Argentina!

Geoff and I really enjoyed our trip to Argentina, even though it was a bit schizo and we had to take 8 flights in 9 days in order to get from place to place!

The three Argentinian cities we saw were Buenos Aires, El Calafate, and Ushuaia. Buenos Aires was really cool (obviously), because it had a lot of culture. On our first night there, we went to an exquisite tango show + drinks + introductory lesson. It was one of the most pricey things we did in all of our trip, but very cool!



There is a little touristy walkway called La Caminita that is quite famous in Buenos Aires. There are a lot of artesans there on holidays and weekends, with some really neat things, so we put on our shopping hats and went crazy. :)


Our last night in the city was New Year's Eve. We went out for some Indian food!! (I know it's a little ironic to be eating Indian food in Buenos Aires, but we can't get it in El Salvador, so...) As a bonus, we received some funny party favors (See Geoff with his plastic mask and tie below). We spent the rest of the night roaming the streets and enjoying the open-air partying atmosphere of Palermo, a neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Apparently, it is very hard to find a cab on New Year's Eve in Buenos Aires, after the cops started recently to crack down on drinking and driving. We had given up and started trying to walk across town back to our hotel, and we had actually walked for over an hour before we got lucky and bumped into a really nice taxi driver who was refueling at the gas station! He took us back to our hotel, so that we could nap for a couple of hours before getting up to catch our flight to Miami.


El Calafate was another Argentinian town we had stayed at during our trip to Argentina. The town is famous for its Perito Moreno Glacier, which is unique because it's the only glacier in the world that is actually advancing despite global warming! The guides explained to us that every year, there is so much snow fall over the mountain because of the pressure difference, that the snow compacts and accumulates into giant sheets of ice within 10 years, and slides down the mountain to join the existing glacier. The glacier is, in fact, larger in area than Buenos Aires, and it measures 60 meters above water and 140 meters below sea level! It is enormous.



Anyway, we got to walk with crampons on the Perito Moreno glacier, as well as spending some time looking at its generally awe-inspiring scenery. The front side of the glacier breaks off small chunks roughly every 5 minutes; those chunks fall into the water and make an impressive cracking noise. (Although the guides say that it's not nearly as safe as it looks. In a couple of decades previously, 32 people were killed from glacier explosions.)



And, the best part of hiking the Perito Moreno? In the end, they give you some whiskey, served over fresh glacial ice with the local chocolate/caramel dessert alfajores.

Speaking of foods, Argentinian cuisine is delicious. Besides alfajores, they also have a variety of craft beers and a steamed milk + piece of dark chocolate tossed into it combo called submarino. Roquefort cheese seems to be very prevalent as well -- an easy evidence of their heavy European influence. But, most delicious of all is their asador, which is lamb grilled on crucifix:




The lamb is divine with the traditional dipping sauce (Chimichurri?), which tastes spicy, citrusy, and super flavorful like the Indian vindaloo sauce.


After El Calafate, we went to Ushuaia, which is nicknamed "El Fin del Mundo" (The End of the World) for being the southernmost city in Argentina. It's a surprisingly small town, with some neat touristy features. We hiked a nearby glacial mountain, went out for a boat tour of the nearby islands that host a variety of sea creatures (including penguins!), and we also hiked through the national park to the ending marker of the southernmost Argentinian high way. (Truly, the end of the road.)









We also visited a lovely museum about all things Ushuaia and Patagonia, that is located at the site of a former prison of Argentina. (As it turns out, Ushuaia owes a lot of its development to the prisoners, who were sent to Ushuaia to work on a variety of public projects.)



(Did you know that the first European boats to sail around South America were small, like the one in this model?? HOW COOL.)


Anyway, I am coming back to what seems like a fair bit of work/errands before school starts in a week. bleh. Hope you all had a lovely new year! :) Ciao!

Anniversary!

Today's the 1461st day that Geoff and I have been officially dating. :) (That includes a leap day somewhere.)

Since it's easier to celebrate on Saturdays than on Sundays, we went out last night to one of the fancy Japanese restaurants we've only seen but never tried. It's on top of Torre Futura, which has an amazing night view of the city from all sides. The dinner turned out to be delicious! :)

Bacon Jalapeño Brownies

A while ago, my friend Amy had blogged about baking bacon brownies, and so Geoff and I had tried it out. We put the chopped-up, somewhat-cooked bacon into the brownie mix, blah blah, and it was pretty darn good. So yesterday, for my birthday potluck (at my friends Colleen's and Eric's house), I thought I would make some more -- and this time with jalapeños!

To my great delight, they were quite popular with all who had a chance to try them. Bacon + jalapeños + Ghirardelli brownie mix = super duper yumminess! (They actually ran out almost immediately. I only got a chance to nibble on the leftovers in the tray.)

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Being Asian sucks. I always get hungover while drinking, because my body can't metabolize the alcohol very well. My dear Asian friends, does this happen to you guys?? I also get red patches on my stomach whenever I have more than 1 drink, and my eyes become bloodshot as though I have pink eye. I am probably allergic to alcohol (but I don't really care, because I drink fairly minimally, and it keeps me a cheap date). I have read somewhere that our allergy to alcohol is what keeps most Asians from becoming alcoholics. It's just so toxic to our bodies that we end up consuming only minimal amounts of alcohol, not enough for an addiction.

When You Go Budget...

I was reminded yesterday of something silly that had happened in Peru, and I thought I'd jot it down for future reference. It goes to illustrate how budget Geoff and I are, and the general ridonculous nature of our travels.

(As is the norm when you are or date a redhead...) G and I decided to buy some wine for the four-hour train ride between Aguas Calientes and Cuzco. Because we didn't have a bottle-opener, boxed wine seemed to be a natural choice. The tienda we went to only had a (dusty?!) box of WHITE wine (named Gato, or Cat), so whatthehell, we decided to get it even though room-temperature white wine in a box seems even more suspicious than red wine in a box.

About 20 minutes into the train ride, we realized that we didn't have cups. So, no worries, we emptied our plastic hiking water bottles and poured the white wine into them. We shared a round of drinks with our hiking mates, and while partaking in this first round, Geoff discovered the expiration date on the box: January 2009.

...Needless to say, hilarity ensued, during which we made several tipsy bad puns such as, "The cat is out of the box!" and "Hey, cats are supposed to have 9 lives," and other things I can't remember now. I'm half-amazed that we didn't die from bad chemical reactions.

That night, Geoff and I went to some local restaurant in Cuzco, where Geoff orderd a dish that looked like someone had literally thrown up all over his plate and brought the puke out as a dish. Hysterical in hindsight, but we were really worried about food-poisoning when it was all happening (especially because there was trash all over the floor of the restaurant and everything -- and I mean everything -- tasted recycled). I know it has been days since, but I am still banned from choosing a restaurant.

(Geoff was most traumatized because Peruvian food is super delicious, and this restaurant was damaging our impression of their national cuisine.)

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In other news, Geoff and I have arrived in Jersey/NYC! I am SUPER excited for Fram tonight (especially because Heather and Ryan will be DJing!). :) Oh, how I've dearly missed swing-dancing in the city!! (Not to mention the awesome ethnic foods galore... YUM.)

...I love how in NY, ya never know whom you're going to bump into, where, and how. When Geoff and I got out of Customs at JFK Airport a couple of nights ago -- at 2:30am -- I saw my old student Pamela V. waiting to pick up her uncle at the airport. How funny!

And, randomly, here are a couple of hysterical photos of Geoff's one day of mustache following our trip to Peru. (He thought that since he already had a full face of beard from 10 days of not shaving, he might as well shave it into a mustache look for a day.) ...As you can tell, I am just thrilled by the idea of his upper-lip decor. (--I will, until the day I die, never figure out why men think mustaches are cool. That night he wore this look to dinner with our Escuela Americana amigos; the gals all winced, and the dudes were all ready to start a new mustache trend! Ri-donc!)

Our Peruvian Adventure

I am back home!! But, not for long. We just returned from our Peruvian trip yesterday (after some logistical snafoos), and we will be leaving again tomorrow. The day before we were leaving for Peru, Geoff found out to his HUGE disappointment that the house he had been looking to purchase in Jersey had fallen through. So, while we were in Peru, we each bought a round-trip ticket to Jersey. We leave tomorrow evening; I will be in the States for two weeks, visiting friends(!) and swing-dancing(!!), while Geoff looks around at other properties in NJ. The plan is that he will be in Jersey for four weeks total, but this way at least we are not apart for the entire time. (I will have to get back to San Salvador within two weeks, because that is when all returning teachers will start to prepare "officially" for the year. In truth, I have been on-and-off doing all sorts of prep this summer, but it will be nice to finally get a class schedule, finalized room assignment, meet the new hires, etc.)

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Peru took my breath away, both literally and figuratively. On our 5 days / 4 nights trek, the highest point we reached was about 4600 meters, or over 15000 feet above sea level. That is an astonishing feat! The temperature dropped below freezing on the first night of the trip -- in the 20s Fahrenheit range. What had happened to Geoff and me was that we had only arrived in Cuzco the day before our trek was due to start, so our bodies didn't have enough time to adjust to the altitude before beginning the climb into even higher altitudes. I threw up twice on the first day while ascending the mountain, and my chest hurt the entire time as I was walking / breathing, because my lungs were constricted. We passed by a couple of tombstones along the way, and the guide explained that one of them belonged to a gal whose asthma had flared up in the high altitudes, but who pushed on obstinately until things went from bad to worse. (I'm highly asthmatic, so that story got Geoff and me both a bit worried.) Finally, after about 9 or 10 hours of hiking, I gave up and hopped onto an emergency horse for the last hour of hike of the day.

On day 2 of the hike, the guides put me on a horse on the way up to the highest point, since the air was so thin. Geoff, too, was having a lot of trouble breathing -- and he runs marathons!! He was very pale by the time he finally got to the top of the mountain. I hopped off the horse and took a few steps on completely flat ground, and I already could not catch my breath. I had thought that descending would be easier for me to walk (even though we were still at an altitude > 4500 meters), but I clearly was wrong, because after walking for about 15 minutes, I threw up again. The guide insisted on me getting back onto the horse, and I threw up once more that day. Not my strongest showing, and I was super disappointed in myself that day. :(

That night, we got back to a lower altitude (in the 2000s meter-wise). By the time I woke up the next morning, the tightness in my chest had subsided. I was able to walk the rest of the trip, and even raced my way to the entrance of Machu Picchu to be one of the 400 people each day to receive a ticket to hike Wainapicchu (a nearby super-steep but stunningly beautiful mountain; you can see it in the picture above)! I was so proud of myself, because we had started hiking at 3:30am, in pitch darkness, and we were ascending these steep stairways that seemed to never end. Geoff was eager to be one of the 400 people, so he ran up the entire stairway and left me to climbing by myself. It was a tough mental game, but I was able to outrace a lot of people in similar (or better) physical condition than me, because I really wanted to get one of those tickets to Wainapicchu!

I can't describe how amazing Wainapicchu was, and our pictures do not do it any justice. It was like climbing up to a city in the clouds -- you have to use your hands and feet, rock wall-climbing style, in order to get up the narrow and VERY steep stairs. (I was really freaked out, naturally, because I'm terrified of heights. But, I tried not to focus on the fact that if you missed a step, you might very well tumble down the mountain and die. On the way down was much scarier, because you couldn't avoid looking at how high up you are.) When you look down from the top of Wainapicchu, even the immensity that is Machu Picchu is entirely dwarfed at the base of this mountain. It was definitely the highlight of our entire trip!

In Lima, Geoff and I also spent some time going to discotecas and bars. We also checked out a peña, which is essentially a local Peruvian cabaret, where traditional dancers come out in fancy outfits and dance during your dinner. Geoff and I found a place called "La Brisa de Titicaca" (the Breeze of Titicaca), which was cheap and you can get up in between the dance numbers to dance to traditional music! It was super fun. And, while walking around Lima during the day, we decided on a whim to go paragliding, since we had never done it before! It was awesome to fly over the cliffs of the Peruvian coastline. And, of course we also checked out some delicious Peruvian cuisine -- including cuy, or guinea pig!!

My only (HUGE) annoyance from the entire trip was that when we arrived at the Lima Airport yesterday, 3 hours before our scheduled flight back to El Salvador, the Copa Airline guy told us that the Salvadorean rule is for you to be deported from El Salvador (back to Peru), unless you can show proof that you have been vaccinated against the Yellow Fever more than 10 days BEFORE your scheduled flight from a country with active cases of the disease (ie. Peru)! In fact, the only reason that Copa eventually allowed us to check in to our flight was because the doctor on-site at the airport did Geoff and me a huge favor and wrote "Revacunado" ("Re-vaccinated") on our immunization record cards, after administering the vaccine to us! Otherwise, we would have been literally stuck in Peru for another 10 days!! Ridiculous!!

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Anyway, that's it for now. Ciao! I've got some errands to run (as is the nature of things when you keep leaving the country), but I'll leave you with this cute picture of us from our Peruvian trek. There was purple chalk on our faces and confetti in our hair, because it happened to be our hike-mate, Kate's, birthday, and that's how the Peruvians helped her celebrate!


How can you not love this country??

Cameras, Shutter Speeds, and Suspicious Half-Chickens

In the interest of taking motion-blurred pictures of rotating objects (a la this, this, this, this, or this), I did some mini-research about my digicam and about the iPhone. I'm not one to be particularly bogged down on electronics or to be nitpicky about what tools I own, etc. But, the results of my research have spurred me to want to get another camera (or one of the newer iPhones)!!

It turns out that the Canon Digital Elph -- which Geoff and I have and love -- only has two modes: one being instantaneous exposure (with flash) and the other being long exposure (1 second or longer). For the purposes of math-teaching, if I were to take motion-blurred pictures myself, the exposure should be somewhat variable in the 0 to 1 second range. And, more depressingly, it looks like because Geoff has an older iPhone (iPhone 3G, with OS version 3.0), its built-in camera does not have all the spiffy features that I would need, either. --Doh!! I'll have to keep looking around for another solution, I guess. In the meanwhile, the Flickr photos will have to do (provided that their owners are kind enough to share their shutter speeds with me).

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By the way, it's pretty amazing that Geoff and I have not gotten really, really sick from food poisoning in our 12 months of living together. Case in point, two nights ago I decided to try cooking a new chicken dish. Now, I'd say that I'm a pretty decent Chinese-food chef, but whenever I try a new dish, it's still really nerve-wracking because my mom's recipes are hand-wavy at best. In this case, it was something like, "You boil half a chicken with some salt, and then when that's done, you scoop out the oil at the top of the broth, and you add the oil to some chopped ginger, scallions, and you add some salt to the dip. You take a big butcher knife to chop up the chicken into slices, and -- tada! You'll have what's called the Scallion-Oil Chicken." Sounds pretty easy, but it turned out that for some reason, part of the chicken we boiled was pink even after a while of cooking (and we were pretty sure, by the way, that this chicken was well-defrosted before cooking). We sliced it up pretty well and threw it back in the broth for some more time, and then took it out. After a couple of bites, Geoff and I decided to be safe and to microwave the chicken before eating.

I'll never know if that chicken was fully cooked or not. It tasted oddly tender and looked oddly pink even after the microwaving. But, I'll say that this is the first time I've topped off any cooking feat with microwaving! It's royally sad. And, amazingly, Geoff and I didn't get sick from that meal; we just might have stomachs of steel!

Beautiful mirador

On Sunday, Geoff and I went with a few friends to celebrate a birthday at a stunningly beautiful restaurant that overlooked many nearby mountains. The food was delicious; the menu featured fusion cuisine brought back by the two Salvadorean restaurant-owners from their experiences living around the world. And the restaurant was only a short (~30 minute) drive from the city!

Our photos don't do the place justice. We had dined on the deck while the sun was setting, and you could see numerous mountain ridges near and far, colored in hues of blue and purple. Right past where we were sitting on the deck, the cliff drops about 60 or 70 feet. It was truly breath-taking; I hope we go back soon sometime. :)

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The year is wrapping up so soon! With my Alg2H classes, I've been doing simple trigonometry in prep for their Pre-Calculus class next year. It's making me nostalgic already. (With Geometry, we're still pushing forward with "regular" curriculum all the way until the last day of instruction. I feel a little bad because I'm speeding through some of the topics, but the kids seem to be faring OK, despite their complaining.)

Winter Holidays

Geoff and I had an amazing trip back to the States for the holidays! Not only did we get to see a lot of friends and family, but we also got to spend some time in the city, revisiting our favorite restaurants and checking out the current Broadway shows -- and we even managed to swing-dance for a hot second! It made us miss being back in the States, for sure, but also helped us appreciate things back in San Salvador (ie. the ridiculously warm weather and things being reasonably priced). In any case, it will likely be a good while before we get to take another vacation to the New York area, so we cherished this opportunity to catch up with everyone.

Since it is costly to fly directly from San Salvador to the States, Geoff and I had decided a few months back to try instead to fly through Guatemala. On paper, that saves us about $200 per person round-trip, which is a kickass deal. But, in reality, the bus + extra nights in a hotel + extra food expenses just about balance out the savings we would have had. And actually, the hassle of traveling by bus through Guatemala isn't worth the savings, regardless of how comfortable and luxurious those busses may be.

Still, Geoff and I thought this particular trip through Guatemala was well worth it, because we got a chance to check out Volcano Pacaya, which had been our only regret from our previous visit to Guatemala. There is a reputable tour group that takes people up the volcano at night, camps overnight, and then hikes up to the flowing lava just before sunrise. But unfortunately, 1. they're not too flexible with their dates, since they need to rally 4 people in order to make it worth their effort to lead such a trip, 2. the boss is kind of an asshole to his employees. In the end, we booked another day trip instead. The day trip only costs $10 per person, plus about $5 for entrance fee to the park and tips for the guides. The afternoon hike, which Geoff and I had gone on, left at 2pm and was supposed to catch the sunset as we were descending the volcano. But, since our group had a few old ladies and children, the group hiked extraordinarily slowly, and it actually worked out to be to our benefit. We didn't get to the flowing lava until sunset, so we saw an amazing sunset right over the lava stream, and we got to enjoy the lava in the dark before descending the hill! (Most other day-hike groups only see the lava in daylight, which just isn't the same.)

The experience was truly phenomenal, and I would highly recommend it. Although, you definitely feel when you are up there, that you are tempting fate. Even as we were climbing the volcano, the local guide pointed out chunks of rocks where lava had flown only months -- or weeks! -- ago. He said that the lava flow changes its direction or location sometimes within a day. Then, when we got to the mini-crater about 200m from the main (top) crater, the hot river of lava was breath-taking. At one point, the rocks near where Geoff had been standing collapsed, and everyone was pretty freaked out from the keen awareness that we were standing on only a thin shell of rocks above a huge reservoir of hot lava. Later, as we got further away from the lava, and we looked back, we could see two different places where the volcano was erupting, and see heavy smoke coming from the top crater. One of the guides told us "no es normal", which only hastened our steps down the mountain.

Geoff and I spent the next couple of days just relaxing in Guatemala, getting over our sickness (which we had acquired in the below-freezing weather of New York) and easing our way back home to the tropics. I posted the complete set of vacation pictures on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/averyseriousmimi/sets/72157623154596774/show/ , which you can watch as a slideshow.

Take care! Hope you (whoever and whereever you are) had a lovely holiday season. :)

Visa!

Geoff's visa app finally got approved yesterday! yay! I cannot tell you how long and grueling this process has been. We had started it months before moving here, but he actually had to go back to the States to gather additional paperwork in September, because his lawyer had been unclear about which papers were needed the first time around. (It was v. fortunate that this trip coincided with M&M's wedding, so he could just extend the wedding trip to take care of the stuff instead of making a separate trip just for the sake of gathering papers...)

The problem is that he currently lives here on 90-day tourist visas only, and every time he exits the country (to go to even a neighboring country for a short trip), he would have to go back to the States to obtain all of those docs again; the docs required need to be date-stamped around his latest entry to El Salvador.

He and his lawyers had been down to the immigration offices several times, and each time they would ask him to obtain more paperwork, mostly from the States. It would take weeks to pull together and get mailed here, and the process would repeat itself. Finally, yesterday his stars were all aligned, and they accepted his application! yay! (It actually helped out that I am working for the American school, because apparently my work visa is issued by a higher authority -- something like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- and so it helped legitimize both his overall application and his particular reason to wish to stay in El Salvador.) It still was a pain and took a whole day, but at least for now they've accepted his money and taken his picture, so we think it's going to be all good. :)

So, in celebration, we took his lawyer's assistant out to dinner. It was good times, and the steaks we had were amazing... :) Afterwards, Geoff and I were both feeling serious food coma, so we called it a quiet Friday night. We watched "Changeling" at home, which is really intense! Much better than what we had expected based on its RottenTomatoes ratings. I would definitely recommend it.

Anniversary weekend

Geoff and I celebrated our third-year anniversary this weekend. :) It was kind of a big deal, since I think we had hit a few big milestones in this past year (ie. moving in together and moving to another country), and everything had been as smooth and fun as can be. We don't eat at expensive restaurants much (since we cook decently well during the week, and we also enjoy eating at mom-and-pop Salvadorean places that cost only a few bucks for the whole meal), but we decided that for this particular occasion, we would splurge a little...

Colleen and Eric had highly recommended an Italian restaurant in Zona Rosa called "Vittorio's", so G and I decided to start our night there. It was by far the most expensive meal we have yet had in this country! A bottle of wine, a fabulous calamari appetizer, two entrees (fish and pasta) muy ricos, and two cappuccinos all added up to be about $70, but we thought it was well worth the price. The food at the restaurant was fantastic, and the ambiance was also lovely. Even though it had rained on-and-off throughout the night, Geoff and I sat in a covered section of the garden outside, surrounded by decorative wine, wooden wine racks, and lush tropical plants.

After dinner, we went to a couple of different spots, eventually landing in the "Jungle", which is now officially Geoff's and my favorite dancing spot on the Zona Rosa strip! We were already pretty tipsy when we started dancing there, and after a short while, the DJ offered us a free bucket of beers! --WHAT?! We were really surprised and a little confused; we never quite figured out what the free beers were for, but we were told it had something to do with our dancing. Anyway, we had a pretty great time there; a few of the locals were talking to us and being very friendly, and by the time we finally got home, it was already past 2am! For partying by ourselves, we didn't do too badly. :)

The rest of the weekend was also deeply relaxing, complete with naps in our two hammocks and some old-school video game-playing. (Geoff and I have been downloading old Nintendo games and playing them on my laptop, with the $7 game controllers we bought. It feels pretty silly to be playing games from the 80s, but G gets really excited about them. The only caveat is that I have short attention span and can barely sit still through a game, if we last through multiple levels...) I think I am almost ready for a full week of work. Almost.

Day trip!

As part of the welcoming process for the new international hires, the school organized a day trip led by a Salvadorean Spanish teacher who holds a Master's in Salvadorean history and who had worked for years at the national museum. As it turns out, Vicky is brilliant in both historical and current knowledge and was very kind to tell us all kinds of wonderful stories about her people. It is apparent that she takes a lot of pride in the culture of El Salvador, even though she has lived through some hard times here.

After a couple of quick stops, we stopped for lunch at a local food festival. Geoff and I gorged ourselves on grilled meat, chicken, shrimp, and sausage links. They had really amazing spices on them, and were one of the best meals we've had yet. On our way out, we had a bite of Jon's order of armadillo! It was very interesting. The meat is smooth but dense, and it has a strong salty aftertaste. Next time, I will keep my eyes peeled for "cusuco," which is the Spanish word for armadillo. :)

After lunch, the gang headed to Ataco, which is a very charming little coffee plantation town up in the mountains. There were some really cute artesan shops and cafes here, that the group decided we would stay here for the rest of the day. Geoff, Colleen, Eric, and I hiked up to the cross that we saw up the hill, and en route saw some interesting creatures -- big spiders and what looked like a flying ant hive.* Here in Ataco, we also bought some delicious goat cheese, a beautiful stool, and a couple of pieces of hand-painted art.

All in all, it was a really fun trip. :) Since we didn't have time to go try out the indigo-dying at the museum, Vicky promised to take us on a separate day trip just for that. --I can't wait!

*You can check out pictures on Flickr. Just click on the Flickr app on the right of your screen.

Weekend Excursion

Geoff and I spent the weekend by ourselves, because the rest of the new international teachers were busy settling into their apartments. In El Salvador, we have thus far met a lot of really nice locals, but because of the disparity in income, we think that many of them would not be able to afford the lifestyle that we want to have, ie. going out regularly. To give you an idea of what a "regular Salvadorean" makes in income, Geoff and I could go out and have a FULL meal -- with two pupusas and a drink for each of us -- and the total for BOTH of our meals would be around $2.50. And many "restaurants" and snack stores are holes-in-the-wall that are run literally out of someone's home or front yard. You can get a chocolanana, or frozen chocolate banana, for around 35 cents. Clearly, that's not a very high profit margin; the vendors make those right at home and sell them through a little window that faces the street, in order to keep their costs low.

International school teachers are considered upper-middle class here. In truth, my salary here is far lower than my salary back in NYC, but because the cost of living is so much lower here, our life is much more luxurious than what we once had back in NYC. Geoff and I could afford a 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom apartment here, with a pool and 24-hour security, in a nice neighborhood. In NYC, for the same amount of money, we couldn't even get a single room in a shared apartment in Manhattan!

Anyway, on Friday, we had gone out in Zona Rosa, which is a posh partying district here in the city. After having a delicious steak dinner and drinking in an outdoor bar typical of this area, we checked out another indoors bar, Riconcitos, which had an awesome vibe and a cover band. The band's music was upbeat and diverse -- I think they started out with some electronica and ska, and then wrapped up with some reggaeton and salsa. The crowd was young; here in San Salvador, high-schoolers can go out and drink and party as well, and you definitely can spot their young faces in the hip bars around town. Afterwards, Geoff and I went and danced in another cool little spot across the street, where they were playing some American music, mixed with a lot of merengue. --All in all, a really fun night. :)

We ran some errands on Saturday, and then headed down to the beach. We had our minds set on going to el Tunco, which is a beach named for its giant pig-shaped rock. (Actually, the rock looked awesome, but it also looked more like a whale to us than a pig.) This beach is a famous surf spot, but we didn't get to surf this weekend. Instead, we swam in the ocean and had some delicious pupusas and seafood. We also stayed with a semi-creepy artist at his guesthouse, and that was very interesting. While we were hanging out with him on his porch, the electricity went out for the whole village, and momentarily we were sitting in complete darkness -- with a creepy guy who had already demonstrated his prowess with his machete and had reiterated his love for Asian women! Yikes. ...Fortunately, everything was OK in the end, and we even ran into our friends Alison and José the next day at the beach! :)

On Sunday night, we drove our rental car back to the city and went to a barbeque at the school's complejo, where the rest of the international hires live. That was fun, because teachers are almost always a social bunch. I'm hopeful that once they are settled in, they'll be up for going out and exploring the neighborhoods with us. :)

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A pictoral illustration of a crazy bus that went into the lane of on-coming traffic in order to pass cars in our lane; it eventually gave up and came back into our lane. (Taken on the way back from the beach.)




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As you might have read, the swine flu has been in full-swing in El Salvador for 4 months. Well, the ministry is closing schools for two weeks -- this week and next week. What that means is that we are not allowed to go into the school itself, and all of the paperwork and professional development meetings we were supposed to have this week have been moved to another location. School will be delayed at least one day in opening, which I'm certainly not complaining about. Other teachers are keeping their fingers crossed that the school will be delayed even further, to allow us a last long weekend before school re-opens.
We'll see about that, I guess. I'm not too worried.