At least I´m memorable...

Hey, everyone!! Ok. So I kind of feel like the last few weeks have been pretty boring. I mean, really, I usually have at least one Seinfeld-like story a couple of times per week. And for the last couple of emails, I just haven´t had ANY. But...that all changed this week. I´m back to normal!! :)

So...in the last week, I´ve spent the night outside the church with refugees from around the volcano, learned how to get to Sonsonate (the city) in buses, memorably introduced myself to hundreds of people in Izalco (my municipality...the town for the country area that I live in), made a fool of myself in the local pupuseria and with one of the high school english classes, and enjoyed (for awhile anyway) some alcoholic beverages and fun with volunteers in the western side of the country. There is other stuff, but this stuff is definitely the most fun to talk about. So....

SPENT THE NIGHT WITH REFUGEES
I´m not really sure if refugees is the right word here, but they´re the people that have been evacuated due to the volcanic activity. They´re staying in my town, outside the church. So we basically played cards all night and talked. Pretty fun stuff. Nothing really crazy happened...just letting you know that the drama continues. :)
TRAVELS TO SONSONATE IN BUSES
I bet you thought you were going to get another crazy bus story, huh? Nope! Perfectly traveled...sin problemas. :) It makes the highlights because it´s so uncommon for something like that.

INTRODUCTION TO IZALCO
So, during one of my visits to the ice cream shop in Izalco (my municipality), I met about 10 students from one of the schools. We all got along really well, so they invited me to a presentation the following Saturday in the center of town (right in front of the mayor´s office), where they were going to perform a dance. I guess every Saturday this month, they´re having presentations by 2 schools in the center of town, to celebrate their Independence. So I went. And the presentation was pretty cool because they had matching bands, dancers, and speakers. So, after the bands marched in and a couple of people spoke, it started raining. So HUNDREDS of onlookers ran for cover. Half ended up under one of two tents and the other half went under the overhang of the mayor´s office. The presentation was suspended for about 5 minutes while volunteers moved the two tents together in front of the stage (the front of the mayor´s office). So I moved to be under the tent with the other community members so we could watch the presentations. I was thinking, "Well, I did bring my umbrella in case this happened...too bad it´s in my backpack in my host family´s car!" Anyway, the tent offered enough cover for us. But about halfway through the event, I noticed that people were moving away from the front so I looked up and saw that all of this water was gathering in the fabric, causing a big bulge to form and water to come in to where we were standing. I was fine where I was standing, but it was causing people on the perimeter to be pushed into the rain. I looked around and realized that I was at least a foot to a foot and a half taller than most of the people there and I could probably reach the top of the tent. So I decided to help out. At the same moment I decided to fix this, another guy, close to my height, got the same idea and stood right where I was going to stand. He wasn´t quite tall enough, though, to reach the top of the tent, so he just tried pushing on the big bulge, which did absolutely nothing to fix the problem. So I walked over to the area, faced him, reached up to the top of the tent and started pulling while he pushed on the big bulge. At this point, everyone was really happy we were fixing this, so we were the center of attention for these hundreds of people. (Again, there was a slight pause in the program so people could resume standing under the tent.) I tried pulling lightly at first, but I couldn´t move anything, so I just yanked the fabric with all of my force and ...WHOOSH! Like FIVE TO TEN GALLONS of water just gets DUMPED on me!! And the crowd goes CRAZY!! Screaming, yelling, clapping, laughing, pointing, etc. Everything you can possibly imagine when a crowd goes crazy. And I just start laughing (I mean, after the total shock wore off!). And I couldn´t stop. And the crowd was right there with me - laughing their butts off. So I just shrugged my shoulders and said, "Well, it´s fixed! And by the way...I´ll be living here for 2 years. My name is Michelle." Nice intro. So now I´m the giant gringa with a few water problems. Buy hey...at least I know they´ll remember me, right?

FUN AT THE PUPUSERIA
So I´m at the pupuseria, my regular Sunday night hang-out now, talking with Gloria, the cook, and one of the patrons RUNS into the kitchen and shouts out, "Michelle!! You´re song it on!!" I had no idea what was going on, so I walked into the next room to try to figure out what was going on. There was a tv in there, with all of the people eating pupusas, and they had a popular dance show on. And the dancers were dancing to "I Will Survive". And I was like, "I LOVE this song!!" So I just went CRAZY and started belting out the words and dancing. All of the people eating their pupusas stopped and just stared at me with looks like, "What is the crazy gringa doing now??" It was AWESOME!! I had so much fun! And I called my friend Jen who is notorious for dancing with me in times like that, and she just had one question about the whole thing. "So how do they know that is `your` song??" :)

FUN WITH ENGLISH
Yesterday, I taught 3 english classes, or at least part of them. The teacher wasn´t there for 1, so I taught it. And the other 2 were just parts of class. But the last one, in the high school, I came upon because I was making copies in the computer lab, where class was. They were learning a song, "Truly, Madly, Deeply" (http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/SAVAGE-GARDEN/Truly-Madly-Deeply.html), in English. So I was helping them with some of the sounds that are difficult to pronounce here. Like "th" or words that begin or end with "t". They said, "How about if you sing this for an example for us?" I was like, "You mean, by myself??" They all yelled, "Yeah!!" So, after making them promise that they would sing loudly afterwards, I did. I sang an entire song in front of 40 kids, by myself. Memorable, I´m sure. :) Afterwards, they were still having lots of problems with the "t" sound, so I was like, "Ok. I´m going to draw for you." So I drew a cross-section of a mouth on the board to attempt to demonstrate where the tongue should be with the sound. But I didn´t tell them it was a cross-section. I just said, "Ok. This is a mouth." And they just LOST it laughing. They were all like, "You can´t draw at all!!" And I was like, "No, no! This is the side! Here are the teeth..." Anyway. I don´t think they´ll be asking me to play Pictionary with them anytime soon. :)

A NIGHT OUT WITH THE GRINGOS
And lastly, we recently had a western conference where all of the volunteers in the western part of the country got together to talk about projects and stuff like that. All I have to say about this is...good conference and don´t drink more than one drink if you haven´t drank in 3 months.

Oh, and one final thing. I received an email from someone last time asking me not to use the lord´s name in vein. Sorry if I offended people...just recounting a story.

Well, that´s about it for me! I hope you´re all doing well!!

Miss ya tons!