Bienvenidos a El Salvador!

Well, I’ve been in El Salvador for two weeks, and now and I think yesterday was the most cultural day we’ve had yet.  We left the house at like 6:30, and wandered around the wrong side of this little city for a couple hours trying to find the Habitat for Humanity office.  We finally realized that we were on the wrong side, then made about 20 phone calls till we got to a place where we were supposed to be picked up.

Eventually, a tour bus pulled up and took us to the habitat office.  We all got off, only to have to flag down the driver because everyone had left by then, and he needed to take us all the way to the build.   We waited for the habitat guard to explain where it was, and we started watching this guy groom his poodle in the window.  He was wearing a white shirt and white bandana over his mouth.  We were probably just a little tired at this point, but we all thought it was hilarious and started snapping pictures from inside the bus and singing "How Much is that Doggy in the Window?" Also, the van had happy suns on the back of the seats with sunglasses and shovels.  I have no idea what that was about.  We drove to the wrong build at first, but about three hours after we were supposed to show up, we made it to the right house (we think.  We’re still a little unsure…)

Vladimir was there working on it and greeted us when we showed up.  From what we understand, the house is to be for him, his wife and two ninas.   Alan, Logan, Megan, Vladimir and I lugged cement tiles for the floor from the neighbors to the house we were building.  Honestly, it’s a little embarrassing, but I don’t think I’ve been that sweaty ever, in my entire life.  Oh, yeah.  There were nests of ants under the tiles.  They were teeny little ants and Vladimir kept telling me “no pica, no pica!” (that they don’t bite) but I didn’t feel like explaining to him that I knew they didn’t bite.  If they did, I would be running away instead of just whimpering like a little girl and holding the tiles like they were on fire.  I dropped one and it broke, but considering how grossed out I was, that’s a number I can live with:)  (all the tiles we moved)

After the floor was moved, Alan, Logan and Vladimir went into town to pick up more paint brushes (which apparently Vladimir made Alan pay for…) and Meg and I stayed at the house and played with Vladimir’s little girl Leslie.  She was seriously the most adorable little girl EVER. 

We painted for a while, then the other workers explained that here in El Salvador, they like to take a lunch break.  Alan said that was fine, we’d take an hour, and they men said, “mmm, more like an hour and a half.”  Sure, why not?  Alan was telling us that we were in a pretty dangerous area, so when Logan asked Vladimir about safety, he agreed that it was pretty dangerous, and ran back to the house to grab his gun.  And his daughter.

Anyway, we drove to lunch and adorable Leslie held my hand and chatted with me in her adorable little kid El Salvadorian Spanish.  I love talking to kids, cuz we’re on about the same Spanish level;) We went to one place, but they told us ridiculous prices when they saw all of us gringos, so we went to another place and Vladimir went in first and asked for prices, then we all came piling out of the van.  We pretty much cleaned out all their food and everyone was staring at us the whole time.  

We went back to the build and painted the rest of the house.  As we were leaving, Vladimir insisted that we take a bag of platanos and mamones.  Right as we were getting into the van, he decided I guess that we didn’t have enough mamones yet, so he ran into the jungle and came back with another full bag.  We’re eating mamones tonight!

We got home, and everyone was soooo happy to shower and go have some dinner.  We turned on a movie after dinner, but paused it to watch the storm.  It rains really hard almost every night, and sometimes the storms are really intense.  The rain is super loud, and the sky is always lit with flashes of electricity brighter than a strobe light.  Every once in a while, lightning strikes somewhere in the city with a huge flash of light, and huge thunder follows.  It’s so loud that after a strike, all the car alarms in our neighborhood go off.  If I was ever going to steal a car, I’d do it during a tropical storm;)

Anyway, that was our crazy El Salvadorian day.  It was a blast!