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!!!