Lovely weekend

Geoff and I had a lovely July 4th weekend sans BBQ and fireworks. :)

Despite it being the rainy season, the weather turned out to be beautiful all of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. On Friday night, we went out for a dinner and a movie, and watched Kick Ass, a cheesy but very entertaining film about wannabe superheroes. On Saturday, we checked out La Puerta del Diablo, or "Devil's Door", a famous site for executions during the Salvadorean Civil War. It was interesting -- we met a coconut vendor who speaks flawless English, and he initiated a very frank conversation with us about El Salvador's present and future. Much of what he said corroborates my existing belief that there is little hope for foreseeable change in this country. He confirmed for us that the police fears the maras and added that the government's lack of funding in education means that the poor is without hopes even in the long run. So many people sell things on the street, he said, because that's the only job they are capable of doing. It was a profoundly depressing conversation...

On Saturday night, after a failed attempt to locate a house party (the host had sent out very poor directions), Geoff and I went to Alambique for a drink. We ended up drinking a bottle of wine between the two of us, dancing a bit, and then deciding to come home. We hung out and talked in the hammocks, under the soft lighting of our patio, until it got to be really cold and really late -- about 4am! Finally, we went to sleep, and blissfully slept in on Sunday.

Sunday was a beautifully lazy day. We got up late. Geoff played his guitar while I hung out in the hammock next to him. Then, we took a walk to a nearby park, ate a delicious lunch at Kreef (--YESSS for Prosciutto and salami baguette sandwich!), and then took a long nap and watched some TV before going grocery-shopping. We dug up a recipe that we liked for a dish called the "Drunken Tuscan Pasta," and used a whole bottle of wine to cook our meal. --It was delicious! By the time we finally cleaned up after dinner and were ready for bed, somehow it was already 11pm.

I love aimless weekends spent with Geoff.

Leap Year

Yesterday was not a great day for me, so on a whim, Geoff, Andrea, and I headed to Gran Via to catch a movie in spite of the on-and-off rain. (Here, during the rainy season, Salvadoreans rarely go out.) We watched Leap Year, which is a sweet romantic comedy that reminds me of some classics that I love! It has to be one of my favorite movies of late, and they also incorporated picturesque landscape from the Irish countryside. Lovely! It made me really want to go to Ireland sometime. (And maybe if I lug my redhead along, they'll be extra nice to us.) ;)

Movies and Down Time

Geoff and I have been watching a lot of movies, because he has recently cut back (ie. temporarily stopped) drinking, in hopes of getting back on track with a healthier lifestyle before Christmas. As a result, neither of us has been too excited about hanging out at bars the last couple of weeks. Instead, over the weekend, we went to the movie theatre twice and watched Julie and Julia and Unglorious Bastards.

Unglorious Bastards was an excellent film about the Nazi occupation of France (set during WWII, but it's actually historically inaccurate, so it doesn't matter). The entire film kept us on the edge of our seats, and the plot twists were clever and intricate. To add to the experience, much of the movie was spoken in either German or French, and Geoff and I had to rely on our ability to read the Spanish subtitles to follow the plot. Fortunately, reading is always easier than listening, and we were actually fairly surprised by our ability to follow most of the film! (Our Spanish is getting better, for sure, but when native speakers begin to speak fast, we still have trouble understanding sometimes. Thus, watching dubbed movies is still very challenging.)

Julie and Julia is a much slower film. It got me thinking, however, about the blogosphere. I used to read various blogs written by friends. Over the years, as everyone got busier, the frequency of both their writing and my reading of their blogs had waned. Once in a while, I still go through short phases where I would follow blogs of some random teachers or swing dancers, to keep me in the loop of what others with similar interests are finding and exploring. But, there is nothing out there that really keeps my interest consistently as a reader. I would, however, be interested in reading in real time about someone else's ambitious undertaking of a task, similar to what Julie had set out to do in the movie. Are you familiar with some such blog? (Google seemed to fail me in finding anything of interest. But then again, I couldn't think of good keywords to use to help filter out the bloggers who blog mostly about their careers.)

-------------

Anyway, as for my own life, things are going slowly. School has almost slowed to a halt, with kids taking midterms and teachers grading only idly before the holidays. I'm looking forward to having a few days off between school and going back to the States to unwind, read some books, watch some Law and Order, and maybe even get a haircut. :)

Visa!

Geoff's visa app finally got approved yesterday! yay! I cannot tell you how long and grueling this process has been. We had started it months before moving here, but he actually had to go back to the States to gather additional paperwork in September, because his lawyer had been unclear about which papers were needed the first time around. (It was v. fortunate that this trip coincided with M&M's wedding, so he could just extend the wedding trip to take care of the stuff instead of making a separate trip just for the sake of gathering papers...)

The problem is that he currently lives here on 90-day tourist visas only, and every time he exits the country (to go to even a neighboring country for a short trip), he would have to go back to the States to obtain all of those docs again; the docs required need to be date-stamped around his latest entry to El Salvador.

He and his lawyers had been down to the immigration offices several times, and each time they would ask him to obtain more paperwork, mostly from the States. It would take weeks to pull together and get mailed here, and the process would repeat itself. Finally, yesterday his stars were all aligned, and they accepted his application! yay! (It actually helped out that I am working for the American school, because apparently my work visa is issued by a higher authority -- something like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- and so it helped legitimize both his overall application and his particular reason to wish to stay in El Salvador.) It still was a pain and took a whole day, but at least for now they've accepted his money and taken his picture, so we think it's going to be all good. :)

So, in celebration, we took his lawyer's assistant out to dinner. It was good times, and the steaks we had were amazing... :) Afterwards, Geoff and I were both feeling serious food coma, so we called it a quiet Friday night. We watched "Changeling" at home, which is really intense! Much better than what we had expected based on its RottenTomatoes ratings. I would definitely recommend it.

Beach and Halloween weekends

It has been two weekends since Andrea's Oktoberfest party. True to our words, Geoff and I rented a car and planned to get away last weekend. It happened to be an international surf competition weekend in El Tunco, so the beach town was particularly lively with activities throughout the night. Greg came along, and at the beach we ran into Brad and Dave (who go down there every chance they get, to surf). Dave decided to share our small cabin and to stick around overnight to party, so the four of us spent the weekend eating a lot of yummy tacos and burritos, and relaxing by the lovely beach. :) Dave also took Geoff out to surf on the ocean, and the boys stayed out on the water until dark. The weekend was so relaxing, it was exactly what we had been missing...

This past weekend was a long weekend down here in El Salvador. Coinciding with Halloween is All Saints' Day or All Souls' Day, when the locals celebrate family members who have passed, as well as all of the Catholic saints. So, we got Monday off as a holiday. Since there were some talks of going out for Halloween, Geoff and I decided to stick around to take part in the celebrations. On Saturday night, we donned our home-made costumes, and headed out on the town. (I was "Comma Sutra", and Geoff was a guy with a cup-"telephone" connecting him to his penis, wearing a shirt that said, "Who Says Men Don't Listen?") We started at Zanzibar and met some pretty nice folks who were Jon's friends, and then we went with Andrea and her friends to Alambique (spelling) at the Multi-Plaza. We danced there for a long time, and the boys split a bottle of vodka -- it was a pretty fierce drinking night, for them anyway. By the time we all rolled out of there, it was about 2:30am.

Sunday night was pretty chill. In fact, we slept in on Sunday for much of the day. :) Geoff and I had planned on inviting a few people over for dinner (our first dinner party!), so as soon as we woke up from our hangover nap, we had to get rolling on purchasing supplies and cooking. I wanted to cook Chinese food, but none of our friends eats very spicy foods and one of our friends is vegetarian, so Geoff and I brainstormed some options that would meet everyone's dietary preferences. In the end, we cooked: stirfried eggplant; tofu in spicy bean sauce; mushrooms with garlic; and "three-cup" chicken drumsticks. Geoff also made capirinas for everyone, which tasted fresh and amazing. :) After dinner, we set up a projector (brought over by one of our friends) and watched Cidade de Deus, which was fantastic.

All in all, it has been a couple of beautiful weekends! Next week will be the Marine ball, which is a black-tie event held by the US Embassy, including dinner and dancing. I'm thrilled about it! I love playing dress-up. :)

----------------------------

PS. We bought a car! yay! We're keeping our fingers crossed that there won't be major repairs necessary. So far, we've only found very minor issues with the car, but we're taking it to the mechanic on Monday to get them examined more thoroughly.

First Surfing Lesson!!

Geoff and I had a fabulous week! On Tuesday, the new international hires played a hilarious game of Charades at Eric's and Colleen's apartment over drinks and popcorn. Then, on Thursday night, some of the same people went salsa-dancing with us at an awesome salsa spot in the neighborhood. The cover charge was $5, but there was a live band and some serious salsa-dancers there! I had a ton of fun asking the locals to dance, and Geoff and I are definitely planning on returning to that place regularly once we start taking salsa lessons. :) Finally, over the weekend, Geoff and I caught a movie (G.I. Joe, which was surprisingly decent), went to scope out the famous volcanoes and the beautiful Lago Coatepeque, and even took our first surfing lesson down at El Tunco!!!

...Surfing was really fun, but also a lot harder than I had imagined. Admittedly, I'm not the strongest swimmer, and my upper-body strength is definitely non-existent. Paddling my way on the long surfboard all the way out to where the waves break was so discouraging, that I actually almost asked my surfing coach to let me go back to the shore. Literally, he had to drag my board all the way out there each time, in addition to paddling for himself. --So embarrassing! It was only later that Ali and Jose told us that it is pretty common that the surfing instructors have to drag the newbies out there, because you just don't build the same upper-body strength doing anything else than surfing. Anyway, the actual surfing part was a BLAST. It's not easy to stand up on the board, obviously, but the long boards we had actually felt really stable; even I caught a wave that pushed me all the way out to the beach! It was awesome! And a definite do-over at some point (after we do some pushups, perhaps).

There were some other things I had wanted to say, but I'm so exhausted from the week that I'm going to just crash now. Tomorrow's the first official day back at work for all teachers, so I'm going to start being very busy! Our school day here starts early -- I will have to leave home at 6:30am everyday from now on, to arrive at school with a little bit of time to spare. Yikes...

Weekend at a Beach House

Since a couple of people have asked: Yes! We finally have cell-phone service and internet at home!! :) :) It took 5 trips down to the Claro store, but we eventually prevailed. The funny thing is that their computer system is so archaic, that 1. Even after we had submitted all of the necessary documents, we had to wait another few hours in the store for the guys to finish inputting everything into the computer, and 2. We had to go back the next day (Trip #6) to purchase a related monthly service, since the computer system does not update in real-time and it would take 24 hours for the system to begin recognizing us as existing customers. Goodness. We were in that store for so long each time just sitting and waiting, that the (extremely nice) sales clerk even taught me the word aburrido, meaning "boring."

The good news is that Geoff purchased a mobile internet service that would allow him to do work at any time on his laptop, even if our home network is down. If we decide to start traveling, we can also tag on $10 a month to extend the mobile coverage to other Central American countries, like Guatemala and Costa Rica, so that he can log on at any time and do emergency fixes. Pretty sweet.

-----------------------------

Geoff and I spent a chunk of the weekend at an amazing beach house, along with the rest of the new international hires and their families. The beach house is owned by our principal, and -- I don't know what I had expected before getting there, but -- I was completely blown away by how luxurious it was. We had driven a long time to get there, since it was near the border of Guatemala, and by the time we were finally there, it was dark. We had passed various corn and sugar cane fields (El Salvador is lush with agriculture), and eventually turned down a bumpy little alley way. His maid's family came to open the front gate, and it looked almost like we had arrived on a FARM!! He has so much land in front of the house, that he actually keeps two goats, a big dog, and a number of roosters as pets. The house itself is gorgeous, with brick arches everywhere and a feeling of openness typical to this warm-weathered country. The back yard has a serious pool, some hammocks, an outdoors sitting area, and it opens right onto a beautiful sandy beach that is essentially private. There are palm trees everywhere in front of and behind his house, and his maid's family has done a fabulous job with the upkeep of it all.

Needless to say, the next day or so was extremely relaxing. Even though the electricity was out for a good amount of time during our stay, the people were great and we had a good time anyway. We swam in the ocean, chatted late into the night, read and napped in the hammocks, and drank many a coconut's juice. Geoff also went running in the morning with Brian along the beach, and even played a song or two on Eric's guitar for everyone! It was really a beautiful time. :)

After we got back from the beach house, Geoff and I finally set up a sort of bare-bones "entertainment system" for ourselves at home. We can download movies off of BitTorrent fairly easily, and then if we hook the computer up to our mini stereo-radio-thing, then we can watch movies in our bedroom. Hurray! We spent a lazy Sunday cooking, drinking, swimming, listening to Spanish lessons, and watching movies... I highly recommend He's Just Not That Into You, a decidedly gender-neutral flick. ;) (No, seriously -- Geoff liked it a lot, too.)

-----------------------------

It's looking like I'll have to go out and purchase some practical things this week, including short-sleeved work shirts and a battery-powered alarm clock. This morning, our power was out, and if that had happened on a school day, my plugged-in radio alarm wouldn't have worked, and I would have surely been late to school. That's a Must Fix! :(

We're learning to cope with the unreliable infrastructure here, slowly but surely. This is the third time in less than 3 weeks that we have experienced power outage -- each time in a different setting -- so there is a good chance that this is a common occurrence around here. Along with the electricity goes the water, since the water we use is pumped from underground somewhere. Just have to learn to roll with the punches, that's all.