High for the Day

When I say high, I mean the temperature. Today we reached a new high in the classroom during one of our afternoon classes: 95 degrees, and if possible, it felt hotter, but maybe that's just the polyester talking.

On the positive side, the pants I am wearing today are grey like the pants of our uniform, but are not, in fact, the pants of my uniform. So, they are made of a lighter material and not nearly as hot. Why did I buy these pants? Quite by "accident", I destroyed the first pair while ironing them. Our iron here has a hidden talent of leaving behind black sticky goo when it gets heated up nice and hot. While ironing my pants, I went to place the iron on the pants and realized immediately that the goo had emerged and quickly pulled the iron away! Alas, the goo had already gone to work on my pants, and within seconds the hot, sticky mass had melted and fused with the polyester of my pants leaving a hard and shiny blob. Observe. Feels like sand paper.

Tourist for a day

What a fabulous day today! Solidea and I set out this morning for a day at the beach. I was not to thrilled as our previous beach experiences had been rather disappointing and boring. Lo and behold, this beach proved worth the trip, we finally found what we were looking for: Tourists! Playa El Tunco is the name and it is a surfing beach known around the world as one of the better places to surf. The surfing season starts in March and goes until October - or so one of the more dedicated surfers told me.

Not only did most of the people speak English (hooray!!) but I met a couple of women while browsing through some local merchandise and we all hit it off, so we spent the day together. The best part is that the older woman, Sonia, is a school teacher of 18 years in Southern California, came down for a week to the beach, and has been there four weeks now. She isn't going home until June. :) Yep, she ran away from school, said this year had been terrible and she wasn't going back. Well, she knew everyone and everyplace in Tunco already (it's not that big), speaks fluent Spanish, and was more than happy to show us around.

I felt such relief at conversing so freely in my own language with someone who is from the same culture! I didn't realize how much I miss the shared understanding that comes from growing up in similar cultures. Sonia will be there until June, so chances are good that we'll see her again. We've already made plans to return to Tunco in two weeks. :)

Oh to be a tourist again, what a great day. I love tourists - and not only that, surfers. Yes, I think I will learn how to surf.

Moo!

I'm correcting the exams of seventh grade and one of the vocabulary words they had to translate was "vaca" = cow. It seems one of the students doesn't know the word in English, but they know the sound - so they wrote "moo!" I can't mark it as correct, but thought it deserved an honorable mention. :)

Processions

Now that we've discussed the Alfombra's, we can move on to the processions for which the Alfombra's are the welcome mat.

For Good Friday there are two processions. The first is the Stations of the cross. This consists of one procession with a platform of Jesus and the cross (you can click on the picture to enlarge it)

and a second procession that starts from a different street with Mary, Mother of Jesus, Mary Magdelene, and John, the Beloved Disciple.

At the fourth station where Jesus meets his mother, the two processions meet, and the platforms with Jesus and Mary bow to each other. Very cool.

The platforms are big, very big, especially Jesus' platform. The volunteers carrying Jesus wear white robes and black clothes over their head, they are all male. The volunteers carrying Mary and the other two are all female, are dressed all in white, and have a white covering over their hair. Since the act of supporting the platforms is seen as a form of penance, many of the bearers proceed without shoes. I was sweating just standing in the immense crowd, I can't imagine how difficult it was to carry those platforms for the several hours the procession lasted.

But that's not all! Later that night, after the Good Friday service, there is Jesus' funeral procession. Complete with clouds of incense.

And I thought the platform of Jesus from the Stations was big, the platform for the funeral procession is mammoth! There were at least 25 men on each side with extra guys to rotate out. Sydney and I decided the funeral procession platform was a tad over the top and the decorations terribly tacky. Molly defended it stating the symbolism of the various items festooned all over the platform. She made a good case, yet still the tackyness remained.


Well, I thought the processions for the holiday were done. And I was mistaken.

Easter vigil, nice long service in which I was pleased to discover I understood several of the reading. Once I picked out which story was being read, it was a breeze to understand from there. At the end of the service everyone shifted to one exit for, you guessed, another procession. And what a fun procession it proved to be. I admit, my first thought went something along the lines of, "you're kidding, another procession?"

This procession consisted of the Resurrected Christ on a reasonably sized platform, and then Mary, Mary, and John again, and to switch things up, they threw in the angel announcing Jesus is risen, however this angel was a real little girl. Darn cute little girl too!

Then the fun began. Tradition is that when the angel runs, everyone runs with her. Why is the angel running? To tell Mary her son is risen! She travels between Mary in one street and Jesus in another saying "Jesus, do you want to see your mom? Come with me."

Then streaks off to the other street where she meets Mary and says, "Mary, do you want to see your son? Come with me." She goes back and forth a few times with most of the younger girls, boys, and foreigners running in front of or behind her.

Reminded me of the running of the bulls. I lagged behind to catch my breath, only to see a fresh wave of screaming, running, people coming directly at me with a platformed angel chasing them! So much fun. I too did some screaming - it's tradition. :)

Alfombras

Easter, ever the happy time for traditions to make themselves know. I made my way over to Chalchuapa for Easter where I stayed with Sydney and Molly at the Maria Auxiliadora School there. On Good Friday I traveled alone for the first time by bus (that in itself was an adventure) and I arrived just in time to head out and see some carpets and the first of many processions for the weekend.

Yes, I did say carpets - alfombras. These are not your run of the mill, "lay one down in the entryway of your house" carpets. No, these are "make them out of colored salts, fruit, bread, leaves, sawdust, whatever you have on hand and lay them down in the street where the procession will be walking" carpets. So we went out to see these glorified carpets. Some where made of colored salts; others of fruit; others of . . . other stuff. Sadly, whatever they were made of, they would soon be walked over by the processions where statues of Jesus and Mary and others would be carried on mammoth platforms for roughly 3-4 hours, in what I would call "fry an egg on the street" heat. So, we viewed and contemplated what we could of the carpets while they were there. Really impressive! Reminded me of sand castle's, but with anything but sand.

Here we are contemplating. :) (Me, Lupe, Molly, Sor Marta - the idea for the picture was Sor's.)

Sweet Rewards

While venturing out with Sor Arabela and Aura making home visits during our time at camp, each family we visited gifted us with fruit. The most wonderful part of the land around the houses is that while they are devoid of grass, they are filled with fruit trees. Every family took us out on their property to knock fruit off trees that we could fill our purses with. Luckily, Aura and I had big purses. :) Unfortunately, some of the fruit was very ripe and got squished all over my stuff. With careful administration of a wet napkin, the items were safely returned to their slightly used glory.

One house in particular offered us something different than fruit, he offered us honey. I thought, okay, how do we knock that off a tree? (ha ha!) Well, wasn't I surprised when we walked over to the honey making kitchen. Why are they cooking honey in a big pot? Doesn't it come ready to eat from the bee hive? Well, this isn't honey from bees, it's honey from pulvarized sugar cane!

There were three huge vats, like in the picture.

The contents were brought to a boil and left to boil for awhile - not sure how long - until one of the workers scooped out the honey into a trough leading down to another large pot.

Once the honey was in this pot, the workers brought the pot outside, set it in a tire to hold it upright (I didn't take a picture!) and would stir them with large wooden paddles for 1/2 hour(this is what they told me). Then the honey is poured into these little molds to harden.

We didn't wait for the honey to harden, we tasted it right from the boiling pot! Yummy! and not nearly as sweet as honey from bees - surprisingly.

And yes, the picture makes the kitchen look like a sauna, and it was. Felt like I was back home at the factory cooking taffy, freely sweating through my shirt!

Pupusas

I would like to qualify that I do like Pupusas. They are the national food here, are very tasty, and come with a variety of fillings. What is a Pupusa? Well, the easiest way to explain it (and the only way I know how) is that the Pupusa is a stuffed tortilla. The tortilla can be a corn or rice tortilla and can be filled with frijoles, cheese, chicken, spinach, and a multitude of other options, but always with cheese.

The reason for my stating eating pupusas was one of my least favorite things during the camp is that we had them almost everyday during the camp and while tasty, pupusas are not healthy, and are always cooked with oil - as everything seems to be cooked with oil here. Hence, the eating of Pupusas in part contributed to my being sick.

Here is a somewhat overcooked pupusa which I, personally, overcooked. :)

Camp

Wow, what a week. Was this my vacation? What a week. Let’s see if I can sum this up. April 4^th - 8^th I went with local VIDES volunteers to an outlying town for “camp.” Camp is kind of like a missionary trip where we do a vacation bible study for the local kids in the afternoon, home visits to read the bible in the morning, services for the church after VBS, and feed and evaluate ourselves everyday.

Saturday: Arrive; set up; cook dinner and eat; prayer and prep time

Sunday: Mass for Palm Sunday at local church; procession up a small hill for blessing of palms; lunch; 2 hours with kids; prayer service; dinner and reflection

Monday: Home visits in the morning; lunch; afternoon with kids; dinner and reflection

Tuesday: Prep for different services (I folded and sorted clothing to be sold at the church that we had brought along); lunch; afternoon with kids; time sitting with wet cloth on head to help headache; selling of clothes and general amusement and locals looked through clothing and suggesting funny clothes for their friends J.

Wednesday: Pack up; initiation ceremony into VIDES; hop the back of a pick up to get back home.

Favorite parts of the five days: riding in the back of pickups; showering behind a tarp with buckets of cold water; preparing dinner (also my least favorite!); falling in love with some of the kids; laughing with locals while searching through clothing to try on; the walks each day to the other church for VBS; getting to know the other volunteers; home visits (this was also very challenging)

Least favorite parts: Getting sick (I was sick the last day and night), eating pupusas (which were at least 3 meals during those 4 days), sleeping on the hard floor, or not sleeping, really; not knowing anything that is going to happen.

Reflection: We visited houses to share the Word with the locals since there is not a daily service at the parish which has no resident priest. At each house we came to there was a sick and usually home bound person. It was my first look at home life in El Salvador and I walked away not knowing what to think.

At the same time we were staying at the church a doctor was visiting for any who wanted to see him, of which there were always plenty of people. After leaving the homes of the homebound I thought what they really need here is a traveling doctor who can visit them in their homes. A regular traveling doctor – but I know that will never happen.

I was left wondering why I had been allowed to see this suffering? There is nothing I can do about it. These people are suffering terribly, their loved ones doing what they can to assist, but all the time watching the condition worsen. I felt even more like a foreigner then, I just wanted to go home, this isn’t my country and I can’t help, so I didn’t want to know. But now I do know. The other groups had the same news to report, many houses they visited had homebound patients. It’s just the way it is for these people, they know it’s not easy, but they don’t have any other options, so they do the best they can. We offered what medical advice we could while we visited and we prayed with them. I will continue to pray for them as well; it’s what I can do.