5 Days of GREAT memories...

So the family visited. And they lived through it. And they even LIKED it!! :) I just finishing downloading all of the photos that I took from the trip onto Snapfish, so you can click on "View Photos" on the right-hand bar and view all the fun memories. (But, FYI, the first day´s photos (from 12/22) are all listed with a date of 12/23/05.) Here is just a quick recap of some of the highlights...

12/22 (Thursday)






Family arrives in airport. 30 seconds after leaving airport, we arrive at Avis to pick up the rental car. The woman doesn´t speak in English, so I´m translating for everyone. The first word out of her mouth after locating our information is "fijateque". I stopped her before she could say ANYTHING else, and said to my family, "Did everyone hear that? She said ´fijateque´." My dad was like, "Oh, no, I didn´t hear that. I´m glad you pointed it out, but I don´t know if I want to hear the rest..." I turned back to the worker and said, "Ok. Continue." And what does she say? "Fijateque, we don´t have a rental for you." I could hardly translate what she said back to English because I was laughing so hard. 30 seconds out of the airport and that´s what we encounter. The first El Salvador experience for my family, and it begins with fijateque. So my dad says, somewhat irritated at this point, "I called yesterday and verified that they had it and they said everything was in order." Through my laughing (and crying and choking by this point - which I´m sure wasn´t helping the situation), I said, "Fijateque, we´re in El Salvador now." They all just looked at each other and my dad was like, "Ok. I need to call Avis in the US." So I gave him my cell phone and hooked him up with that, continuing to laugh hysterically. Long story short, 45-60 minutes later, we ended up getting a rental car. It was a 5 passenger car, not the SUV that we had reserved or the mini-van that they TOLD us we were getting inside after all the fijateques were done. During all of this drama, my baby bro and I were re-enacting the Seinfeld episode where Jerry is at the rental car counter to pick up his car and is told that they don´t have a car for him. The conversation proceeds like this:

Jerry: What? You don´t have a car? But I have a reservation!

Worker: I understand that you have a reservation.

Jerry: Do you know what a reservation IS?

Worker: (irritated) Yes, sir. I´m aware of what a reservation is.

Jerry: I don´t think you are. You see, a reservation has 2 parts. The first part is the TAKING of the reservation. You have that part down. You´re really good at that part. The second part, however, the HOLDING of the reservation, you just don´t seem to understand. And, that´s REALLY the most important part...the HOLDING (shaking fists to emphasize) of the reservation.

Anyway, all of this drama set the groundwork for some pretty good stories later in the trip...

So after working everything out, we made our way to the beach. It was SO nice and relaxing! We enjoyed the waves during the sunset, had dinner, then ate breakfast on the beach the next day. It was AWESOME!!

12/23 (Friday)
After having a lazy morning at the beach, we finally made it back to the car and drove to San Salvador, where we checked into the hotel, then visited MultiPlaza (a huge new mall) where we ate lunch. Baby bro and dad couldn´t stop talking about how nice the mall was, noting the waxed floors in the parking garage as evidence. Yeah, it definitely doesn´t fit into the normal El Salvador life, but it´s nice to get away sometimes by visiting.

After lunch, we left for "Centro", the area in the middle of San Salvador where all the vendors exist...the "market" as they refer to it here. However, as we were backing out of the parking spot, another car ran into us. It didn´t do much damage; just the bumper leaving some paint on our car, but it definitely took up some time to get all of the info that we needed, etc. (We ended up taking the car to a car wash and everything was taken car of, so no big deal.) Anyway, we finally got to centro, where we walked around a bit and bargained with the locals to purchase the tables and chairs that I wanted. Dad took a few photos here, which shocked me. This is an area in San Salvador where we are told to never go alone because it is so dangerous. And here my dad is taking photos with his nice camera. I was SHOCKED that nothing happened. When I told him that, he said, "What was going to happen?" I said, "Someone could have robbed us at gunpoint." He said, "What, in front of thousands of people?" I said, "Yes. It happens all the time." (although I´ve never witnessed this...just heard stories). But we managed to record some memories without problems. We tied 1 of the tables to the roof and put the other stuff into the back of the car. We were planning to visit my training community at that point, but dad didn´t think there was any way we could make it there without the table falling off. Actually, he didn´t think we´d make it out of the market without it falling off. Baby bro said that there was NO way it was going to fall off. We could drive where ever we wanted for as long as we wanted without problems. So that was an interesting discussion...dad and baby bro going back and forth. In the end, we decided to drive back to my community and drop everything off. After a 2 hour drive through terrible traffic (it normally takes 30-45 minutes on bus) with baby bro and Liz checking the status of the roof-side table every 5 minutes per dad´s constant requests, we finally got there (without problems with the table). (Baby bro didn´t let that drop for the rest of the trip.) And this is precisely when I realized that my keys were in the hotel room in San Salvador. ¡PUCHIKA! Thankfully, my neighbor was willing to hold the stuff until the next day when we arrived. So we dropped everything off and just went back to San Salvador, ate, and went to bed.

12/24 (Saturday)

We started the day by driving to my community, San Isidro, where we took a tour of the Beneficio, the factory where coffee beans are processed into the coffee that we all buy. Sonia, one of the women from my community gave the tour and I translated. At the end of the tour, she gave us 2 free bags of coffee from Cerro Verde (translates into Green Hill), where some of the best coffee in the world is grown. Or that´s what I hear anyway. Since I don´t drink coffee, I don´t really know. Anyway, then she and another person from my community drove us out to where workers were cutting down sugar cane. And we all got to try sugar cane for the first time. It definitely tastes like pure sugar!

For the rest of the afternoon, we just rested and visited with various families that I´ve lived with since arriving. And that night, we ate pupusas (good reviews from the fam), watched a Christmas presentation in the Catholic church by the kids, and attended a community dance. Now THAT was some good stuff!! Right when we walked in, this woman from my community practically grabbed my baby bro and dragged him out to the dance floor where she kept him right there. Now, this is a woman that I think will end up being some personal trainer for me based on her incredible energy level. This is the woman that said, "Let´s go running sometime." And I said, "Ok. When should we go and what will our route be?" And she said, "Ok. We can start at 5 AM and run up this HUGE hill/mountain to the next community (about 15 minutes in car), then run across to community number 2, then back to San Isidro...and then when we get back, we can lift weights and do aerobics..." This is where I stopped her and said, "Yeah....I was kind of thinking about starting out SLOWLY since I haven´t really done anything for awhile..." So she offered to cut it back to about 4 hours of working out instead of 8. Yeah....So, anyway, that´s who grabbed baby bro. And after about 30 minutes, he was like, "I HATE you!!" And after about an hour, he was like, "Tell her I HAVE to take a break!!" and he sat down. I was laughing SO hard!!

Oh, and this was the first night that dad experienced the bucket bath that I take each day. Sonia, the person that gave us the tours earlier in the day stopped by to chat, and dad went outside to take his bucket bath. In the middle of the conversation, we just heard a LOUD SCREAM from outside and then heard dad say, "That was just my LEGS!!" After that experience, he just had one thing to say: "I don´t think anyone can really fully appreciate what the bucket bath is until they´ve experienced it first-hand." :)

12/25 (Sunday)







Remember the first hour of the trip? The issues with the car? Well, we definitely had some fun on Christmas day with the outcome of that drama. We drove from my community to Juayua to go horseback riding through some mountains where coffee is grown. Getting to the actual town wasn´t so bad, but then we needed to drive 6 kilometers up into the hills to the ranch. No problem, right? I´ll just tell you when we asked a local where the road was that we needed to take, he replied, "You´re going to go up there in THAT car??" That should have been our first warning. The next 6 kilometers were, well, let´s just say quite memorable. Too many bottom-outs to count, baby bro, Liz, and I getting out to PUSH the car when we got stuck as dad put the pedal to the metal causing a foot´s worth of loose dirt to cover us, wondering whether we were going to actually make it UP to the ranch, etc. etc. etc. VERY humorous!! And, miraculously, we made it. Although, the car did sound a bit different after THAT trip...

But the horseback riding was SO beautiful. As is the case with all family vacations for some reason, I had issues actually STAYING on my house, which caused immense entertainment for baby bro. (I still stand by the fact that the problem was my crappy stirrups, which ceased to be a problem when I switched with our guide.) However entertaining I was to baby bro, he was 10X that for the rest of us. We had to go up some pretty steep inclines, and our horses were definitely feeling tired towards the top. And baby bro´s was so bad that it just resigned. He explained that he understood that horses ran until they died. And he knew that his was right there ready to collapse, carrying the 200+ pound load. He said it was panting so much that he thought the heart was going to explode and it was going to collapse right then and there. So they got to a point when the horse just stopped. Baby bro kicked it to get it moving, and it just wouldn´t move. At all. So baby bro had to WALK his horse up to where we were. No THAT´S bad. When your horse won´t even carry you anymore!! Oh my goodness. We could NOT stop laughing!!

The trip back DOWN the 6 kilometers, surprisingly, was pretty easy. We took a scenic route to visit Nauizalco, where they build beautiful furniture, then to Lago Coatepeque (right by my site), then attempted to go directly to Suchitoto, one of the most beautiful areas in El Salvador. Unfortunately, the people here don´t believe in marking roads with NUMBERS on maps or on the actual roads. They just believe in throwing up signs every once in a while directing you to CITIES. And sometimes, the signs don´t make any sense as to which way to go. So, needless to say, we had an interesting drive. When we finally got to Suchitoto, we ate dinner and just went to bed.

12/26 (Monday)








We woke up and realized that our room (and entire hotel) in Suchitoto overlooked this lake, so we enjoyed the gorgeous views and even ate breakfast overlooking it. Then, we were off to San Rafael Cedros, my training community, where I lived for the first 3 months. We visited with my host family there for about an hour, then decided to head back to San Salvador. Before leaving, I asked the fam if they wanted to drive up to an overlook of the city (San Rafael Cedros). They were up for it, so we drove up a HUGE hill that I used to walk. I mean, we didn´t even think the car was going to make it up the top. It was like riding the first hill UP of a roller coaster. But we managed to get to the top and I told everyone to get out. Dad said, "Well, let me move up a little more so we´re a little more level." Well, this meant that he had to put the pedal to the metal again, causing TONS of dust to be pushed down the hill, onto these people that were climbing the hill, causing them to lose all of their clean air shown by them choking. And we all JUMPED out of the car apologizing profusely and trying to make sure they were ok. Well, they sure didn´t seem to happy about it and just ignored us completely. So we walked back to the car and dad was like, "Oh, crap." Remember that nice car that we got from the rental place? Well, since there is so much crime in this country, the rental car places apparently have added security in their rentals. Yeah, approximately 30 seconds to 1 minute after shutting the doors, the car automatically locks. And guess where the keys were? You guessed it; right inside that car. So now we´re on the top of this roller coaster hill, in the middle of nowhere, with our keys locked inside the car. Fun times.

So I walk DOWN the huge hill to go to the internet cafe, where I plan to get the Avis number and find a phone and make some calls to figure out what to do. But in my walk, I come across my host mom´s daughter-in-law. And I explain what happened, and she says (after laughing hysterically) that she knows someone that can help. So this guy comes out and says he can open it for us. So we walk back UP the huge hill, he investigates (while I´m GASPING for air, attempting to translate for people again), then goes back DOWN the hill, and then comes back UP the hill with this contraption to open it. While waiting for him to return, my host family, who now has heard about what has happened, makes the trek up the hill and observes the drama unfolding. Also, dad and baby bro attempt to be MacGeyver by forming barbed wire into a door-opening contraption. So...about an hour later, the first guy, the local, manages to get the car open and we went on our way.

We made it back to San Salvador, visited the artisan market, ate dinner, went to bed, and ended the vacation. Amazingly, the return to the airport was VERY easy.

So, there you go. 5 days of fun. Who´s next? :)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Miss you!!