Maras Showdown with Government, etc.

This is a quick life update for my non-mathy friends:

El Salvador is crazy. I am mad that the maras decided that they could shut down the entire public bus system as a fist-waving gesture to the government. Some of you might remember that back in June, as part of their extortion schemes, the maras burned down a bus with over a dozen people trapped inside. The outrage continues, when they issued a threat (via pamphlets and other things) earlier this week to do more of the same. So, in response, the entire country's bus system was shut down 2 days ago.

As usual, this doesn't impact the well-to-do, who travel in private vehicles. It only impacts the poor Salvadoreans who now have to get up early in the morning and walk hours across various towns to get to work, or to take camiones if those can be found. It sounds like as of yesterday, parts of the transportation system have resumed operations, but the system continued to be affected today.

What a ridiculous situation! Supposedly the reason for this wave of mara threats is a retaliation / protest against a newly passed bill outlawing Salvadoreans from joining a gang. Well, it looks to me like the mara are playing Quien tiene mas grande huevos with the government, and they're not doing so badly in this contest. I was talking to Geoff about this, and I was saying that in the States, those gang threats would have been SQUASHED by the government. He reminded me that this situation would never have even occurred, because the gangs simply don't have the same power over there. What a different world it is that we live in. :(

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In brighter news, Geoff and I finally got our car back! Yay. We might have to send it away again soon, to fix the shocks. Who knew that there were 4 sets of shocks in a car?? I don't like the sound of that. We need to go back to driving Flintstone cars.

But, having a car allowed us to go back to our salsa class last night. SUPER FUN!!! :) :) We did some closed-eyes dancing, which is always incredible, because you have to rely on the raw connection you have with your partner in order to follow their lead. It made me miss swing dancing like crazy.

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By the way, our first progress reports are due tomorrow. Time in school is flying by!! Time to finish grading those quizzes...

Geometric Series Fun!

I'm excited about an upcoming lesson about applying geometric series. In fact, I am excited about it enough to be writing about it in way advance. :) (I'm not getting around to it until late next week. But, anyway, it's making me feel very OCD to be pretty much finished with planning for all 3 classes all the way through next week! I am kind of really in love with my job.)

Here it is. I love problem #1, because it brings up the idea of a summation approaching a particular value! If you keep constructing new rectangles at half size (adding counterclockwise each time), you'll see that they just fill in the middle portions and the overall geometric series approachs 2*(original area). YEAH! Chivisimo.




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In other news, Geoff's and my car broke down on the way back from the beach on Sunday. :( --OUR FIRST BREAKDOWN!! The mechanic has been sending us emails with estimated costs, and I just want to know which parts of the car are not broken, because it sounds like he's going to have to replace everything that I either did or did not know existed in a car!! (Fun fact: Our car was spilling oil all over the engine area after having spontaneously broken down on the side of the road, an hour away from our house, when it was already getting dark! It was a bit nerve-wracking, and it even started to rain just as we were waiting on the side of the road. Our friend Greg got out of the car, peeked under the hood, and said seriously, "You guys got a fire extinguisher?" ...Thank goodness we've got awesome friends who live near the beach, who arrived within 15 minutes with a tow truck to drag us all the way back to the city!!)

So, that's gonna be fun... I learned some key words recently from dealing with all the miraculous breakdowns in our lives: grua means tow truck, and calentador is the water heater at our house (whose thermostat broke because of electric current fluctuations that are a side effect of the heavy rains that we had over the summer). Really fun stuff.

Roundabout Math, Day 1

I had an idea for a possibly interesting math-modeling situation, so I went ahead and googled it to see what there is already out there on this topic. The results were both encouraging and disappointing, because 1. it confirmed my impression that the material is inherently interesting, because there have been loads of math written about it, but 2. the math is perhaps way too difficult to be explored at a high-school level.

So, I have decided to spend a couple of entries this week just looking at the possibilities of presenting Roundabout Math to high-schoolers. It'll be done in installments, as I need some time to think this through. Feel free to jump in at any point on my hypothetical lesson.

Here is the premise: Roundabouts, or "traffic circles" as they are known in some circles, are extremely popular in El Salvador. They drive Geoff nuts, really, because they cause traffic congestion everyday right outside of our apartment. And, because the entire city utilizes roundabouts, it can sometimes take you 30 minutes to go a block or two, during PM traffic hours!

So, let's just take a look at some simplified setup for this problem:

1. Here is a standard roundabout. I'd say they average out to have about two lanes and about four streets coming in/out of them. Notice that they DO NOT USE TRAFFIC LIGHTS!


2. Here is what an average driver might want to do: go straight through the roundabout. You can only go in counter-clockwise direction around it, and you can only make right-hand turns to exit.


3. Of course, this gets more complicated when there is traffic already in the roundabout. The standard code of conduct is to wait until you think it is safe to enter the roundabout (ie. yielding to all oncoming traffic). Once you are in the roundabout, you have the right of way (at least in theory) over the new cars trying to enter from the side.


4. Let's take a detour and look at how curves affect the speed of a vehicle. Let's say that the picture below represents the top-down view of a NASCAR racetrack. Where would the driver need to slow down the most (and why)?


5. Now, let's assume that we super-impose circles on top of the race track. How does the radius of a circle (or arc) affect the speed of the vehicle as it travels through that section of the road? (Is it a positive or a negative correlation between the radius and the speed?)


6. Well, fortunately we have some information to work with. As it turns out, the maximum velocity (in m/s) that you can reasonably achieve when traveling through an empty roundabout depends on its radius (in meters) as such:

This regression equation is provided by a National Cooperative High Research Program Report, dated (unfortunately) about 30 years ago. It should match your intuition that the larger the radius is of a circle (or circular path), the higher your maximum speed will be when you travel around that circular path.

Stay tuned. Again, this is all uber-simplified stuff, because I am trying to get a math model going that would make intuitive sense to high-schoolers and get a reasonable analysis going. If you're hoping for a more detailed/accurate model, consider reading this instead. (It's a nicely written piece about the math of roundabouts, but it does involve some differential equations, which are eons ahead of what my kids can do.) I feel a little guilty doing all of this over-simplification, but considering that much of high-school mathematics is an over-simplification, I don't feel tooooo bad.

Disco Party and Driving in El Salvador

I like themed parties, because I think that the people who actually participate in them take having fun "seriously", and therefore that attitude always contributes to a good party. :)

The past weekend, our friend Andrea had a Disco / "Crazy Accessories" party. Geoff and I have no disco-wear down here in San Salvador, but we decided to do our best to show up in costume anyway. To that end, we made our own disco shirts! It was pretty silly, but we just printed out a picture of floppy disks arranged in the shape of an "O", and taped that to our shirts. ("Disc-O"... get it?) We also dug up some accessories from around the apartment: Geoff's Avatar-3D glasses, my "2010" New Year's glasses, two pairs of suspenders, and my bright striped tie, and we mish-mashed everything together and showed up in good spirits.

The disco party was good times! Afterwards, some of us went on to dance the night away in Zona Rosa, at a bar next to our favorite Jungle. I got to do a lot of dancing -- to electronic music in the basement, to Spanish pop on the first floor, and Geoff and I even salsa-ed for a brief bit while waiting to be picked up. :) It was a great night out!

Next Friday, there will be an 80s party at the Marines house. I'm not sure whether we've decided to go yet, but if we do, I'll have to start planning our costumes now, since it's only 5 days away!

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This morning, I drove -- for the first time in years! It was very... needlessly exciting. I already get nervous driving in the States, and here they've got steep curbs and ditches and roundabouts, not to mention impatient Central American drivers. I'm going to keep practicing with the hope that I can soon navigate myself to go to yoga lessons, to start in (hopefully) 2 weeks. Wish me luck!

Guatemala!

Geoff, Colleen, Eric, and I had a most unforgettable weekend in Guatemala! I won't go into all the details here, but some unpleasant things happened on our way back from Guate and we were delayed a day in getting back to work. We also experienced various car troubles throughout the trip, which were worrisome only because they meant that we had to get out in rural areas to fix the muffler or to crash in a random rural town for the night. At one point, our brakes overheated and started to fail while descending very steep mountainous roads. (None of us even knew that overheating was possible for brakes!) It was scary as shit, as Eric would say...

Alas, we made it back safely! So, let's focus on how beautiful the rest of the weekend was. This weekend lasted 4 days long, in celebration of Central American independence from Spain*, so the crew had decided that we would take the opportunity to go across the border to check out Antigua and Lake Atitlan, both located in Guatemala. As it turns out, Antigua is a beautiful cobble-stoned city that has retained much of its colonial look and feel, but mixed in with an international crowd and awesome restaurants and bars. Geoff and I loved Cafe No Se, which is a bar with an eclectic crowd, great tequila (although they call it something else there), and very interesting internal decor. The town is also filled with colonial ruins, and just generally had a lot of character. It being independence weekend, there were performers and crowds galore, and we had a fun time just walking around this pedestrian-friendly tourist town. At night, Geoff and I closed down Cafe No Se (which wasn't hard to do -- bars closed in the town at 1am).

The next day, we set out for Chichitenango, which has a weekly Sunday market that sells everything from food to traditional goods. Geoff and I had been looking for a cheap and water-proof hammock, which we found there for 150 quetzales. (The exchange rate is about 8 quetzales to 1 dollar, so it was a pretty good deal. Similar hammocks we found in El Salvador for at least twice the cost!) Geoff also began shopping for his parents for Christmas, since we saw something very unique that they would like. I bought a traditional weaved Guatemalan skirt, along with a belt (also weaved/embroidered) to hold it up. Colleen and Eric bought a ton more stuff than us, so it was a good day trip for everyone. :) At night, our brakes failed while on the way to Lago de Atitlan, so we decided to crash in a small town called San Juan to wait for the daylight to come. In San Juan (a tiny town about 15 or 20 minutes from the lake), we found a hotel right across the street from the police station. There, all of us just relaxed and chatted, finishing the bottle of wine that we had brought on the trip...

As it turns out, the brakes often fail for cars going down those windy mountainous roads, because of how many tumulos (speed bumps) there are, the steep grade of the roads, and the many sharp turns that lead to the bottom of the mountains. The mechanic told us not to worry, so we headed on down to Lake Atitlan on Monday to enjoy the beautiful view. Lake Atitlan is amazing! It's huge and gorgeous, surrounded by volcanic mountains, and has really cool little bars and restaurants -- and hippies! I think I had the most amazing sandwich of my life there, at an organic bar called Freedom. (I don't even like sandwiches normally!) During the day, we also took the boats out to another town, hiked a little, and then jumped off a cliff! Everyone else (Geoff, Colleen, and Eric) had done something like it before, except for me, so I was scared as hell. The cliff was about 20 to 30 feet according to Geoff and Colleen, and there were rocks in the water. The lake itself was really, really deep, so we weren't really worried about hitting the bottom of the lake, as long as we could jump far enough to get away from the rocky shore. Anyway, I put my hand over my heart and felt my heart pumping like crazy, and when I jumped, Geoff was scared out of his mind because he saw me almost hitting the side of the cliff and going with my head first into the water. It was so fast, I really didn't know what was going on, but I felt a little dizzy upon entering the water, like someone had hit me over the head. Fortunately, I was OK and didn't pass out or anything. :) Colleen and Eric helped guide me to the shore, because I was feeling a little disoriented at that point. Honestly, I don't know if I will do it again. I really wanted to do it this time, just to know what it feels like. Not sure if I should tempt fate in the future, especially because I was so clumsy about it this time. :)

All in all, we had a brilliant time. (I'll post pictures very soon, I promise!) The only bummer is that I had to miss work today, because I had been looking forward to a really productive day at school with the kids, and returning late from Guate definitely is going to throw things off. But, I'm really glad to be home after a long weekend, and in the grand scheme, things could have certainly been a lot worse. :)

Ciao! Next weekend is Geoff's and my three-year anniversary! I almost can't believe it; time has really flown by!

*Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador all celebrate their independence from Spain on September 15.

Weekend Excursion

Geoff and I spent the weekend by ourselves, because the rest of the new international teachers were busy settling into their apartments. In El Salvador, we have thus far met a lot of really nice locals, but because of the disparity in income, we think that many of them would not be able to afford the lifestyle that we want to have, ie. going out regularly. To give you an idea of what a "regular Salvadorean" makes in income, Geoff and I could go out and have a FULL meal -- with two pupusas and a drink for each of us -- and the total for BOTH of our meals would be around $2.50. And many "restaurants" and snack stores are holes-in-the-wall that are run literally out of someone's home or front yard. You can get a chocolanana, or frozen chocolate banana, for around 35 cents. Clearly, that's not a very high profit margin; the vendors make those right at home and sell them through a little window that faces the street, in order to keep their costs low.

International school teachers are considered upper-middle class here. In truth, my salary here is far lower than my salary back in NYC, but because the cost of living is so much lower here, our life is much more luxurious than what we once had back in NYC. Geoff and I could afford a 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom apartment here, with a pool and 24-hour security, in a nice neighborhood. In NYC, for the same amount of money, we couldn't even get a single room in a shared apartment in Manhattan!

Anyway, on Friday, we had gone out in Zona Rosa, which is a posh partying district here in the city. After having a delicious steak dinner and drinking in an outdoor bar typical of this area, we checked out another indoors bar, Riconcitos, which had an awesome vibe and a cover band. The band's music was upbeat and diverse -- I think they started out with some electronica and ska, and then wrapped up with some reggaeton and salsa. The crowd was young; here in San Salvador, high-schoolers can go out and drink and party as well, and you definitely can spot their young faces in the hip bars around town. Afterwards, Geoff and I went and danced in another cool little spot across the street, where they were playing some American music, mixed with a lot of merengue. --All in all, a really fun night. :)

We ran some errands on Saturday, and then headed down to the beach. We had our minds set on going to el Tunco, which is a beach named for its giant pig-shaped rock. (Actually, the rock looked awesome, but it also looked more like a whale to us than a pig.) This beach is a famous surf spot, but we didn't get to surf this weekend. Instead, we swam in the ocean and had some delicious pupusas and seafood. We also stayed with a semi-creepy artist at his guesthouse, and that was very interesting. While we were hanging out with him on his porch, the electricity went out for the whole village, and momentarily we were sitting in complete darkness -- with a creepy guy who had already demonstrated his prowess with his machete and had reiterated his love for Asian women! Yikes. ...Fortunately, everything was OK in the end, and we even ran into our friends Alison and José the next day at the beach! :)

On Sunday night, we drove our rental car back to the city and went to a barbeque at the school's complejo, where the rest of the international hires live. That was fun, because teachers are almost always a social bunch. I'm hopeful that once they are settled in, they'll be up for going out and exploring the neighborhoods with us. :)

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A pictoral illustration of a crazy bus that went into the lane of on-coming traffic in order to pass cars in our lane; it eventually gave up and came back into our lane. (Taken on the way back from the beach.)




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As you might have read, the swine flu has been in full-swing in El Salvador for 4 months. Well, the ministry is closing schools for two weeks -- this week and next week. What that means is that we are not allowed to go into the school itself, and all of the paperwork and professional development meetings we were supposed to have this week have been moved to another location. School will be delayed at least one day in opening, which I'm certainly not complaining about. Other teachers are keeping their fingers crossed that the school will be delayed even further, to allow us a last long weekend before school re-opens.
We'll see about that, I guess. I'm not too worried.

Zones, Roads, and Mail

The country of El Salvador is divided into 14 departamentos, or states. Within each state are many cities, or ciudads. Geoff and I reside in the city of San Salvador, which is also located in the state of San Salvador. This city is the capital city of the country, but even within it there appears to be a vast disparity in wealth. The city further subdivides into zonas, or zones. Our apartment is in Colonia de San Benito, which -- depending on whom you ask -- is either itself a tiny zone spanning a few blocks in diameter, or is embedded in a bigger zone (Zona Rosa). In any case, we finally got some sort of address for the apartment when we signed the lease, but even without it, our mattress delivery guys had figured out where to find us based only on the zone information and the building name. Because the city is so small and compact, things are easy to find here and addresses are not too specific.

That said, we still need to test out our address before we set up permanent mail-forwarding from the States. Geoff has been doing a good amount of research, and it looks like we can either get a service that scans in our mail, or one that forwards them periodically without examining the mail. I think we are going with the latter. For now, all of our mail is sent to and held by Geoff's parents in New Jersey.

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Speaking of geography, trying to find a good city map here has been nearly impossible, and I have just about given up on the notion altogether. A free map that we got from a local restaurateur has turned out to be the best thus far. It highlights the roundabouts and major streets, even though it does unfortunately omit certain smaller streets. The roundabouts are important, because here you are very restricted in where you can make left turns. I would say maybe one out of every 6 or 7 streets allows left turns, and -- because the streets themselves curve -- before you know it, you are already going in the wrong direction altogether. The roundabouts are useful in allowing you to make all kinds of turns. Another traffic peculiarity here is that when you come to an intersection of two major streets, where there is no roundabout there is often a road bridge that raises the traffic from one road to be above the other. This avoids unnecessary waiting at the intersection, and is actually very useful, if you're familiar enough with the roads to anticipate the intersection. Their labeling of the roads is different from that of the States. When I get a chance, I'll take a picture. Geoff and I had a wild ride on the first day, trying to figure out what those signs mean and where we were on the map...

But, all is well. :) Still missing internet and phone services, but for now Geoff and I are stealing wireless bandwidth from our neighbor, so things are OK. I also miss dancing, but until we buy a car and are able to get out more regularly, my assignment for myself is to expand my jazz collection and jazz knowledge. It's something I had always wanted to do, but hadn't had time for. If you have killer jazz playlists, please do send them my way. :) Adios!

Dinero, Manejo, y Otras Cosas

Everyone here rocks the Hamiltons, or $10. In fact, that is the largest denomination dispursed by the ATM. :)

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In El Salvador, since the late 90s there has existed a privatized Social Security system. Anyone who works in El Salvador would see an automatic payroll deduction (for me, I believe it will be roughly 6.5%), but it is money that they can reclaim either at retirement, as pension, or at the time when they permanently leave the country, as a lump sum. Employers also contribute to this Social Security. The same Social Security system also provides a form of socialized health care in this country. Although foreigners like us are also eligible for the ubiquitous health care, they typically go to private doctors to avoid the long lines (and to ensure "better care", whatever that means) -- hence the private health insurance that we pay for. But, it's good to know that the poor is somewhat provided for in this country, at least in theory.

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Thus far, Geoff and I have had a fantastic experience in El Salvador! People have been super friendly and helpful -- not to mention extremely patient with our Spanish. Things are definitely much slower here, except when we are driving. As in many developing countries, speed limits and traffic signs/signals work more as recommendations than as hard-and-fast rules here. Even lane divisions aren't so clear-cut; people habitually cross over to the opposite lane (in face of on-coming traffic) in order to pass a slower car. Maybe surprisingly, the craziest drivers appear to be those of busses. On our first day with a car rental, Geoff and I had a few close encounters with busses coming at us at full speeds while we are stopped, or witnessing bus drivers making 3-point turns in the middle of a busy street! Holy mother of God. They are CRAZY! Also crazy is the fact that pedestrians are literally everywhere. In the busier parts of town, at every traffic light there would be teenagers coming up to wash your windshield. They don't take "no" for an answer, even though most cars do not pay them for the unsolicited service. The same goes for street vendors who weave in and out of traffic to sell all kinds of stuff. We even saw a juggler in front of a taxi cab that was stopped at a light. On the way to the beach last weekend, we also saw cows and horses walking unsupervised alongside the cars on the highway. One kid crossed the highway in front of us on a skinny horse, which he was spurring along with a random tree branch. Geoff and I could not stop exclaiming how crazy people are down here, but it seems to be just a way of life for them, no hay drama.

I really like how things are different here. As it turns out, getting an apartment wasn't so hard; obtaining a permanent visa also seems to be fairly straight forward, albeit a matter of time. What Geoff and I have spent the last few days agonizing over, ironically enough, is setting up our phone and internet services. To get those set up, not only do we need a passport and a NIT card, but we also need apartment contracts and formal letters from my school, vouching for my employment contract and salary. And, as you can imagine, pulling those details together is not just a matter of hours, especially down here. It is a bit frustrating, because even though we are gaining basic Spanish proficiency pretty fast, it isn't helping to hurry along the settling-in process, and Geoff is losing time daily for work as long as he does not have reliable internet access at home...

I am holding my breath that everything will be OK by the end of today. The 85-degree ocean is, too, holding its breath...