After much anticipation and what seemed like an eternity of waiting, my parents came to visit!! I was essentially out of commission in the two weeks prior to their visit because all I could do was count the days, hell, the hours, until their plane landed.
I picked them up at the airport, and the taxi that we took back to the hotel gave them what I thought was an appropriate welcome to the country; we got in a taxi that had no suspension and thus the rear of the car scraped the pavement the entire 45 minutes back into the city! The taxi “no sirve,” a term that has quickly summed up most of my feeling about this place. “No Sirve” means, literally, “doesn’t serve/work” and my parents got a firsthand look during their two week visit at the broken, backwards country that I now call home.
Something though that “si sirve” for Lane at least was Tony Roma’s 2x1 draft beers. Soon (and I’m talking about 20 minutes) after we checked in at the hotel, I took my parents to enjoy my favorite activity in the capital (well, second favorite, after Pizza Hut delivery and CNN), and that’s 2x1 beers! And then for dinner we went to Tucson for 2x1 beers AND 2x1 steaks! Tucson is in La Gran Via, which is essentially Georgetown, DC in the middle of a third world country. Neither of my parents could believe how nice the pedestrian shopping mall was, and now understand why I love to go there for dinner every time I venture to the capital. The capital doesn’t offer much in the form of tourism, so both times we spent the night there, we mostly ate and drank and I got to show them where I spend my time when I’m there (i.e. Tucson, Tony Roma’s and the Happy House Hotel).
The next morning, my parents and I hauled all their luggage (which was made larger because they carted down a bunch of my crap for me) to the bus terminal and headed out East to my site. It was at the terminal that I introduced Lane to pupusas. His response when I handed him the pork and bean filled tortilla: “What is this? Like a pizza or something?” He loved them and was impressed at the price tag of 3 for a dollar.
The terminal in San Miguel (the transfer point to get to my site) was a SHOW. Gringos on parade for sure! We barely made it to the bus on time, but it was PACKED and it was chaos in the terminal. Of course, all of us had to pee, we had a ton of luggage to put on the bus, and the bus was way over capacity, if there is such a thing in this country. In the terminal, in front of the bus that goes to my community, in the midst of all this chaos, is where I mistakenly decided to introduce my parents to water in a bag. Hell. It was hot, and we were sweaty and in desperate need of water, regardless of the container it came in… (Water in a bag is about the most retarded thing I’ve ever heard of, because once you make a hole in the corner to suck through, you basically have to finish the thing, and I never want that much water in one gulp…). Lane punctured the bag, and tried to pour the water into his small water bottle. “Tried” being the key word. The water gushed everywhere, soaking both him and me, while the Salvadorans around us just laughed. We were a show. He eventually mastered the task, but needless to say we mostly drank bottled water for the rest of the trip!
We spent two nights in my site, which was fun. They were my first visitors here, and it was fun showing them around where I live. My mom really liked my house, and she had fun trying to figure out how I could improve my cooking techniques and recipes given what minimal equipment I have. Lane enjoyed my patio, and was busy reminiscing about his time in Africa in the Peace Corps. My living conditions are clearly superior to what was available to him, but some things are always the same in the third world. Open windows with no screens, dirt roads with puddles of god knows what in them, the trash, chickens running wild and women walking around gracefully balancing their loads on their heads are all clear signs of life in developing nations!
Both parents liked the bucket bath, as it is hella refreshing in this heat! Although, my mom did have to ask me how to even begin to wash dishes in the pila, and when she was cutting watermelon in my concrete sink, she saw the “abate” (larvae poison in small red bags we keep in our pilas here to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in the standing water) and thought she had spilled some of the watermelon in it!
My mom also learned how to make tortillas while she was here. A neighbor of mine, Beatriz, and her mom taught us both how to make tortillas and it was hilarious! Neither of us could ever get it quite right, but it was fun trying. Beatriz is a PRO, as she’s been making 100 tortillas about every other day since she was 11, and so she perfected the faulty tortillas my mom and I produced, while her 99 year old grandmother sat by watching us and laughing. She thought it was the craziest thing she’d ever heard when I told her my mom had never made a tortilla before, and that we don’t eat them with every meal in the states! She just couldn’t wrap her brain around how we can ever get full without eating them!
I cooked my “no refrigeration necessary” veggie and pasta dish for my parents also, so they could experience my nightly meal and how it is to live without a refrigerator. I also took them to visit the school and the kids loved it. Everyone kept talking about how young my mom is, and how beautiful Lane’s white hair is!!
After my site, we hit playa El Tunco and the cliff top beach house we rented for a week of r&r. It was heaven. The hammocks looked out over the waves crashing against the cliff (and the salt water pool) and I read two books sitting in those hammocks that week! We also had a bunch of my new PCV friends stay with us for a few days so now my parents can put faces with names when I talk about my life here! We ate seafood, drank beer, swam in the two pools and read for the week and it was amazing. I never wanted to leave.
After the beach, we headed west to Santa Ana, where we explored the “colonial” city (not so much colonial anymore, just a few colonial style landmarks in the main square and more rundown buildings with tin roofs…like I said, no sirve). Lane and I hiked the volcano at Santa Ana (the second tallest in the country) but that’s a whole other blog post entirely! And my mom and I went with my friend Molly out to a food festival in Juayua and had a great time eating cheap food and shopping in the artisan market.
The trip ended too soon, and so we had one last dinner at Tucson with my friend Paul that was in town, and then they had to leave. All I wanted to do was get on that plane with them home, out of here! Still do. It was so fun having them here and when they left it just reminded me how much I miss home.
Lane said he’s not planning another vacation here, because there’s nothing to do. And my mom wants to come back and live with me on my patio for a month or two, but only if I get a second hammock!
Moral of the story: come visit me? I want visitors and even though most of the time this place “no sirve,” we can make our own fun! And there are always 2x1 beers…
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