And it's raining

Third night of a glorious four-day weekend (thank you so much Headmaster Skipper), and it is pouring down rain. Welcome to the rainy season in Central America. We have enjoyed two day trips over the holidays. Today we stayed in town, had friends over to swim, and got sunburned yet again!

On Thursday, we drove to Santa Ana with the Magana family. Letty Magana is head of H.R. at the school. She and her husband, Julio, along with their three children, led us to a delightful city about an hour outside of San Salvador (and as with every place we go - it's all down hill to get there). The town square had a festive atmosphere due to September 15 -Salvadoran Independence Day. We walked from vendor to vendor. Julio was the expert at picking the best street food for us to try. My personal favorite was choco-sandia - frozen watermelon dipped in chocolate and nuts. The most memorable snack was "elote loco" - translation "crazy corn." The corn on the cob was brushed with mayo, dipped in parmesan cheese, then equal toppings of ketchup, mustard and BBQ sauce. Maggie is officially hooked.

We finished off our trip to Santa Ana in a pastaleria - a little pastry and sandwich shop. There I tried horchata - milk with a sugar and seed mixture in it. Maggie described it as the taste of milk after you've eaten all the cereal out of it. It was delicious, along with pastries nicknamed "ear" and "lightening." (I've forgotten the Spanish names for both.) Letty's children rode back to the city with us, and gave Mags and Will a free Spanish lesson on the way home. The photos in this blog entry were taken inside and outside the cathedral. I've got some nice shots of the children feeding the pigeons, too. It was all so "Mary Poppins" like.

Yesterday we met two school families at the beach - Costa del Sol. You have no idea how nerve-wracking it can be to try to navigate in this country. But thanks to our complejo friend, Maria, we only had to turn around once - a new Dunlap record. The house we visited was right on the beach. The sand is black. It's very soft to walk on but it looks so different. The beach is also littered with coconuts - they are everywhere. The rental house had a big yard, a bunch of hammocks, 50 chairs (no lie - don't know why there were so many chairs), and a small swimming pool. I got to eat a jumbo shrimp, deveined and cooked on the grill. South Carolina shrimp are going to have to change their names to mini-jumbo. These were super-jumbo!

All in all, a great vacation. We'll head to church in the morning, and spend the rest of the day preparing lesson plans for next week. Hasta la vista!