watch out panera!

So, elvis is finished up with all of his classes, but of course you can't just graduate after finishing your classes. oh no, that would be tooo easy. they actually have a special word for students that have already finished classes, but have not graduated yet, so he is now of that status, which is in and of itself prestigious because it is a feat just to get through all the years of undergrad classes (8 for elvis, up to 12 for some!there's actually a law here that it you are not allowed to graduate from college in less than 5 years.) so, now he has to take a "pre-graduation course" whatever that means, then the normal process would be to write a thesis which could take up to a year and a half more. however, this year they are offering "specialization courses" instead of the thesis, which will only be 8 months, and he will be specialized in a specific area of his major. we have opted for that route, which seems a little more useful.


anyways, the pre-graduation course starts in february, so these past few weeks, elvis has been busy...in the kitchen! after our last visit to Panera Bread in the states, he got the idea that he wanted to learn how to make bagels. so he did! we have had homemade berry bagels from scratch, the apple cinnamon bagels kinda flopped, and my personal favorite, garlic cheese rosemary basil bagels (pictured below)!!! yummm!!

In other news, last night my jazz band was invited to play (only 2 hours in advance!) in a political banquet for international supporters, since the elections here are coming up soon (elections for mayor are tomorrow). So, we got to hob-nob with and meet lots of important people, several mayors, even the candidate for vice-president of el salvador, which according to polls, will win here in march. it was fun, and after our band played, a marimba group played. now if youve never seen a marimba band, it is pretty cool. its like a xylophone, but made of wood, or traditionally made of gourds, like in this picture i found on the internet of a traditional marimba in Guatemala:
Anyways, the cool thing is that the marimba they play here is reallly long, long enough for like 6 people to play on it at the same time. So, last night the marimba band was a big hit because they played traditional folk songs from here, and everybody started to dance. hey, we even joined in a danced a few! this video does not have good sound quality, but i wanted you to see the marimba band: