A Day in the Life
Monday, 19 March 2007
I wake up around 6:30am to the sounds of rapid footsteps and some serious squwaking. Opening my door, I see my host mom running around in her pajamas, chasing down a chicken that really didn´t want to be caught. I immediately join the chase, because she needs help and I´m still half asleep and damn, it kind of looks like fun. Together we back the chicken into a corner of the yard and I´m thinking, Ok, here´s tonight´s dinner, but no, Yanira has other plans. She ties the poor bird to a makshift nest chock full of eggs - just straps it in there with string like a glorified seat belt. Through bleary eyes I must have looked at her strangly because she tries to explain - "The mother hen ran out of the yard and got herself run over by a mototaxi, so this hen has to be the new mother." The chosen chicken doesn´t look too pleased with this arrangement but hey, maybe motherly instincts will kick in and she´ll care for the incubating eggs as though they are her own.
I shower and get on the bus heading to Santa Rosa de Lima in the next department, to attend a meeting with fellow volunteers to plan our upcoming youth gender camp. The meeting goes well, but there is a but of confusion as to what bus I need to take back. Not all buses pass through the San Miguel terminal, where I pick up a bus to my site. I ask a few drivers, who point me in the direction of other buses. I´m waiting on the side of the road when one of the drivers I had questioned pulls up and tells me he´ll take me close to where I need to go. I say thanks and jump on his bus. It´s then that I realize his bus is headed to San Salvador, which is perfect ecause I can stay with him past San Mig and just get off the bus at the desvio heading to my site (I live thirty minutes off the PanAmerican highway, and can pick up a bus going from San Mig to my ite at this stop). I attempt to explain this to the driver, but it´s loud and crowded on the bus and my Spanish is crap today and I´m not sure how much of it he gets. He smiles and nods though, so we´re on our way. We travel for a while until the driver pulls over at a point between the terminal of San Mig and the desvio where I intend to get off. A big, burly guy with a mouth full of gold teeth gets on the bus selling french fries and the driver calls him over. They´re both looking at me and I hear the driver explaining to the man, "She needs to go to Chapeltique and she has no idea what she´s doing. Can she stay with you here and you tell her what bus to get on?" Gold teeth guy looks at me and grins; I jump up and say to the driver, "No no! I know where I´m going - I´ve been living here almost 10 months." In my head: "Please don´t leave me with the french fry guy." So the driver says "Oh, I didn´t realize you knew where you were going!" and the other man is dismissed, thank God. We continue on and I get back to my site with no problems.
I´m back in time to teach my English class at 2pm, which always seems to go well. The ten university students I teach are studying English in college and are gung-ho about learning the language. The only problem is that they´re too smart for their own in good - I sometimes wonder if everything they´re learning from me they already know by listening to American music and watching US television and movies. That day class we were practicing questions - "Who did you go to dinner with? What are you doing tomorrow?" - and I ask them "Where are you going after class today?" One student - Ohlmer - said something and I thought I heard "Happy hour," so I stopped and said, "Happy hour, what?!" Turns out he hadn´t said that at all, but because I´d looked surprised they all wanted to know what "happy hour" meant. Crap. I sort of laughed and explained it to them - they are university students afterall, not ten year olds, but happy hour doesn´t really exist here. Those who are in the bar are never there for a casual drink after work. THey´re there to get drunk, period, and everyone knows it. They all thought it was funny and laughed at my discomfort more than anything else. Then Fabricio, who is a less-advanced speaker, pipes up out of nowhere and says, “happy tour great, you get two for one.” And everyone sort of nods their heads and says, “Ohh, two for one, two for one.” I was completely torn between shaking my head and laughing my butt off… my students still mix up their pronouns and we´re not using verbs beyond “go” and “come” yet, but they can tell you what happy hour is and they sure as hell know the value of two for one. Yes, I´m an excellent teacher.
Class ends at 4pm, and I head back to the Alcaldia. Earlier that week I´d agreed to go to Haydee´s house for enchiladas that night with Cecilia, two women who work for our town mayor. I hadn´t eaten all day because I remember the last time I ate enchiladas as Haydee´s – she gave me about ten of them and I had to eat them all, lest be an ungracious guest. So I was hungry and excited – I love Haydee, a twenty-something, single, rather robust lady with a self-deprecating attitude and a laid-back air, she and her mother cook the best enchiladas around town. Haydee heads to her house and I walk with Cecilia to hers so she can change clothes before dinner. Cecilia´s husband and I watch Daffy Duck in Spanish for a half hour until she calls me into the back room. When I open the door she´s standing there with a few items of clothing. “Quita su camiseta,” she says – and the next thing I know I´m standing there in my bra and she´s pulling a shirt over my head. It´s a rather large, brown and green flowered toga-type shirt, and I look as though I´m trying out for the circus. Cecilia is all excited, telling me how nice I look in it but my bra is clearly visible throught he fabric and I know I can´t walk down main street to Haydee´s like that. So I made up some excuse – “I´ll save it for the Alcaldia!” – and took it off to replace it with my own shirt. Thank God I didn´t seem to offend her.
We arrive at Haydee´s and immediately I feel great. The house smells wonderfully of chicken and fried dough and Haydee and her family are friendly and just so hysterical. We gather in the kitchen with her, her mother and her 11 year old sister, and I´m immediately instructed to sit down and let them work. Haydee´s mom notices that Cecilia has a cough, so she givers her a mug with a small spot of gasusa, or homemade liquor made of corn and fruits. She presents me with a glass of it too, but fills it half full and tells me proudly, “you can only get this stuff in the campo you know.” I sniff it and I believe it – the stuff could singe your eyebrows – and Haydee laughs and offers me some soda to go with it. I thank her, then watch as she pours about a shot of Coke into the glass to “water down” the liquor. Well, alright. I sit on my stool, moving Haydee´s dad´s loaded handgun to do so, and enjoy the booze as the women cook and chat and laugh. I´ve yet to do such a thing with women in this country – sit and drink and raise our glasses for more, proclaiming things like “estamos jodidos” without shame while discussing local politics and religion like, well, the men do. It was refreshing and relaxing and so familiar to home.
Afterwards we liberally ate enchiladas and pastels, enchiladas with chicken, vegetables and sauce in the middle, until we could barely move. We retired to the hammocks and chatted with eyes half-mast – I turned down another glass of gasusa three more times. Around 9pm I left with Cecilia and a bag full of chicken eggs, a half bottle of gasusa, more clothing they´d decided would look great on me and a promise to come live with their family, should I get sick of where I am now.
I walked back to my house and greeted Roberto, the “vigilante” or security guard who now guards my host family´s home from 8pm to 6am everyday. He was very busy watering the trees and plants outside when I walked in the gate. Thank goodness we have a middle-aged, overweight security guard with a sweet temperament and a flashlight for a weapon to protect us from robbers and thieves, is all I have to say. Roberto spends most of his time in his hammock on the house porch – I was he would escort me from my bedroom to my bathroom and protect me from Psycho-Turkey Flesh-Eater, but that doesn´t seem to be part of his job description. I went to bed hot, sweaty, stuffed…. And happy.
Starting Monday April 2 the whole country begins to celebrate Semana Santa, and stays off work and out of school until Tuesday the 10th. Every Friday the butcher shuts down and the whole town smells like tortas de pescado, or fish, and a procession with a statue of Jesus goes around to each neighbourhood, with the priest reading off the stations of the cross and a crowd of people following with candles and hymns. I´ve been observing and enjoying the Lenten process of Catholics in my town, and look forward to celebreating Easter in a few weeks with my host family (though I´ll very much miss being with my own family in the States). I hope everyone at home is doing well and taking care – thank you for all the recent updates and emails! EMQ, your Halloween package is just as appreciated now as it would have been had I gotten it four months ago, when you originally sent it. Nicole and Sister Dorothy, your packages filled with wonderful things for the kids in town are so generous and have been extremely well received and appreciated – thank you so much! Kev, your St. Patty´s Day card and CD of Irish drinking songs made my day. I hope you were part of the 60% of Boston´s population projected to survive the four day weekend. KK, thanks for the five pager… Im working on a return letter I promise!
And to my family… I miss you guys, and wish I could have been there to celebrate Dads 50th. Youre an old man now, better take it easy Dad. Happy 25th wedding anniversary today to my parents as well! Im thinking of you as always, and look forward to talking to you soon.
Paz y amor,
Erin
I wake up around 6:30am to the sounds of rapid footsteps and some serious squwaking. Opening my door, I see my host mom running around in her pajamas, chasing down a chicken that really didn´t want to be caught. I immediately join the chase, because she needs help and I´m still half asleep and damn, it kind of looks like fun. Together we back the chicken into a corner of the yard and I´m thinking, Ok, here´s tonight´s dinner, but no, Yanira has other plans. She ties the poor bird to a makshift nest chock full of eggs - just straps it in there with string like a glorified seat belt. Through bleary eyes I must have looked at her strangly because she tries to explain - "The mother hen ran out of the yard and got herself run over by a mototaxi, so this hen has to be the new mother." The chosen chicken doesn´t look too pleased with this arrangement but hey, maybe motherly instincts will kick in and she´ll care for the incubating eggs as though they are her own.
I shower and get on the bus heading to Santa Rosa de Lima in the next department, to attend a meeting with fellow volunteers to plan our upcoming youth gender camp. The meeting goes well, but there is a but of confusion as to what bus I need to take back. Not all buses pass through the San Miguel terminal, where I pick up a bus to my site. I ask a few drivers, who point me in the direction of other buses. I´m waiting on the side of the road when one of the drivers I had questioned pulls up and tells me he´ll take me close to where I need to go. I say thanks and jump on his bus. It´s then that I realize his bus is headed to San Salvador, which is perfect ecause I can stay with him past San Mig and just get off the bus at the desvio heading to my site (I live thirty minutes off the PanAmerican highway, and can pick up a bus going from San Mig to my ite at this stop). I attempt to explain this to the driver, but it´s loud and crowded on the bus and my Spanish is crap today and I´m not sure how much of it he gets. He smiles and nods though, so we´re on our way. We travel for a while until the driver pulls over at a point between the terminal of San Mig and the desvio where I intend to get off. A big, burly guy with a mouth full of gold teeth gets on the bus selling french fries and the driver calls him over. They´re both looking at me and I hear the driver explaining to the man, "She needs to go to Chapeltique and she has no idea what she´s doing. Can she stay with you here and you tell her what bus to get on?" Gold teeth guy looks at me and grins; I jump up and say to the driver, "No no! I know where I´m going - I´ve been living here almost 10 months." In my head: "Please don´t leave me with the french fry guy." So the driver says "Oh, I didn´t realize you knew where you were going!" and the other man is dismissed, thank God. We continue on and I get back to my site with no problems.
I´m back in time to teach my English class at 2pm, which always seems to go well. The ten university students I teach are studying English in college and are gung-ho about learning the language. The only problem is that they´re too smart for their own in good - I sometimes wonder if everything they´re learning from me they already know by listening to American music and watching US television and movies. That day class we were practicing questions - "Who did you go to dinner with? What are you doing tomorrow?" - and I ask them "Where are you going after class today?" One student - Ohlmer - said something and I thought I heard "Happy hour," so I stopped and said, "Happy hour, what?!" Turns out he hadn´t said that at all, but because I´d looked surprised they all wanted to know what "happy hour" meant. Crap. I sort of laughed and explained it to them - they are university students afterall, not ten year olds, but happy hour doesn´t really exist here. Those who are in the bar are never there for a casual drink after work. THey´re there to get drunk, period, and everyone knows it. They all thought it was funny and laughed at my discomfort more than anything else. Then Fabricio, who is a less-advanced speaker, pipes up out of nowhere and says, “happy tour great, you get two for one.” And everyone sort of nods their heads and says, “Ohh, two for one, two for one.” I was completely torn between shaking my head and laughing my butt off… my students still mix up their pronouns and we´re not using verbs beyond “go” and “come” yet, but they can tell you what happy hour is and they sure as hell know the value of two for one. Yes, I´m an excellent teacher.
Class ends at 4pm, and I head back to the Alcaldia. Earlier that week I´d agreed to go to Haydee´s house for enchiladas that night with Cecilia, two women who work for our town mayor. I hadn´t eaten all day because I remember the last time I ate enchiladas as Haydee´s – she gave me about ten of them and I had to eat them all, lest be an ungracious guest. So I was hungry and excited – I love Haydee, a twenty-something, single, rather robust lady with a self-deprecating attitude and a laid-back air, she and her mother cook the best enchiladas around town. Haydee heads to her house and I walk with Cecilia to hers so she can change clothes before dinner. Cecilia´s husband and I watch Daffy Duck in Spanish for a half hour until she calls me into the back room. When I open the door she´s standing there with a few items of clothing. “Quita su camiseta,” she says – and the next thing I know I´m standing there in my bra and she´s pulling a shirt over my head. It´s a rather large, brown and green flowered toga-type shirt, and I look as though I´m trying out for the circus. Cecilia is all excited, telling me how nice I look in it but my bra is clearly visible throught he fabric and I know I can´t walk down main street to Haydee´s like that. So I made up some excuse – “I´ll save it for the Alcaldia!” – and took it off to replace it with my own shirt. Thank God I didn´t seem to offend her.
We arrive at Haydee´s and immediately I feel great. The house smells wonderfully of chicken and fried dough and Haydee and her family are friendly and just so hysterical. We gather in the kitchen with her, her mother and her 11 year old sister, and I´m immediately instructed to sit down and let them work. Haydee´s mom notices that Cecilia has a cough, so she givers her a mug with a small spot of gasusa, or homemade liquor made of corn and fruits. She presents me with a glass of it too, but fills it half full and tells me proudly, “you can only get this stuff in the campo you know.” I sniff it and I believe it – the stuff could singe your eyebrows – and Haydee laughs and offers me some soda to go with it. I thank her, then watch as she pours about a shot of Coke into the glass to “water down” the liquor. Well, alright. I sit on my stool, moving Haydee´s dad´s loaded handgun to do so, and enjoy the booze as the women cook and chat and laugh. I´ve yet to do such a thing with women in this country – sit and drink and raise our glasses for more, proclaiming things like “estamos jodidos” without shame while discussing local politics and religion like, well, the men do. It was refreshing and relaxing and so familiar to home.
Afterwards we liberally ate enchiladas and pastels, enchiladas with chicken, vegetables and sauce in the middle, until we could barely move. We retired to the hammocks and chatted with eyes half-mast – I turned down another glass of gasusa three more times. Around 9pm I left with Cecilia and a bag full of chicken eggs, a half bottle of gasusa, more clothing they´d decided would look great on me and a promise to come live with their family, should I get sick of where I am now.
I walked back to my house and greeted Roberto, the “vigilante” or security guard who now guards my host family´s home from 8pm to 6am everyday. He was very busy watering the trees and plants outside when I walked in the gate. Thank goodness we have a middle-aged, overweight security guard with a sweet temperament and a flashlight for a weapon to protect us from robbers and thieves, is all I have to say. Roberto spends most of his time in his hammock on the house porch – I was he would escort me from my bedroom to my bathroom and protect me from Psycho-Turkey Flesh-Eater, but that doesn´t seem to be part of his job description. I went to bed hot, sweaty, stuffed…. And happy.
Starting Monday April 2 the whole country begins to celebrate Semana Santa, and stays off work and out of school until Tuesday the 10th. Every Friday the butcher shuts down and the whole town smells like tortas de pescado, or fish, and a procession with a statue of Jesus goes around to each neighbourhood, with the priest reading off the stations of the cross and a crowd of people following with candles and hymns. I´ve been observing and enjoying the Lenten process of Catholics in my town, and look forward to celebreating Easter in a few weeks with my host family (though I´ll very much miss being with my own family in the States). I hope everyone at home is doing well and taking care – thank you for all the recent updates and emails! EMQ, your Halloween package is just as appreciated now as it would have been had I gotten it four months ago, when you originally sent it. Nicole and Sister Dorothy, your packages filled with wonderful things for the kids in town are so generous and have been extremely well received and appreciated – thank you so much! Kev, your St. Patty´s Day card and CD of Irish drinking songs made my day. I hope you were part of the 60% of Boston´s population projected to survive the four day weekend. KK, thanks for the five pager… Im working on a return letter I promise!
And to my family… I miss you guys, and wish I could have been there to celebrate Dads 50th. Youre an old man now, better take it easy Dad. Happy 25th wedding anniversary today to my parents as well! Im thinking of you as always, and look forward to talking to you soon.
Paz y amor,
Erin
posted by Erin @ 9:26 AM
1 Comments:
At 10:45 AM,
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