a baldwin rendition of feliz navidad

More spontaneous Christmas fun with the whole Baldwin clan...including Memaw!!

feliz navidad from the baldwin clan!

well we made it to NC (after a disappointing airplane ride where we were only offered a bag of peanuts instead of the usual lunch!) and we have been busy having fun doing nothing with the fam ever since! well now i guess we have been busy... i mean we have been busy eating outrageous quantities of food, went to chapel hill for the bball game where tyler hansbrough broke the scoring record, and have been taking funny pictures as well...what else would you expect from this crowd?? merry christmas from the baldwin/bywaters/henriquez crew!

feliz cumpleanos elvis!!!

Guess who is a quarter of a century old today?? ELVIS!!! i love getting to celebrate the life of the absolute most amazing person ive ever met. i think all of you that know him...even if you have only exchanged"Nice to meet you".... can testify to the fact that he radiates peace, love, and joy to all those that are near him. And i can testify to the fact that he is like that 24/7! and what better way to celebrate than to be finished with college classes FOREVER and to be heading to NC in 2 days!! In other news, we have been super busy this week...here are some pictures from a couple of our activities. First of all, these pics are from a Christmas party we had here at the house for the girls from church. Thanks Mom for the christmas dishes!!!

These pictures are from a trip that elvis took with his niece Camila to "Tin Marin", a really cool children's museum here in town. She got to dress up as a doctor, firefighter, make tortillas, go shopping at the grocery store, go to Greece, Taiwan, a butterfly farm, and a gravity house. im not sure which one of them had more fun playing all day!!

tropical fun

This past friday, my school took all of the staff to the beach for our christmas celebration. Oh the advantages of living in a warm climate all year long!! Here are some pics:

Here's a shot from the way to the beach...at the far left is Izalco volcano which naturally has no vegetation, and to the far right is Santa Ana volcano, which is bald halfway down because of the eruption a couple of years ago...we hiked it a few months after it erupted. but thats a whole different story...

Daytime job: preschool teachers. Nighttime: models.

This week, I was sneaky and got Elvis tickets to the Juan Luis Guerra concert for his birthday...i was proud of myself because its not so easy surprising him when i cant exactly move around the city by myself. so thankfully, his family was in on it with me and he was totally surprised! Juan Luis Guerra is from Dominican Republic and is one of the legendary singers of merengue and other tropical music, and so we danced all night long! He became a christian several years ago, and so he sang his old songs but also his newer songs with a christian message but with the same tropical dance beat. i had concerts this past wednesday, thursday, and friday, so it was a nice treat to just get to listen to the music and dance! Here's a video of the song "Ojala que llueve cafe" (Tyler, didn't you have to study this song in spanish class in college?) this video is actually from another of his concerts this year, but it was the same idea. i liked the video they showed behind him singing...

In other news, we are both down to the last week of school!!! and one week until we head to the states!! whoohoo!

stuffed like a turkey

Happy belated Thanksgiving! i pondered the idea of making a list of all the things i was thankful for, but whoa i would never finish! and i could never mention each one of you and what you mean to me. so, instead, i will tell you a little bit about our thanksgiving...
yesterday the american teachers at my school were treated to an amazing, authentic american thanksgiving FEAST (not just a lunch....it was literally a feast!) Judy, our pastor Wally´s wife and my boss Cady´s mom, cooked Thanksgiving lunch for all of us, and boy can she cook! Those of you that have come down for mission trips can testify to that! She´s from Texas, so all the food was very familiar and sooooo good. I havent had some of those dishes since covered dish luncheons back from my childhood! We had homemade yeast rolls, ambrosia fruit salad, green salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, two types of turkey, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole (fried onions on top and all!) cranberry sauce, corn, and oh the homemade desserts: pecan pie, pumpkin pie, cherry cheesecake, and chocolate mousse ! and real sweet tea! we ate each and every dish mentioned above, and it was all so special because you cant even get half of the ingredients for those dishes here in El Salvador, but Judy had brought them back from the states. We ate about 1 o´clock, and elvis and i literally could not move ourselves from the couch until 5 o´clock when we had to go home because we were so stuffed. thanks judy!!!

It probably wasn´t such a good idea for me to eat all that, seeing that last week i went to the hospital with what we thought was appendicitis. luckily it wasnt, i think it was because of those gigantic black berries from the last post...last saturday i ate a big plate of strawberries and blackberries, then after my concert people we could get free food at the cafe so i drank 3 fresh strawberry smoothies, then ate a plateful of strawberries and black berries the next morning for breakfast. all those little tiny seeds did a number on my insides! so, unfortunately we havent been able to enjoy those anymore. but i wasnt gonna let a doctor´s order mess up my thanksgiving!!
we have some pretty exciting 2 weeks coming up...amongst lots of activities at church and with my band, elvis´s birthday is december 14th, the day he also will be finished with his college career!!! then we head to NC the 16th..we can´t wait!!! hope to see you soon!

baptism in the lake

This weekend was one of those marathon weekends where you just run from one event to the next...i think we spent about 5 minutes awake at home this weekend. The activities ranged from going to a fishing seminar, to grieving with a friend who lost his mother this weekend, to having baptism in the lake, to having service at church every night with a father and son missionary team that came to visit (i guess you can call it "revival", even though i think its interesting that in the South we call it "revival" anytime we plan 3 days in a row at church with a visiting pastor, instead of "revival" being a spontaneous outbreak of the Spirit ...luckily this weekend was both!)

I wanted to share some about the baptism that i mentioned...since our church meets in an old bar/pool hall, we don´t exactly have a baptism pool like most churches do. So, the options were to bring in a kiddy pool and have baptism there at church, or pack up and head to the lake. you can guess which option appealed to us the most! We went to our favorite lake, Lake Coatepeque, to our favorite hippy hideout that you have already seen pictures of here on the blog. It´s really a funny place because there are pictures up everywhere and they hand out stickers there saying that on Dec 12th, 2012, the volcano beside the lake will erupt again (it erupted 2 years ago) and aliens will come take over the hippy hideout on the lake. They chose the date 12/12/12 because it is the last date of the Mayan calendar, and therefore supposedly the end of the world. After years of going to this place and talking with the owners, we still can't figure out if they are serious, or if its a gag to get hippies to come stay there. Anyways, we like to go there with our friends from church and even took the mission team from Quaker Gap there because it is a lovely place, but a little dark in the whole alien aspect, so we like to shed a little light there if you know what i mean. So maybe they were a little taken off guard when we drove up with 18 people ready for a baptism service! Elvis led a study on baptism when we got there, and then our pastors Wally and David bravely jumped into the freezing cold water to baptize 6 of our friends. I can´t think of a more beautiful place to share such a neat experience!

I felt the earth move under my feet...

Saturday was an exciting day for many reasons, the first being that we had a strong tremor in the afternoon, while Elvis was in class and i was at home by myself. They said it was a 6.0 on the Richter scale, and it happened just off the coast of El Salvador and lasted for quite a while. Now, it's not rare to have little tremors every now and then, but this one scared everybody because it shook, then shook harder, reminding them of the huge earthquakes that destroyed lots of the country on Jan 13th and Feb 13th, 2001 (however, because of those earthquakes, marty came down to el salvador to work with Samaritan's Purse, and therefore met Elvis!). I was scared because it was my first one by myself, and i tried to think of what Elvis had taught me about where to go in the house if there is an earthquake. I got in a doorframe...that's all i could remember to do in the moment! It's such an odd and completely helpless feeling to have the earth literally move under your feet. So a weird thing about tremors here is that there is always one when there is a change in climate. About an hour after the tremor, the winds picked up and it got cold here (well, relatively cold). Im not sure if the cold fronts provoke the tremors, or if it tremors provoke the cold fronts. But its quite odd. However, we are enjoying the quasi "fall" weather.

Saturday night we had another jazz concert which was so much fun, i'm getting a lot more relaxed with each concert. After we played, they kind of had just an open mike night, and lots of older people got up to play and sing old folk songs which was a lot of fun. Then this little girl got up there and just blew us all away! i hope you can get a feel of how amazing she was from this video:

In other news, we bought this gigantic blackberries from our favorite fruit guy that sells on the street in front of our house...yummmmmmy!

it´s nifty to be thrifty

It´s neat to think sometimes about how God was forming and shaping Elvis and i over the years, in separate countries, to be a perfect match for each other. He carefully aligned our dreams, interests, likes and dislikes even before we met each other and didn´t leave out a single detail, including a hobby/way of life that is so dear to my heart...that´s right...thrift store shopping. Many of you know how i love to look for a bargain, but man i have met my match...elvis can outshop me when it comes to bargains!! we try to not buy clothes during all year until our trips home to the US, where we visit with my folks between trips to Ross, Rugged, etc. =) Our only shopping that we do here in El Salvador is at the amazing thrift stores that we have here downtown. There are tons of them, and since they are all in the historical downtown area, they have converted these old historical buildings, like old banks and other fancy buildings into 4 story thrift stores. Downtown is the place to go to get anything, absolutely anything cheap and that´s where the huge craft and food markets are. Since it´s definitely not safe to take a camera downtown, i found some pics online so you can get an idea of what downtown looks like (the San Salvador volcano is in the background). The tiles on the front of the cathedral were painted by our local artist, Fernando Llort, and downstairs in the cathedral is the tomb of the famous priest Oscar Romero.

So, when we go downtown, we park beside the cathedral and walk around, hitting up all the thrift stores we can physically handle in one day. All the clothes are shipped down in bulk from the US, so it´s practically all name-brand stuff. We also like to shop for household items and decorations there, and we always find coffee cups and other random stuff from NC. I got this platter this summer for $2:

And these cute coffee cups for 30 cents each!
My all-time favorite find downtown was my new Dr Martens shoes for $2.50:And our best sale ever was over August vacation, when we went with a car-full of friends from church. That day we found the 10 cent sale, where there were mountains of clothes on sale, all for 10 cents each, and you just had to climb up the mountain of clothes and start digging. It was so great!

This past weekend we went with our newlywed friends, Aldo and Belen, to help them find stuff for their new house. To our great joy, we came across a 3-items-for-a-dollar-sale. Here's just a dollar's worth of the stuff we got:

So, keep donating your old clothes and household items to Goodwill. We appreciate it!!

dream come true!!

As you may recall from an earlier post, the Skatalites have been Elvis´s favorite band for many many years. They invented the genre of ska back in the ´50s in Jamaica.

So, our dream really was just to see the Skatalites in concert. We were so pumped when we found out they were coming to our little tiny country!! And to top it off, who knew I would get to play on the same stage, opening for them, and that we would even get to meet them?!

Oh, where do we start?? First i want you to see that Elvis broke out his "rude boy" shoes for the occasion......now how do i describe to you what a rude boy is? As Wikipedia says: "The first rude boys in the 1960s were associated with the poorer sections of Kingston, Jamaica, where rocksteady was the most popular form of music. They dressed in the latest fashions at dancehalls and on the streets. Many of these rude boys started wearing sharp suits, thin ties, and pork pie or Trilby hats; inspired by United States gangster movies, jazz musicians and soul music artists."

The fun thing about the concert was that there were probably around 1,500 people there, and most of them were dressed as rude boys(you ´ll seee that in the videos to follow), and everybody was dancing.

Here´s our band, Groovy Time:

Yes, in this picture i am actually singing back-up vocals in front of all those people...who woulda thunk it??Really the funnest part was when one guy dressed like a rude boy got past the security gate and jumped up on stage to dance... watch him dance on the video!

And then, like 6 more came on stage!

As soon as we were getting off of the stage after playing, the Skatalites drove up so we got to meet them behindstage before they were whisked off to a separate area. 3 or 4 of the ones that came were original Skatalite members (including the little old lady from the video i put up last month! she´s my fave!) ...i mean, these guys have been playing together for 50 years! i mean, they had to help the drummer walk if that tells you anything. but boy, the ones that could walk danced alll night long!! they were so cute i wanted to take them home with us! I love the fact that the sax player on the left in the picture is named Lester. So appropriate =) He is one of the original members.

It was really all we had dreamed of and more.

After the concert, something random happened to us (what a surprise!) We were with our friends Efra and Tania, looking for pupusas because we hadnt had dinner yet. Now, keep in mind that it´s about 1:30 am at this point. Luckily, there is a street that is open all night long, where you can buy pupusas, steak, etc etc. As we were getting close, we see something odd going down the street...and realize that it´s a guy riding a unicycle down the middle of the road. He said he was just practicing! See if you can catch him in this picture, even though it´s a little dark:

a Baldwin halloween

So, don't worry...i'm working on a huge blog about the Skatalites concert which was amazing, so that will be coming soon! however, i just had to do a blog on Halloween since i was sent these incredible photos:

First of all, the Baldwin family tradition continues...mom and dad have outdone themselves again:
Also, my grandma Memaw and her roommate were not to be left out...they dressed up for their Halloween party they had at their Assisted Living Home (UNC girls you might recognize these outfits!!):
Here's Memaw, showing off her surprisingly shapely body at 89 years old!

And here she is, with her roomie Ronnie: Ronnie's getting a little frisky:Here, in our little corner of the world, Elvis and i celebrated Halloween a little differently; we decided to take advantage of the fact that i didn't have to work on Friday, and we escaped the city to go to a little colonial style town called Suchitoto to spend the night. it's a cute town with little shops and cafes, cobblestone streets, and a huge lake. We stayed at a cute little hotel...i was so excited about having air conditioning and hot water!! we thought we were going to find refuge from the noise of the city in this little quiet town, but of course the mayor of Suchitoto decided to throw a huge Halloween party for the whole city. As in any Salvadorean party, this included a huge sound system which blasted through the whole town allll night long! we just wanted some peace and quiet so we went and hid in our hotel, but the thumping bass from the party literally shook our hotel all night...i think they stopped about 2 am. So much for peace and quiet! here are some pics from around town:

Here's a picture from inside our cute little hotel:On Saturday, we walked down to a nearby waterfall...actually i had been there before with marty when i came to visit him once, but there was no water in the waterfall because it was dry season. This time, there was a little bit of water since rainy season just ended recently. The rock structure of this waterfall is really neat:

In other news, i had the honor of playing the flute in another friend's wedding yesterday and elvis and i got to take part of the "lazo" ceremony which is something they do sometimes in weddings here...literally we put a fancy rope around the couple to symbolize their union. Congratulations Karla and Mario!

gone with the wind

Remember that i mentioned earlier that in october the rains stop, the temperature drops a bit, and the winds pick up? Well today the winds didnt just pick up, they were outta control! I thought my little ones were going to literally blow away! After school, elvis and i went to our favorite park where we like to go to walk. It's our favorite for sentimental reasons: We used to go there about everyday when we were dating because it was just a few blocks from my old apartment and therefore the cheapest, prettiest, and closest option for hanging out, and also because that's where Elvis gave me my engagement ring (not where we got engaged though! we were blessed with the ring a little later...let me know if you dont know the whole story!) We also love it because it's one of the biggest pieces of grassy areas here in the city and because there are magic trees...well thats what we call them! they are tall, skinny, smooth trees that show different colors as the bark peels off. They look somewhat like camoflauge:
Also, last week we saw a torogoz in the park, our national bird. This picture is from the internet, but you get the idea of how neat they are:

The thing is, we went to the park today to see the trees move in the wind, and boy were we surprised to see fallen trees and tons of limbs all over the park! It was so sad. This tree was completely uprooted and laying across the walking path:

We were trying to get a video where you can see how strong the wind was blowing, but the videos just don't do it justice. But a weird thing happened when we were trying to get a video...this bamboo limb just starts swinging back and forth all by itself, like it was trying to knock elvis out of the way!

So the funny thing is that while we were walking around, a policeman came up to us and started asking us questions about why we were taking pictures, if we were from the media, etc. You see, this week, there is a very important conference here in El Salvador which will include all of the presidents from spanish speaking countries... from central america, mexico, south america, spain, the caribbean, etc. This is a huge deal and they will be shutting down lots of roads all over the city, which means no school wednesday, thursday, or friday!!! Security is a huge issue since all these important people will be here. So, what does this have to do with the park you may ask? There are several embassies right in front of the park, including Ecuador's embassy. Apparently the policeman was in charge of making sure there are no threats to the president of Ecuador, which means making sure no one is taking pictures of him nor the embassy! He actually looked at all of the pictures we took to make sure we weren't secretly taking pictures of the embassy. Crazy!

In other news, i was a good citizen today and went to the embassy to turn in my absentee ballot.

In other non-related news, the Skatalites concert is this thursday! eeeeekk!!!