Ruta de las Flores

Solidea and I took a tour yesterday through Ruta de las Flores. It is a road that runs through the mountains in Western El Salvador and is quite breathtaking. We stopped at a restaurant for breakfast that had a walking path filled with flowers,

(yeah, I did take this picture of the flower, and no, I don't know why it turned out so incredibly cool! But I'm not arguing)a small village with an impressive view,



hiked to a waterfall, and then stopped in Juayua for a festival going on at the time. This is the only picture I took at the festival - horses with diapers to keep their poo from littering the streets. :)

While I failed to take pictures at this point, we did meet a nice artisan named Erik. He told us about another festival in Santa Ana in July. Santa Ana is close to where Sydney - other American volunteer - is, so we might just head out that way.

Dancing for a Dream

I'm sorry, but I have to comment on this television show here. Bailando por un sueno, it's like Dancing with the Stars with a famous person and a professional dancer. I mention it because I love to watch Dancing with the Stars and when I discovered this show (the Sister's like to watch it, as do the students) I got really excited!

However, I am very disappointed. wow. It's just, well, really bad. I expected better from Latin America. The Latin dances are not so bad, at least, not as bad as other forms such as Hip Hop (good heavens!) and Electric!

I don't completely blame the dancers since they don't choreograph their own dances, there is a choreographer for each dance partner. Really, some terrible choreography. I wish I had a video clip to show you but I can't find any on youtube specific to El Salvador. I don't mean to say all the dances are bad, I mean, I realize the Stars are learning to dance, which is the point, but there is a difference between someone learning with faulty footwork and just really bad choreography. Really bad. Wish I had that Hip Hop dance clip. So bad.

Teacher's Meeting

Today we had a meeting of the teachers. This is the second I have attended (missed one because I was off getting tested for my amoeba:) and I found this one about as useful as the first. What does that mean? About 3 1/2 hours of useless meeting time. But, that could just be my North American perspective. Let me describe:

The meeting is automatically 4 hours long from 8am - 12pm. Right away, that's a bad sign, and that's just how the meetings are set up. You would think, since the school is shutting down for 2 weeks that we would need a meeting, and we did discuss the school shutdown for roughly 20 minutes. After that, everything had been decided, and we moved on to forming groups, reading chapters from a book, and answering questions about those chapters regarding the Salesian Family. Sound like a class? Yeah, felt like one too. Then at the end we share the answers to our questions so everyone knows what was discussed in the entire book, which, according to the questions, is the same thing in every chapter. None of which was tied into teaching. Seemed like a time filler to me.

And that was our meeting. Oh, and then we talked about problems with the girls wearing makeup. I was desperately hot at this point and didn't have any water so I left, lay down in my room for 20 minutes, drank some water, filled a water bottle, and returned to the meeting. Guess what they were talking about at this point? Girls wearing makeup. Right.

Swine Flu

Egads! The school is closing for 2 weeks to help prevent the spread of Swine Flu. Our school doesn't actually have any confirmed cases of the flu and everyone that has come down with a cold recently has been shipped off to the hospital to be tested. Nobody has had anything other than a common cold.

However, a couple of the richer schools had a few students contract the flu after they took vacations in Mexico. Darn rich kids! So, the Ministry of Education decided it would be best to shut down all the schools in San Salvador (not sure if this stretches outside the city) for 2 weeks. This would be great if Soli and I could leave the school for 2 weeks, but we can't. Not part of our contract. We'll have to talk to the Sister's and see what we can negotiate. If there's stuff to be done around the school, I'll be happy to help, but if it's just busy work, I won't be so happy.

To make up the time, school will probably run 2 weeks longer into November, but it beats having school on Saturday 10 times to make up for the missed days!

On a lighter note, one of the workers here caught a mouse in the house and of the two Sister's still in the kitchen after dinner one grabbed a plastic bag for her to put the mouse in. When she dropped the mouse in the bag the other Sister ran to the other side of the room and the one who had the bag quickly backed away squirming when the worker took the bag! It was too funny! Then good ol' Sister Doracilla came along and gave the mouse a few good whacks to kill it, since nobody else would. :) I call her the no nonsense nun, always good for a laugh, I just don't always understand.

Immigration

Today I went to the Embassy and to Immigration. At the Embassy I met Lidia, who had translated a few documents for me. She is a great lady and I really like her, she even told she could get me a job at her school for next year if I wanted! Pondering... Yeah, we'll see how this year goes first.

We entered, had the four documents notarized, I paid her and I paid for the notarizations. Then off to Immigration. I'm feeling pretty good at this point. I have all my documents, I have everything translated, I have all the notarizations that I need - I'm set.

No. No, I was wrong.

Immigration is a very humbling place.

WELL... the documents I had translated were not translated and notarized by a lawyer. I fail to see why this is important, but as I was told several times, it's the law. I even know the number, law #24 from some book related to Immigration I'm sure. I guess that's pretty official.

Oh, and the letters I ran all over town to get when I first got here? They're old.
No, they are from this year.
Yes, but January and February.
Yes, of this year.
Well, you'll need new ones.
(restrained silence)
Anything else I should know?
That's everything.
Yes, that is almost everything. How about these photocopies? Are they clear enough? Maybe I should put a date on them and after 3 months I'll make new ones.

So, I'm going to return with Solidea and talk to someone else. I don't think they're going to let up on having a lawyer notarize the translations, but I can deal with that. Having to get another letter from the Bishop and having another health test at the hospital are not on my list of things to do again.

And the letters are not old. I haven't taken a break from applying for a Visa. These are the same letters from the same process. It's just that I keep finding out about new rules each time I go. I suggested they put this rule about the lawyer on their list of items needed - seeing as how it's so important.

Angels

Last night was a moving night for me. One of the girls of the Internado asked my advice about dating after she clarified that I am really religious and so I could give advice to help her with her situation. I asked another girl if she was sick because she had been unusually quiet that night. She confessed that she wasn't sick and was having family problems and asked if she could talk to me later. After dinner I found her sitting on a bench, so I joined her and she explained she had been told that afternoon that her parents are getting a divorce.

I feel so bad for her and the worst is that there is nothing I can do. She explained everything that had happened that day and began to cry, so I just hugged her as much as I could. I told her that whatever she feels, it isn't her fault. Today I gave her a little stone angel (thanks Deb and Jim!) with the words "I will never leave you." I told her I pray every day to God to send an angel to watch over and take care of her and this is her reminder that He is always with her. With a beautiful smile of appreciation she gave me a hug.

I love these girls!

Bus Racing

We exited bus 44 once we got to San Salvador and headed over to the next bus stop a few blocks away. Getting to be around 5:30pm we knew it would start to get dangerous in that area soon so we jumped onto bus 41C to take us to the school. This 41C was a small bus, which means craziness, and this trip only helped reinforce that perception.

Our trip began smoothly, well, as smoothly as they can on the little buses, until our two lanes of traffic merged down to one. Not normally a big deal, but there happened to be another little bus next to us and neither wanted to give ground, so both sped up to pass the other before the second lane ran out. Thus the race began.

Our bus ended up slowing down as the other had the lead by a head, but shortly after the lanes merged down to one, they quickly multiplied to three. Our driver took his opportunity and sped around the competition. In an attempt to keep the lead, he only slowed down at the bus stops, didn't stop, and the two guys who hang out the doors to encourage people to get on the bus only gave half-hearted calls, then banged the side of the bus signaling to the bus driver to haul ass. Which he did.

Swerving around impeding vehicles, the two guys from the doorways shouted directions to the driver about open lanes or the location of other vehicles. Solidea and I were laughing, but it was a kind of "this would be really funny if we weren't in danger of dying" laugh. The driver did stop to let people off the bus, but the race continued until we ran into congestion on the road and were forced to slow down. Alleluia. BUT, we made really good time back to the school.