Amoebas, Soccer, and Impenetrable Heat

That´s right, I wrote ¨soccer¨.... I´m an American, dammit!

So... first off, I´m going to write that I am excluding one very juicy detail of my last few weeks. I will be of no interest to some of you, of much interest to a few of you, and of great interest to find out to all of you, since I won´t write it here. If you want more, you will need to write me personally so I can evaluate your worthiness for such a story.

And on...

I got amoebas. I´m sure that the majority of you will wish that this had been the part that I had chosen to omit, since this particular week of my travels involved little else than pills and poop, but I thought it prudent to record my illnesses as my trip wears on. It lasted something like a week and a half, and involved something like 8 different kinds of medication. Seriously. No joke. Look at the picture under the El Salvador tab. I managed to escape, however, and I am fully indebted to Uga for his particular role in my recovery. I´m not exaggerating when I say that there was a dark, stormy night, a frantic trip across town to call in a favor from an old friend, and much, much nervous anticipation (at least on my part- I didn´t think I could last another night).


Anyhow, I recovered just in time to receive Kat and Adam on the 25th of last month. There was much tomfoolery to be engaged in, and I will post only this photo of Adam locking himself into their own room to verify my point. The one really sucky thing about this part of the week was that I couldn´t drink. The particular pills I was on called for a complete abstinence from alcohol... so the firt time I saw my friends in nearly 4 months, I had to be Sober Sam. Lame Sam- some might say. Oh well.

I made my way back to El Tunco (don´t judge me) and met up with Stav for a day or so more, before heading southward with her friend Jeff. Since the borders between El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua were only tentatively open, we decided to take the less conventional way, and boat it through the Gulf of Fonseca. This is what we found.

Another astonishing thing was La Unión, a city commonly considered to be El Salvador´s asshole. Hot, Sticky, and, well.. shitty. It was absolutely beautiful. Not in the traditional sense, as in good to look at... because it wasn´t... but the people were wonderful. Here I am posing with some policepeople we met. Aside from the fact that nobody in the town seems to know anything about transportation to or fro.. we found them to be perhaps the nicest of those we met in E.S. ... which is hard to say because everyone we met in E.S. was pretty much awesome. We also joined some locals in watching an intermural soccer game in a school yard basketball court. I didn´t get any photos, but it was quite the experience.





The last thing I want to include is this picture of a cute girl in Potosí Nicaragua. The loveliest lady in red in town! Here she is, befuddled, but standing with her proud father. They both waved merrily as we jostled out of town in an overcrowded bus filled to bursting with puppies, baseball teams, and actual chickens.

Oh, and here´s another picture of me in Las Peñitas, Nicaragua. I thought it artistic although my friend Austin has told me I walk like a lesbian... and it seems to be particularly apparent in this photo. Whatever.

El Tunco, take 2.

So, Kaj and I have been back in El Tunco for the last week or so. It´s miraculous how quickly a week spent in a hammock can pass. In my defense, I have also gone out for several more days of surfing, and have actually caught a wave or two (albeit not for very long). I need to learn how to do push-ups. I have a feeling that that would greatly improve my quality of life down here... or at least minimize my daily salt-water intake.

Another thing I´ve pegged as a priority on this trip is learning how to cook. Here is a photo of Kaj with a fish that we bought in the market. Somehow, while perusing the seafood aisle, we came to the conclusion that -- of course they would gut the fish for us... how could you sell it otherwise? ... and came home with this thing thinking we could just chop the head off and dump it in the oven. My, how very mistaken we were. Did you know that you also have to take the scales off? They don´t do that for you either. I pity the cleaning lady in Papaya´s hostel. I did the best I could to clean up, but considering that in our haste, we began mercilessly beating the thing against the counter, flinging scales and guts every which way... I wouldn´t be surprised if a chair was employed to get the last of the bits off the higher parts of the wall. It didn´t help that the dog got ahold of the bones when we were done either. It made for a very unpleasant morning... especially for the first person to step barefoot into the kitchen.

In addition, I have also spent the majority of this past week trying to learn how to click my heels... a lifelong aspiration that I´ve recently decided to try to fulfill. Here is where I got on my last day before I came up to Santa Ana. Let it be known that jumping around barefoot on a rocky beach is a stupid... stupid thing to do.

The locals had a good laugh though. Man, sometimes I can be such a stupid tourist.

Speaking of interactions with locals, on Saturday night, the lot of us from the hostel went out to the local cantina (the only cantina) to have a brew or two with the natives and try to assimilate with the local culture. The night somehow ended with an angry Salvadorean lady drawing back her arm to punch me in the face. The blow never landed, but I´m really not sure how we got there in the first place. It began with a mistake (or, rather 5 mistakes) on our tab which they refused to rectify. Who would drink Golden when you could get your hands on a Pilsener anyway? Anyhow, lesson learned- do not sass an angry latina. It will not bode well for the future of your teeth.

On the same night, we witnessed quite a bit of local flavor- B-boys, a Michael Jackson impersonator, and one guy doing freestyle flow in English, although I´m not sure why he´d choose a second language, since he apparently sucks at it. I got a little homesick thinking of my friends back home that could rip that guy a new asshole. Anyhow, the hip hop culture down here is really quite the same, except that all the music videos feature the artists fanning themselves with stacks of USD 10 bills. My, how comical an economic divide can be.

Anyhow, Uga is patiently waiting for me outside this internet cafe. Here is a picture of him as a kid that I doubt he´d let me upload if he knew what I was doing. It´s part of a goldmine I found in his sister´s bedroom. I will also add more under the ´El Salvador Photos´tab at the end of the week. There are some good ones.

Juayua

Not too much to update on here. We went to Juayua ... the whole group, for something like 4 or 5 days. We went to waterfalls during the first day, and some others went hiking to Lago Coatepeque, but the main reason for going was the food fair. Here I am eating a frog. It cost 7 bucks and tasted like chicken (doesn't everything?) except more chewy. Meh. The rabbit was better.

Another thing that the food fair brought was a very large pair of underpants. Erin, Kaj and I found them in a dollar bin near the outskirts of the food stalls. After going on something of a wild goose chase involving a 12 year old horse carriage driver, we found some weed and figured we could have some fun with the giant underoos.

... and we did.

We actually managed to fit 6 people in ... Trev climbed in for the finale... but I already uploaded it to my facebook and you all have probably seen it by now.

Although I could have stayed longer, my feet were getting antsy, so I went with Erin and Kaj to La Palma. Here is one of the walls we passed by. Most of the city looks like this-- the influence of an artist.. (I can't remember his name), who has taught everyone this style of naive (I didn´t try to spell ¨native¨here) art in order to generate income for an otherwise impoverished village. It's really quite beautiful.

I'm back in El Tunco now, waiting for Uga and Kat to join me on my simple minded adventures. I will update accordingly as things happen.

Americans and Israelis

I know that, generally speaking, when I travel, I put up with a lot of shit for being an American. I´ve never pretended to be otherwise, and my adamant hope has been that people´s opinions will eventually change, should they know me long enough to consider me to be more than just loud and stupid (two characteristics I don´t deny, but that I hope will be smothered by other, more positive traits).

The people that have had the complete lack of social awareness to say these things to my face in pretense of just expressing what they claim to know is true of the rest of Americans, (as if I was somehow excluded from this extremely generalized verdict) almost seem as if they´d never heard their manners questioned as a result. What makes ridiculing someone´s country any more acceptable than ridiculing their family or friends- and moreover, why do people ever feel that they need to tolerate it? It´s every bit as narrow as racism or homophobia- and the people who are too weak or lazy to see America for how complicated it really is should be made to feel as small and ignorant as they are unwittingly showing themselves to be.

Anyway, I have never felt that I should stand for it, and I certainly won´t hesitate to make my opinion known should I ever be made to feel that way. What I had never considered was that there could be another whole country that may not be as hated, but maybe just as misunderstood as ours. For the first time, I´m traveling at length with an Israeli girl with whom I have a lot in common- but what´s most surprising to me is that it seems that we are both confronted with a lot of crappy (but different) stereotypes. For once, I feel that maybe Americans aren´t the most unjustly depicted of all the traveling nationalities, and that maybe it´s Israel that´s getting the shortest end of the proverbial stick.

El Salvador and on...

Sitting in an internet cafe is ok and fine when you´re in a smog-filled city, but when you´re in a beachy paradise, it can make for a pretty sad afternoon.

El Tunco is pretty fantastic. We´ve been here for almost a week, and it´s going to be really hard to leave in a couple days for Juayua (I´m not exactly sure that it´s spelled that way). I had originally planned to return to Honduras to complete my study of Spanish grammar, but those damn military coups keep getting in the way!

Let me think back to the last time I posted. Oh yes, I was in San Pedro for a couple days, basically just pissing around and enjoying the rain before i came down to E.S. I ended up going to San Marcos and cliff jumping down into the lake. There were two rocks, one of which was a little smaller, at about 20 feet high. You can find a picture of me jumping off of it under my ´Guatemala Photos´tab. There was another one that was 30 feet high that I also jumped off of (after a good 10 minutes or so of deliberation). I used that as my profile picture for facebook.

Geert (Daniel) came to meet up with us for Saturday night, and we went for a proper night of boozing. At one point, I was giving Matt a piggy-back ride while Daniel ran in front of me with a rum and coke, goading me horse-and-carrot-like. That night was good fun, but not enough fun to compensate for the next day, which brought Shiran and myself down to El Salvador on bus. It was something like 10 very painful hours, during the course of which I had to beg the driver to pull over so I could vomit. Here is a photo of Shiran and I passing through immigration. We did our best to not look suspicious.

We stayed 2 nights in San Salvador, hanging out waiting for Trev to come while visiting some cool spots. Some stupid bitch in a hostel got lippy with me and I shut her down-- which I feel was a step towards maturity.... or a step back. However you want to look at it, I went to bed feeling satisfied.

We´re now in El Tunco, surfing, relaxing, and coming up with excuses not to leave. You can find photos of me... ahem... ´surfing´ under the ´El Salvador´tab in this blog. I should take more photos of the beach, but here is one of the playa at sunset from our favorite seafood restaurant.

I haven´t accomplished too much here aside from learning how to surf and getting so drunk I end up running naked down the beach-- I think there´ll be more cultural insight in my next entry.

Back in Guatemala

Just gonna quickly update here as I´ve been on this computer for something like 3 hours trying to get my pics uploaded. For real, 3 hours for 15 photos... there´s something unconstitutional about that... but check out this cool pic I took of the rain falling over the lake. Sweet, no?

Back in Guatemala after 2 weeks of hard core studying Spanish in Copan, Honduras. I spent the first two days here back in Antigua boozing until I blacked out. Ohhh, Antigua.... then on to San Pedro (once again) to chill out and take a few more days of language school before I head to El Salvador. My new language school is half the price, but seriously a fourth of the quality of my last one. My instructor rolls into my lessons every day high as a kite and spends the majority of my 3 hour class philosophizing on the existence of shape-shifters. I haven´t gotten a word in edgewise, and I haven´t learned a thing in the last 2 lessons. Ugh.

I´ve been hanging with some cool peeps and running into tons of people I´ve met on my trip. This really is a very tiny region. Having a good time but I think I´m ready for El Salvador next week. Trev, are you reading this? Where are we meeting up??

OK... my head hurts from being on this thing for too long. Here´s a cute picture of a kid in the San Pedro market the day before yesterday. Her mother had a basket full of live turkeys for sale. I amused myself greatly here.

Copan Ruinas

I fucking hate this computer. One hour, 2 reboots (can you make it plural that way?), 15 minutes of frozen time, and one giant throbbing vein in my forehead. STUPID COMPUTER!

I'm going to bullet point to make this fast.

1. Working in a clinic every morning for 3 hours before language school and loving it. I've been jabbing old ladies in the butt, guessing people's blood pressure, extracting parasites out of screaming children, and teaching many horrified country folk how to use condoms.

2. Been loving language school as well--- going really fast through my lessons and learning a ton. I've met some really cool peeps and been partying a bunch... eating lots of street food and getting mauled by mosquitos. I will post a picture of my legs on my next blog. It's gross and cool at the same time.

3. I'm not sure why I'm still numbering... none of these make sense.

4. Leaving at the end of the week for Guat City, and then El Salvador to surf.

Fucking third world internet. OK... I can't handle this anymore. I'll update again later.