On Thursday (that’s the 19th of October), I went and visited my old host family in San Rafael Cedros for a few days during their Patron Saint Festivals. This entailed a total of four buses (each way), a day and a half with the fam, and me suppressing my fidgeting…but I did it, and all by myself!
The bus from Sonsonate to San Salvador was a little harsh. My stomach wasn’t feeling well and decided to let me know it….it’s amazing how long you can hold it when the only other option is getting off somewhere unknown by you in El Salvador. It's not like getting on the next bus is always the easiest thing and you never know the local conditions.
After all that fun, I finally landed in San Rafael at about 2pm. Yes, everyone was sooo excited to see me and that was a nice feeling. They fed me ice cream right away and asked what I had been up to for the last two months. My host mom and I then went off to the rodeo…which ended up starting late, so we checked out the local high schools science fair. I swear, they had one of the coolest science fairs cause they could get away with doing stuff that would never be acceptable in the good ol´ US of A. For instance, some students…in order to demonstrate a tornado…lit some paper on fire and them put it into a box that somehow formed a tornado that you could see through the font of the box (front was made of see through plastic). I didn’t see how precisely it worked since I was fixated on the fact that they were burning stuff. Other displays included stuff about English…so of course when all the students in English class saw me they had to practice their English. It was fun and I tried to speak slowly for the students. Though, I think my favourite was the display on alcohol….mostly because I believe they were brewing moonshine right there. It smelt like alcohol and my host mom even downed some. Coolest science fair ever!
Next we watched the parade of horses go by. They originally accompanied the Queen of the Barrio Con-something or other on her parade around the town, but were now on their way to the rodeo. So we followed them over and settled in to watch the fun. It was a good rodeo except for the fact that everything took so long. They started at around 6pm, which is sorta late around here. And it was around 10 -15 minutes between every 6 sec bull ride. But, at least the bulls were actually bulls this time and not just one’s pulled from local barns. The best part of it was in the middle of the program when the mariachi singers came out with some of the horses. Unbeknownst to me, there are actual riders who train show horses here. These horses were doing the different moves like extending their front legs as they trotted or trotting in place. Their best trick was doing the whole Zorro move. That’s right…they went full upright on their hind legs. It was pretty damn cool.
After all that, we went and grabbed dinner (pizza! Bad pizza, but still pizza!). We met up with Rosie and Marleny. This was great; cause out of everyone I missed Rosie the most. We then checked out the next parade with the Queen of the Barrio. They really celebrate their queens here. Before her was a band, fireworks and baton twirlers. And she was crowned by the Mayor in front of Town Hall. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this, but it is my goal to be crowned queen of something down here. It shouldn’t be to hard, they have queens down here for everything. I’m talking queen of the barrio (sorry, barrio is neighbourhood), queen of the police, queen of the casa de cultura, queen of festivals, queen of ….well, you get the point. Any who, we watched her crowning and then went and got changed for the dance. I didn’t get changed because nobody told me there was going to be a dance. So, while I waited for everyone else to get ready, my host mother tried to get me to put on some of her make-up and use lotion and all that jazz. I politely declined. I hate it when she tries to do that, though I know it's part of the culture to always look nice. The dance itself wasn’t to bad…just a little empty. That might be due to the fact that the dj felt the desire to speak during the music every two seconds…I was about ready to kill him. My first dance partner was a guy that accompanied a friend of Rosie. He was drunk and can’t say I enjoyed his company. But eventually he ran off and I danced with a guy I knew from my time during training. He was cool. He use to call me gordita (little fat girl), apparently I’ve lost enough weight to lose the title as well. We left the party around 1:30am. This was fine by me since by this time I was tired.
So, of course, since my stomach doesn’t care when I’m tired, it decided to wake me up at around 4:30am…how nice. During this visit I shared a room with the host mom, so she knew I was getting up. I told her later in the morning it was due to all the greasy food I had the day before and not that I was sick. I then told her I was going to San Vicente to visit a friend there. That was a lie, I went and got diagnosed with another stomach aliment. It was funny, because they gave me pills and for the rest of my time with the host fam I took them secretly so they wouldn’t feel bad that I was sick again. Somehow popping pills secretly was amusing all in itself. I almost didn’t take them because I want my stomach to start building its own defences, but then two things persuaded me to take them. The first being the long bus rides back to my village and the second being that I’ve continued to lose weight. Not that that is a bad thing, but I think it's because my stomach has been trying to fight off infections for two months and isn’t absorbing all the nutrients it should. So, I decided to help it out a little by killing everything in it.
After the morning chillin in San Vicente, it was back to the house. I had a lovely chicken soup for lunch and finally figured out what the yellow balls in the soup were….chicken eggs that hadn’t been hatched yet. And no, I never did or will eat one. I have to draw the line somewhere and that seems like a good place to start. The rest of the day went by pretty lazily. I took a nap in the hammock, read my book, checked out the parade for the queen and king of kindergarten, did some shopping, went to mass and chilled with the host family. I was also nice enough to accompany to little kids (friends of the family) on a ride that went all upside down and everything after the little boy asked to go on. The little girl almost cried during it, so I tried to keep my arm round her…little bit difficult when being flung hither and yon…but I tried. Mostly, we just walked around the festival and checked everything out. That night I slept quite well.
Finally it was Saturday morning and making my escape was a little bit of hell. During all my time so far they repeatedly asked me to stay till Wed or to come back on Monday for the dance. I tried to explain that I had an event on Sunday and thus could not stay and Monday was a work day. Yes, Peace Corps is work and I can’t just run away for a week at a time to go check out festivals. They weren’t pleased with the answer, but they accepted it. I stayed till 10am and then said it was time. They gave me a few presents for my home and a bunch of food to take with me. It was nice of them. Alfonso accompanied me to the bus stop and told me how sad his mother is when I leave. That she cried the last time and all. I felt bad but also a little mad, but more on that later. I then hopped on a bus and made my way home. Have you ever been on a bus so cramped that you knew if it crashed you wouldn’t move an inch? Just wondering. I got back a little later then I wanted but still had time to check in with Iris and get ready for Sunday.
Now back to the host mom…I think I’ve figured out what makes me not want to visit them, it’s the host mom. I always think she is judging me and what I do. If I say I enjoy living on my own and having my own space, she gives me a look of disapproval or of not believing that anyone could be happy living in such a manner. Or that after telling her on Thursday that I hadn’t been to mass in a while, we magically found ourselves at a mass on Friday. She always has some look she is giving me or laughing at something I’m saying or doing. I know she doesn’t mean it that way, but it's annoying. And it's nice that she misses me when I leave, but I only lived there for 10 weeks. It's just weird and uncomfortable sometimes. But such is life and I’m sure I’ll wind up visiting them again in the future.
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