't have to be lame and lonely. The side effect of that decision was that there was no transport to/from my site on the 25th, so I had to leave and go somewhere for the 24th, which can be a little crazy here.
The decision I made was to ride my bike to my friend Sam's house in Candelaria which is about 15Km or about 10 miles. It wasn't too rough a ride, but it was windy, and with my luck the wind was blowing right in my face and slowing me down to a crawl. But I made it after a little work and got to Candelaria. I was a bit on the hungry side after that long ride and the small lunch I had to avoid a stomach ache. I had completely forgotten that dinner on the 24th is often eaten very late at night. What I was also pleasantly unaware of until getting to Sam's is that his family intended to take me to mass with them. We went a bit early, which directly contradicts everything that I have come to expect of timeliness in El Salvador. So Sam and I went over to hang out with Sarah, the former volunteer there who was visiting her old host family, and to kill the time. To my utter surprise Sarah immediately introduced me as jewish, which flung her host father into a tirade about why my "race" insists on inculcating hate in their children and murdering arabs. I just sort of smiled and waited it out. Then I went to church and played the nice catholic boy attending mass. Then they got communion all ready and my stomach decided to remind me just how hungry I was. It was screeming at me "you go get that wafer, you suck it up and get me that wafer!" Never in my life have I wanted to receive communion more than I did on Christmas Eve.
Then the morning of the 25th we hopped a ride with Sarah back to San Sal and got ready for the party at Bryan's.

Always Surprising

After five years living in a fraternity house and more than a year and a half in The Saviour I thought I had seen just about every random thing that I could see. On the 22nd I saw something that brought the two together like never before. I was invited along with some of the young people in my community to go to a pool/restaurant (think tiny water park). The first surprise, which in all honesty shouldn't have surprised me, was that a church group showed up and set up a portable mass in the middle of water park. Only here would anyone think to combine pools and mass. I felt a little guilty because I was there with my buddies and we were drinking a bit, though trying to be a bit inconspicuous. Nothing says El Salvador to me like a nice jewish boy having a beer in the middle of mass.
Then in the middle of all the madness I spied someone in a shirt that looked a little familiar. On closer inspection it said "Semper Pi". I realized rather quickly that it was an Alpha Epsilon Pi shirt that was a knock off of a US Marines shirt. I had seen that shirt before at a convention so the rest of it I could recite from memory, "The Few, The Proud, The Circumcised". I decided then and there that he had no idea what he was wearing and it was my duty to inform him. Luckily I knew the word in spanish for circumcision and was capable of fully explaining it to him. He seemed incredulous at best upon being informed that he was wearing a shirt advertising someone had sliced him up a bit. Then he one upped my by changing into an AEPi Stands With Israel shirt. Yes that is correct, the very same shirt that was sold at convention and given to all the brothers that went on birthright. I had to explain that shirt too. I had to explain that almost all my friends from college had that exact same shirt. Then the incredulous Salvadoran started asking me all about what Alpha Epsilon Pi was, which led to me explaining fraternities a bit, and realizing that the relatively simple act of explaining a circumcision led to a full scale discussion about fraternities to a Salvadoran who had never heard of either before in his life. I was in a bit over my head and I gracefully bowed out when one of my friends called to me.
The rest of the day was spent in the pool or on the water slides with my buddies and their kids. I never thought playing in a kiddy pool with a 2 year old could be so much fun, but I learn new things every day here in El Salvador.

Fiestas!

Ok so I have mentioned to a few people that my town has been in the midst of Fiestas Patronales, or the yearly patron saint festivals. The time of year depends on who the patron saint of the town is, but by some happy coincidence my new town and my old town have the same saint and therefore the same dates for fiestas.

My current town, El Porvenir, has a larger and more full schedule for the fiestas than my old town though. It all started a little while back with the election of the queen for the fiestas. I was invited to sit at the table of honor, not really knowing what to expect, but not really wanting to turn down an invite either. So I showed up on time, which was foolish because lets be honest, its El Salvador. Well to my surprise it turned out to be a full scale beauty pageant. I was a little shocked to see how young the girls looked, and really shocked when they started announcing their ages, chest sizes, waist sizes and weights. I mean I didn't need to know that the sort of cute one was 14 and only weighed 98 pounds. That was what got me, there was no second thought of parading a bunch of underage girls in front of 100s of ogling men. Needless to say things weren't all of that calibre.

Most of the activities are small parades for the various queens and such. Some are parades with kids in masks like above. Others are just people doing dances and enjoying hearing themselves on microphones.

My favorite event was a BMX bike show where people were doing flips and such. I mean these were amateur Salvadorans that they brought in. Not all of them did flips, lots just did basic jumps or took their hands off the handles. They guy pictured got major air and did a flip over another guy. I almost lost it when I noticed he was close to hitting the flags and then almost clipped the guy below him as he came down. You can see he is coming in a bit low. After that there was a skateboarding event, all part of extreme sports day. I didn't really enjoy the skateboarding as much, but I did get out of the sun for it, which was nice. Plus there was good music for the skateboarding.

One of the days was Tropical Invasion, which just meant lots of live bands, none of which were even slightly tropical. I enjoyed the first one which was a ska band of sorts. Last night there was a rock band in the park which I listened to for a while until I could hear my ears ringing from the volume and then left. They were good, but I don't understand the Salvo obsession with volume.

I bought a bike and today I am off on my bike to have a meeting about improved stoves then hand out permission slips to kids who I am taking to the camp later this month. Fun stuff.