So, as you probably know already, we're not in El Salvador. What's that, you want to know why? Well just sit down and I'll tell you a tale.
It all started yesterday at 5:30 AM. The children were running and screaming, awaking the shallowest of sleepers (so of course not Ryan). We awoke and had breakfast at Semilla and went over our plans. We were to go to the market and a human rights museum featuring the exhibit "Why we are who we are." In the afternoon we were to travel to San Salvador and spend the night there.
So we travelled to the market. On the way,we saw a man herding goats in the middle of the main plaza. The thing that alerted us of his presence was the cracking of his whip to keep his goats in line. At the market, we were given the task of "buying" basic necessities for a standard family of four on what would be an average farmer's budget (50 Q or 6 dollars). My group was fine (Ryan, Jim, Jordan, and Luke), but I'm sure the other groups were not as great as us. Hillary's group was approached by a drunk man, who told them he loved them forever. We had a tough time finding items to supply a family for one day at a reasonable price. Most of the items surprised us. We asked for prices on various things including tomatoes (5 Q/15), beans (10 Q/lb), a chicken (40 Q), and toilet paper (4 rolls/ 22 Q). Based on these prices it would be hard to supply a family sufficiently since you would likely only be able to buy the most basic of things. Some of the participants also felt uncomfortable asking the prices without intent of buying goods since this was these people's livelihood.
After this, we went to the artisan market. There was a lady there wearing 6 hats, 10 table runners, and large amounts of clothing and bags. The strange thing was she was wearing them all in the heat that was roughly 27 C. A friendly man tried to help Luke find an adequate belt. He was quite determined to sell him a belt, and even went about looking in various stalls to find a proper fit. Luke had no choice but to buy this belt after he put in so much effort to find a good belt. The guys bought a few machettes, and a couple other gifts for various people, which may or may not include family members. This opportunity to buy gifts at the market gave us a chance to practice our bartering skills. I can quite confidently say I was the best. Some were better than others of course. We were all ripped off in the end.
Next stop on the tour we went to the museum. The exhibit mainly talked about the indigenous groups and their rights, and the bloody history of the people. The exhibit was interesting, but we were quite limited by our minimal knowledge of the Spanish language. It was definately worthwhile, but we're still processing what we got out of it.
We came back to Semilla for lunch and packed our stuff up to head out. We ate some delicious chicken. Shortly after lunch we were introduced to our driver, Mario. As fortune would have it, we needed gas. We proceeded to stop at a shell station which housed the cafe called "On The Run." Where's this going? Well, as Adriana returned from purchasing gas, two men came to different windows. One pulled out a gun and pointed it at Mario. He demanded all of our money. Needless to say, we handed what he wanted over. Among notable things stolen are Cassandra's passport and Gerry's camera, along with a lot of MCC's money. Remember the name of the cafe? Pretty coincidental eh? I thought the mood was quite dark in the van afterwards. I looked at the name and started laughing and sharing what I was laughing about. It cheered Hillary up at least. We immediately went to MCC afterwards and debriefed about our experience and our feelings surrounding the event. Thankfully everyone was fine.
So now we had to figure out how to get Cassandra a passport. She did her thing at the Canadian Embassy today, securing a passport for our travels set for tomorrow at 6 in the morning. We slept in this morning and played Kaiser (Jordan and Ryan up 2 games to 0 over Matt and Luke, who think they're going to win the third) while she was doing this.
We also had the pleasure of heading to the community of Lo de Carranza in the afternoon. We met up with Manuel, who was part of the experience of last year's group. We toured the neighborhood as well as checked out the church and the preschool in the area built by past RJC trips. During our tour of the neighborhood, we got to check out some houses in the area as well as meet the locals and interacting with the kids.
On the way back, we encountered a bus that blocked the two lanes of oncoming traffic while trying to turn left, but the traffic headed the other way refused to let him in. The bus driver behind us got quite upset and furiously honked his horn in vain. We also encountered the longest red light in the history of the world. We sat at the light the in the time that it would take approximately to read this blog twice.
We leave tomorrow bright and early for El Salvador.
Your Intrepid Explorers
Jordan, Ryan, and Hillary
PS Thanks Hillary for going to bed and waking up Cassandra so she could proofread. We already know we cannot rely on the sppellcheck feature. I think we're good for next time though, and I'm not sure if I want to see Cassandra after she's prepared for bed again.
