Here in El Salvador, you would be surprised at how much American stuff there is. I mean, we have all the fast-food restaurants practically (well you have to go to Guatemala to get Taco Bell and I am still praying for Chick-fila to come.) You would not believe how nice the Pizza Hut's are here...I mean the somewhat dark and scary-stuck-in-the-80s Pizza Huts that we had back in the States don't even compare. And over the years, we've been able to get lots of American foods in the grocery store that I know and love. Oh, I remember the first time we saw Oh's cereal in the grocery store (my all time fave)...I literally started crying there in the aisle from joy!! Don't get me wrong, I love Salvadorean food, but you know, sometimes I get a craving for some good ol' Betty Crocker brownies.

Anyways, we definitely had a breakthrough yesterday. We found.....(drumroll please).........International Delight Liquid Coffee Creamer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had heard rumors that you could get it here at a store that's like Sam's or CostCo, so we borrowed a membership card and went to buy a huge 32 ounce bottle of vanilla creamer. Plus, ridiculously huge box of Frosted Mini Wheats (yummmy) and a year's supply of peanut butter (we like to call it the nectar of the gringos). I know that mom is going to worry that we won't even come home now that we can get so much stuff here, but don't worry, we still have to stock up on grits, Jello instant pudding, Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, etc. =)

It was kind of a funny day because in the morning we went to the organic/hippy market that they have on Saturdays here just around the block, where we buy organically grown fruits and veggies, crafts, organic coffee, homemade breads and jams, homemade shampoos, etc etc, and then went to the other end of the spectrum in the afternoon to get gigantic portions of overly-processed food products.

Also, yesterday afternoon we went to the birthday bash of a little girl in my class. They have a reputation of throwing the party of the year, so we weren't going to miss out! And they did not disappoint....it was like a make-up theme, and so they gave us all feather boas as we walked in, they you went and they would put make-up on you and glitter all over and they were fixing the girls' hair into fancy up-dos. I mean, the pinata was even a huge high-heel shoe! They had clowns, a DJ, a chocolate fountain where you could dip strawberries, and the most amazing part....they had hired a Chory's hot-dog stand to make all the hot dogs you can eat...these are our favorite street hot-dogs!! They are ridiculously unhealthy...I mean they fry the hot dogs then put them on a bun with double layers of mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, and a Salvadorean slaw. Apparently, to be able to work for them, you have to be able to make about 25 hot dogs per minute because they are incredibly fast. Another interesting thing about birthday parties in El Salvador is that the host actually gives presents to the guests, even if it is just a bag of candy and stickers. I mean, the birthday boy or girl gets presents too, but for example, yesterday the guests got huge bags full of hair gel, body glitter, fake nails, a make-up box, hairbrushes, etc etc etc. Even I got a set of hairbrushes and mirrors!

My friend Cynthia and I in the entrance to the birthday party house.

The giant high-heel pinata

Me and the birthday girl
So that was our exciting day, now guess what I'm going to do? Go drink a little bit of coffee with my creamer.

Butternut Squash

One of my favorite things about this time of year is that it is mango and avacado season. If you don't have your own tree, you can usually steal bucketfuls from a neighbor without even going noticed. And if your neighbors happen to be stingy, there's always trees in the park, although they are usually picked over. It is very common to see people up in the top of these taaall mango trees with a broomstick, knocking dozens of mangoes down to their friends below who have backpacks ready to catch them. That's a scene that i hope to catch on film for you guys. And if all of those trees are picked over, you can buy mangos for as cheap as like 8 for a quarter, and several avacados for a dollar as well.

However, one of the little known facts about El Salvador is that it is also apparently butternut squash season. I know you are all soo jealous! I mean, butternut squash is typically a fall/winter thing, but I guess since we don't have cold weather here, someone arbitrarily decided that it should be butternut squash season. But hey, this is great for us because Marty introduced our tastebuds to an amazing butternut squash/curry/coconut milk soup last year, and now we can make our own for around 50 cents/pound. So, we've been making that soup, butternut squash muffins, and right now we have in the oven our first butternut/apple/cranberry casserole. Thanks to my excellent rationing skills, we still have Craisins from our Christmas stash. I've always been wary of "casseroles", but hey we're going on a limb, at the risk of sounding like something you would take to a Baptist covered dish luncheon on a Sunday afternoon.

So, since we've had so much butternut squash around, Elvis has gotten creative and started drawing faces on our hour-glass shaped friends. I find it harder to later decapitate our new friends, but it is quite entertaining. Check out his latest "rock star" character....

P.S. In the background you can see the beautiful shelves that Elvis designed and built for me for our anniversary this year =)

In other news, we went to a new cafe tonight, called Rock Cafe, started by some guys that have worked with Youth With A Mission. Apparently there's one in Kent, Ohio too. The cool thing is that everything is completely free!! I wonder how long that will last though, when people like our friend Pepon ate 3 cheesecakes in one sitting.... =) It was good to talk to the people that work there about their vision of how to reach out to people...it seems like we have a lot of the same ideas. So hopefully we can work together, maybe do concerts there or something of the sort.

In even more other news, today I got an hour long, full-body massage for $10. Sweet.

Un dia en la playa

One of the great things about El Salvador is that even though it is smaller than the state of Massachusetts, there are over 50 beaches. They are all on the Pacific Coast, but it is amazing the differences you will find at various beaches. For example, some beaches have black sand and you can find some of the best surfing in the world. Then others have "sand colored" sand as we know it, and hardly any waves at all.

Yesterday we went with our friend Ruby to the only beach here in El Salvador that has coral reef. I mean, it's no Roatan (the island we went to for our honeymoon that felt like you were snorkeling through the movie Finding Nemo), but we love it because at low-tide, there are no more waves and the whole beach becomes a gigantic wading pool among the rocks for as far as you can see, and you can see little colored fish. Plus, the sand isn't sand at all, but miniature versions of perfect shells.

This beach is a little fisherman's village, and they have their little houses built on the water's edge, with their little boats tied up in front of their houses, in the water. Just imagine this life....you go out in your boat, fish all day, come back to your house that is so literally on the beach that the water washes up through your "living room" which is just a roof over the sand, which also serves as a restaurant where you can fry up today's catch for anybody walking by who wants to eat.

Playing catch with a coconut

So really the most exhilerating part of the day was on the way home...we got off on a new highway, and I was really impressed by the streetlamps and reflectors on the road because driving on a highway at night in El Salvador is not usually very fun because of poor lighting and people that cross the road in the dark. So I was going on and on about how nice this highway is, and just as we were getting near our exit, we see the cars in front of us make a big U-turn and we're like...what the heck?!?! Then we realized that we had run out of highway. I mean, it just drops off to dirt and rocks, with no signs whatsover warning you that the highway has ended. I mean, not one traffic cone or anything! So, what did we do? Made a U-turn and drove a mile back down the highway, but keep in mind that we are going AGAINST traffic because you can't get into the other lane to go the right way down the road. Oh, El Salvador.

A weird slug-like animal that Elvis found stuck to a rock that had a hard turtle-like shell, but the shell actually started bending in half when he picked it up!

Butter Churnin' in Kindergarten

So, I always said I would never, ever be two things: a teacher, nor a missionary. Well look at me now! I teach at a bilingual Christian school here in San Salvador...kindergarten in the mornings (Reading, writing, english as a second language, math, phonics, Bible) and then I teach 11th grade Psychology in the afternoons. It really is amazing to see how the kids start off at 3 years old, and by the time they are in my class at 6 years old they are reading and writing in English and Spanish (ps- they write in perfect cursive handwriting, something I definitely did not learn until 3rd grade!). But obviously they can't really carry on a conversation with you, more than "May I go to the bathroom please", or "May I borrow a pencil please", etc. So it's really neat to then go to the 11th grade in the afternoons, and hear the kids speaking perfect English. I mean, I'm not crazy about teaching such a wide range of ages, but it is neat to see how they really learn English over the years.

I wanted you to get to see my little ones and my classroom (Elvis and I painted the mural in the back!), so check out this video of them singing and dancing to "Every Move I Make" . Pay special attention to the incredible "butter churn" move at the end of the video. Let me make a small side note about the "butter churn"....I think the technical name is the "Cabbage Patch", but my amazingly "creative" parents coined the term "butter churn" when they debuted this move at my 7th grade birthday party. Needless to say, I was traumatized, and continued to be when they pulled out the butter churn at every birthday since, when the whole family (grandmothers included) did it when I walked across the stage at my high school graduation, and I think I've blocked it out of my mind, but I'm pretty sure at my wedding too. I cringe everytime. So, when my dad's famous shoulder pumpin' move came along (you know which one i'm talking about), I decided just to go with it and to really talk it up because it is definitely better than the butter churn. I thought that maybe the butter churn would be forgotten, but now it's gone and popped up here in El Salvador too.

Ps- I did NOT invent the dance moves to this song in the video. The butter churn curse has returned. It knows no boundaries.

Ruta 3:16

Our church is called Ruta 3:16, and it is a church consisting of all young people (plus our pastor Wally, another gringo, who is young at heart!). Our goal is to reach out to the youth of El Salvador, especially those who don't feel welcome at traditional church because of the way they dress, the music they listen to, etc. We meet in an old bar, and out of the 40 or so of us that meet weekly, we already have 4 worship bands, all different genres. Elvis and I play in one of them. God has really put a passion for music in the hearts of the young people at our church. Our message is that God is good and He loves you, trying to break the lies that many young people here believe that God is mad at them.


So, our pastor Wally has started another church, also Ruta 3:16, but in a little community outside of town. He met several of the current members when he was doing medical clinincs for people that lived in a lava field...literally acres and acres of blackened lava rocks from a volcano that erupted about a century ago. We're talking about no grass, not even dirt, no water, electricity, just black rocks all around you. They have now moved into a nearby community called Nehemias, and Wally helped them start a church. Just looking from the outside, Ruta 3:16 looks completely different in the city and in Nehemias, but really the same heart is still there. The church in Nehemias is about 95% women and children, result of their husbands moving to the states to search for income, divorce, or not being married in the first place. Wally has helped them get into a partnership with a university in the states which is going to market and sell hammocks that the women from Nehemias make to that they can have some income.




Today, Elvis and I went to Nehemias with Wally to help lead worship for them, and Elvis preached. Last time, he was asked to preach about 15 minutes before the service, but this time they gave him a couple of hours heads-up. That's one of his gifts that I admire so much- being able to preach on such short notice! You can tell it just bubbles up from his heart. Now I could prepare for a month, and run out of things to say in 5 minutes! It's neat how God has gifted us in different ways.



















Sunday school at Nehemias



Wally has asked us to come once a month with him to Nehemias to lead worship, pray with the women, and for Elvis to preach each time also, so we'll will keep you up to date on what's happening there!

Our little boy is all grown up....

So, Quesito had his first sleepover last night...coed sleepover that is. He is apparently quite the ladies man, we have had several people ask if their dog could, um, mate with him. I started reminiscing about the first day we went to pick up Quesito. They had told us that he was only a couple of months old and really tiny, but this is the furry surprise we had....

So, back to the love story. It was really an arranged marriage I guess. We got the call yesterday that "Sassy" was in heat, so we gave Quesito "the talk", and took him over. We picked him up today and he cried on the way home, and has been sleeping all day. Apparently he didn't sleep all night...

Here's a picture of Quesito, giving Sassy a goodbye nuzzle....(ps Quesito had a hair cut for the occasion)

Quesito crying for Sassy on the way home...Aww, puppy love...

We'll keep y'all up to date on Sassy's progress...hopefully in a few months we'll be grandparents!!

Bienvenidos!!

So, we've decided to get a blog. Everyday, things happen and I always think to myself, "If we had a blog, I would put that up there." My fear is that now that we actually have one, nothing exciting will happen for me to post. But, here goes...we want yall to be able to get a taste of life here in El Salvador through anecdotes, pictures, videos (if we find to be so technically gifted)...heck, if we could, I would post some pupusas so you could literally get a taste of life here.

So, I'll do my best to post random things about our everyday life...our church, my school, Elvis's studies, our beautiful country, our mischevious hijo Quesito...forgive me if our page isn't that advanced, or if my English doesn't make sense...sometimes I get confused =)

I'm going to close this first entry with some pictures of us, doing some of our favorite things here in the country.

See you again soon,

Ash