agua!!

Water is back! For the most part at least. Some families went over a week without a drop of water in their homes. I heard an announcement from the water company this morning apologizing for the inconvenience and they explained that this in fact was not a case of robbery with the intent to sell the parts but rather it was sabotage with political motives....meaning that it was probably a group of people from the another political party who wanted to make the national water company and the government look really bad like they can't provide for the people. You know, i actually felt better about the situation when i thought it was some poor people who had stolen the pipe to sell it to get money. But now it's even more ridiculous knowing that it was probably rich, politically driven people who did the damage just to make the government look bad. Grow up.

no water...

So, apparently somebody has stolen the main water pipes that give water to all of San Salvador in order to sell the metal. Seems like a joke, but it's not....somebody actually did that this weekend, which means that San Salvador is on a very strict water rationing program right now.

On a normal day, we usually only have water in our house until about noon, or sometimes longer but you just never know. But for the most part, you can count on having running water at least in the mornings. We have a tank that sits above our garage (probably a hazard in case of an earthquake...) that automatically fills up with water when it's running so that we can have enough water for the rest of the day. However, there's not enough pressure to wash clothes or really even wash your hair in it so we rely on those times of running water. Now, because someone stole the main water pipes, we only sporadically have water that is coming from some other source and it's only for a little bit at a time. When we went to bed last night, the tank was completely dry because we did not have running water at all since Sunday morning. We went to bed praying for water because we have a bucket full of dirty cloth diapers and well lets be honest...i hadn't washed my hair in quite a few days! Thankfully, apparently we had enough water sometime in the middle of the night to fill the tank, so we had showers this morning. However, my school is letting the kids out at noon all this week b/c there's not enough water to last the whole day and i've heard of people that have to wake up at 2am to shower b/c that's the only time they have water and they don't have a tank.

All this to say, we're stinky. The whole city is. Please pray with us that this situation will get fixed soon. Originally they said it will be 12 more days to get it fixed, but now they are promising it will be sooner. Pray for those that haven't had access to any water and that don't have tanks and against sicknesses that can come from lack of hygiene. Thanks.

recently...

For Mother's Day, instead of going on the fun picnic Elvis had prepared for me and eating the yummy southern breakfast he had cooked for me (country ham, eggs, english muffins, grits, grapefruit, cappucino), I was in bed (and in the bathroom) with food poisoning. Not my favorite way to spend Mother's day! Although, i did get to do some things that haven't been very possible since becoming a mom, such as sleep all day, read a book for fun, watch a movie during the afternoon, and not have to worry about anything except making it to the bathroom in time! Ha! I didn't go to work on Monday b/c i was very dehydrated, and then Tuesday we were off b/c it was the Salvadoran Mother's Day. Elvis stayed home to help me recover and we enjoyed the day with Suzy just hanging around the house. Not the most exotic, adventurous mother's day ever, but nice to just be with my 2 favorite people, the ones responsible for me being a mom in the first place =)

In Suzy news, she has been busy making friends in the neighborhood and playing with her BFF Pacita and her cousins as well. Here she is with Pacita...they hang out every wednesday afternoon together and at the nursery at church. And here she is with Dinora (Di-Di as she calls her), helping make lemonade.
We've noticed that Suzy is starting to pick up more Spanish, although her list of english vocabulary is still longer than her spanish one. Her favorite word right now is "luna" and loves to point at the moon at night, and find any crescent shapes in books and say luna. She also loves saying "gecko" whenever she hears a gecko in our house (which is very often), identifying parts of the face (in english), and saying "hola" to everybody. Oh and singing Elmo songs. She's a great singer! She also has started letting us know when she is going "pee pee" or "poo poo" and likes to wipe her teddy bears when they apparently go "poo poo" as well. I was nervous about her picking up both languages, but seems to be doing well. The other night when i told her we were going to wash our hands, she promptly said "mano mano!" And in other big news, she had her first ponytail last week! big girl!
In other news, I've started going to latin dance aerobics classes lately. They meet monday-thurs in a community center within walking distance from our house and i've LOVED going. I guess it's basically like Zumba and it's a great exercise and stress buster for me. But man oh man last night we had apparently the most flexible, energetic, hip shaking instructor you've ever seen (and believe me, i've seen some pretty amazing ones in central america! i'm thinking of one particularly funny experience in Guatemala with Nell Stiff and a very flamboyant male aerobics instructor) I think she purposefully speeded up all the CDs b/c i have never merengued so fast in my life. I was spell bound just watching her dance! The fun thing is that there are all ages in the classes- families with teenage boys, moms, even several 70+ years old men that attend and do their best! So cute! Maybe i can sneak a video one day....that's all the recent news for now!

happy mother's (and grandmother's) day, Mom!!!

Mom,
Last year was special in that we actually got to be with you on Mother's Day, but even though we aren't together this year, I still wanted to tell you how happy you are that you're my mom!! Thanks for teaching me by your words and your example throughout all these years. I pray that I will shape Suzy's life in a positive, Christ-centered way just as you have shaped mine.
We love you!