- Got up around 7:45 to go to the bathroom, then went back to bed til 8:30. As everyone else had been up since about 5am, Tomasa was concerned that I was sick. We’ll see if my body changes to fit the Salvadoran schedule, but for right now I don’t have any plans to give up my habit of sleeping in on Saturday mornings.
- Started washing my clothes all by myself, then of course Gilma came and helped me. Also tried my hand at getting (green) oranges down from the tree using the net-on-the-end-of-a-really-long-stick thing – only ended up getting one, but Gilma had already gotten all the easy ones. The mangoes are too high for that tool to reach, so you just have to wait until they fall out of the tree.
- Went into the office for a few hours in the afternoon to enter some of the old inventory/ delivery data into “the machine,” as Armando calls it. Stopped in the little store on the corner in San Marcos (which Gilma calls “the super”) to buy some batteries, which cost $1.50 for two AA – seems really expensive to me, but perhaps that’s a normal price?
- Left the office around 4pm and headed to Ventura’s place in La Papalota for Fabi’s 3rd birthday party. It was very much the same routine as the one I went to my first week (for Bea, Iris’s daughter) – started out with sandwiches made from a sort of creamy chicken coleslaw on white bread, then the piñata (the competition to get the candy that falls out is fierce), then cake, then presents. With plenty of pictures being taken throughout. The birthday parties have many of the same elements as ones in the U.S., but the atmosphere is different in that no one seems especially excited and the birthday girls aren’t quite as much the center of attention (although perhaps that’s because both of them have been quite young).
- The coolest part of my day came just after the birthday party, when I got to go on a little backcountry bike ride. Gilma just sort of said “Liliana, get your bike, we’re going to where María lives.” For some reason I thought she just lived on the other side of the soccer field, but after a few minutes on the little dirt alleyways of La Papalota we were out in the middle of fields of crops, where the scenery was just beautiful as the evening light hit the volcanoes to the north. Then we came to a small gully that had filled with water from the recent rain and decided to bike right through it, which of course resulted in nice black mud splattered all over my legs. All of a sudden the old train tracks appeared and the narrow trail followed them for a while through some groves of tropical-looking trees that I didn’t catch the name of. It was nearing sunset and I could not imagine coming back on this trail in the dark, but I had that wonderfully adventurous feeling of seeing a new place for the first time, getting to go somewhere a normal tourist never would, doing something a bit dangerous, and not knowing where the hell I was, but being with people who did. As it turned out, we didn’t actually go all the way to María’s house, but just to the dirt road that led to her community (La Noria?), at which point she went further south while we turned to the north, then got on the Carretera Litoral back to San Marcos and La Papalota. I think we were south and just to the west of Tierra Blanca, but of course I can’t quite figure it out from my maps. Will have to see if I can get Gilma to go exploring with me back in there sometime…
- Got our stuff (including Tomasita, Rosi, and Monica) from Ventura’s house, then headed back to El Mono. It was well past sunset by that point, almost pitch dark. I can barely even tell when there’s a cow along the side of the road, but Gilma stopped suddenly because she recognized one of those vague shadows as her young bull Bonito. So Rosi climbed onto the center bar of my bike and Monica climbed onto Tomasita’s and we pedaled the rest of the way home as Gilma dealt with the wandering bovine.
- I took a shower, ate a massive amount of salad, two tortillas, and a tamal, then spent a while playing around with Gilma and Monica and Rosi, taking pictures with Gilma’s phone and then my little camera. My Spanish has improved enough that at least I can interact with people much more, even if I still can’t communicate fluently.
- Then I wrapped up the box of markers I got for Rosi the other day with a piece of yellow paper I took from the office and some ribbon from the “Liliana, I love you” thing she made for me a while ago and left it on the outside table for her to find tomorrow morning – hope that works out well.
- Catch up on journal, Bible, bed.
New Words:
mezcal = net
turón = icing
grip = agarre
Cast of Characters:
María – youngest of Gilma’s sisters
Óscar – María’s son
Gilma’s siblings, in approximate age order:
1. Mario – La Papalota
2. Dora – Houston
3. Gilma – El Mono
4. Ventura – La Papalota
5. Candi? – Houston
6. María – La Noria?
7. Abel – La Papalota
8. Memo – Houston
Filed under: Uncategorized
