15 de septiembre contd

So last Monday was the 15 of September, El Salvador's independence day. All the schools in the country organize a parade, complete with marching bands and cachiporristas, which are kind of like cheerleaders or baton-twirlers, except they have to wear really short skirts and don't do many fancy tricks (at least not the ones in my town). There are also kids dressed up in a variety of costumes, such as the doctors and nurses below and the valores or values above - from left to right they are justice (the one with the scales), humility, and peace (notice the dove in her hand).
The day is quite a big event, and the week before the students learn about El Salvador's history and also a little about the other Central American countries who share the same independence day.

15 de septiembre

Ms. Casa de la Cultura

So some of you have been asking what it is I actually do here in the Peace Corps, so I thought I'd share one of my important duties, judging the competition for who will be the next Ms. Casa de la Cultura (Ms. Cultural House). The Casa de la Cultura is a community center in town, where I work teaching English and art classes. They had a beauty pageant/fund raiser this past Saturday and I, along with the mayor and treasurer of the town , got to judge. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

just so you don't think i'm too spoiled

The other night, while I was re-reading the 6th Harry Potter and getting nervous about Voldermort and his tricks (I've forgotten everything that happened in the book), I looked up to see a scorpion (pictured above) crawling up my mosquito net, from the inside, meaning that just before he had been in my bed. This not being my first experience with a scorpion, I knew what to do; I ran out, grabbed the poison and killed it. Unfortunately, in the process I inundated my bed with the insect poison and had to spend the night on the couch.

The previous scorpion attack is an even better story, but as I didn't take a picture of it, I never posted about it on my wall. It happened while I was putting make-up on one day. After applying my mascara, I looked in the mirror only to discover, to my horror, I scorpion sitting on my head. I flipped out and started screaming, but no one heard me, so I figured that the best thing to do would be to gently put my head down on the bed and hope the creature crawled off. Luckily it did, but then it hid somewhere in my sheets. My host mom came to the rescue and sprayed insect poison everywhere, in the process killing him, but like this time, forcing me to wash my recently-cleaned sheets. And if any of you have had to wash sheets by hand, you know it's almost as annoying as finding a scorpion on your head.

my two birthdays

First of all, I want to say thank you to all of you who wished me a happy birthday. And to those of you who called, an extra special thank you, it was so wonderful to hear your voices out here.

I was lucky enough to have two birthday celebrations. The first one was in San Salvador last weekend with my PC friends, and was a joint celebration with my friend linsey, a spring chicken who only turned 23, not 24 like us viejitos. The pictures above are from our delicious dinner at Benihana's, the Japanese hibachi grill that is my biggest guilty pleasure in this country, where all 14 of us went for a wonderful dinner. The meal was followed by a night of dancing out in the San Salvador clubs.

My second birthday celebration was held in my site. I woke up and made myself and the grandkids pancakes, then we had a pool party with some of my friends, followed by a delicious ice cream cake. But the highlight of the day came later, my friend Norma organized a BBQ, where we grilled steaks, chorizo and chicken over hot coals, delicious. It was wonderful, except that the BBQ was held right by where the family keeps their cows, who were staring at us in contempt - I kept feeling like I needed to apologize to them. Also, when I was talking about how old I felt, Norma's mom chimed in to mention that when she was 24 she had already had 5 children! Oh man...
By the way, in the pictures are above, the pink shirt I am wearing was a present from my host parent's daughter, Rina, very sweet.