butterflies and petrified ducks

Today Elvis and Suz and I took a short drive to a butterfly sanctuary outside of the city. For those of you that have visited ES, it's between the lava field and the volcano lake. Anyway, it was such a little treasure filled with beautiful butterflies (in all stages of development) and lots of green open space for Suzy to run! That's a treasure in itself. Suzy's favorite was called the "crying owl butterfly"...see if you see why:

a butterfly that just came out of his little home!

You can see the contrasting inside and outside of this butterfly since his wings were damaged:

a little dinosaur friend ("tenguereche")

Then, we went to an archaeological site which is close to the butterfly sanctuary...I can't believe i'd never been there before! In 1976, they discovered some houses that were buried under a volcanic eruption back in the 7th century. Think of a miniature Pompeii. Here is the description:

The ash perfectly preserved items, such as pots, even human teeth, a duck, etc. Then we walked around to see the various houses that they have excavated and it was amazing to see entire houses, ceremonial areas, even a sauna! It was interesting that all the beds in the homes were only about 5 feet long, which means that my family would have fit in perfectly back then =) Too bad there are no more indigenous people in El salvador...they were all killed in 1920 (but that's a whole different story!) It's amazing to think of how many ancient treasures are below us everyday but there just aren't enough resources to continue excavating.

One of the many pots they found:

A petrified ear of corn:

the duck!

One of the houses they have excavated:

The sauna:

The donut looking stone you see was what they used as a thermostat to alter the temperature of the sauna!

This next week I am on vacation and Elvis will hopefully have a few days, so we hope to find more treasures like this!

Mexican fiesta...amongst other things

Elvis and Suzy spoiled me right this past week for my birthday! They had Cinnabon for me for breakfast, Suzy gave me an Elmo t-shirt that she picked out all by herself, and then they took me to a Japanese steakhouse for dinner. Yum!!
Then, on Saturday, we celebrated my birthday and my friend Ruby's bday together with our friends from church. We always celebrated our birthdays together and we always try to think of something fun and unusual to do (you may remember that elvis and i dressed up as Forrest and Jenny one year for my bday party). THis year's theme was Mexican Fiesta. Don't be fooled; El Salvador and Mexico are very different so we had a blast dressing up in costumes, hitting a pinata, playing mexican bingo, and Elvis cooked an amazing buffet for everyone to make their own burritos. Yum! here are the bday gals:

Some famous mexican actors showed up:

Along with the famous Frida Kahlo:
Suzy stole the show with her traditional mexican outfit her Abuelita brought back from mexico for her this past year:
Suzy was so pooped (and sick from a bad cold) that she actually fell asleep in the middle of the party! THis has NEVER happened....even as a tiny baby she would never fall asleep in public. She gave us a scare on Sunday...one of the medicines that the doctor gave her made her heart race and she was completely out of control for about an hour Sunday morning and again Sunday night. Thankfully, now we know that it was the medicine that made her have those crazy attacks, so we have stopped it. It was really scary though.

Here is my little sweetie pie, getting ready to take me out to eat for my bday.

You may recognize her dress....it used to be my shirt! Dinora (the wonder-maker) whipped up a dress for suzy using my old shirt. I know what you're going to think in this picture...Wow, how young (and skinny!) they look!
Speaking of Dinora and her magic, i came home from work one day and she had made this table for suzy using scraps of wood she found around the house:
This particular day, we were working on making a shaker for Suzy.

I want to do more crafts with Suzy, but don't have a ton of ideas that are appropriate for her age. Let me know if you have any ideas, using materials we can get here!

I heart LA

Oh, where do I start to begin describing this amazing past week in Pasadena, CA? I'll preface it by saying that it was, obviously, very hard being away from Elvis and Suzy. It was hard on everybody...Suzy didn't want to sleep all week (I think she was waiting up for mama to come home), Elvis had his hands completely full with a sweet little girl who didn't want to sleep, and I of course missed my sweet family like crazy. But we survived! And elvis and suzy got some great quality papa-suzy time (they went to the kids museum and even went swimming in a river on a farm in the northern part of the country!) and I had a very impactful (is that a word?) trip, although it was VERY busy!

Let's start at the beginning..... i got into LA about 1:45am and was greeted by two of my favorite people in the world: Kelly and Brian! We went back to their place, and spent most of the next day trying to wake up. However, I did get to tour Fuller's campus, check out cute cute Pasadena, and go to a free folk concert that night in a nearby park. For 10 weeks during summer, they have 5 free concerts a week in that park! 50 free concerts every summer just in one park! Wow!

Fuller's campus

Brian and Kel's cute cute house:

It was kind of an ongoing joke this week that I kept "seeing" Elvis everywhere...but don't you think this guy that played at the concert we went to is Elvis's jazzy twin???

The next day, I got to go to Brian and kelly's church, which i loved. I really love that they cater in good, affordable lunch every week so you can hang out a bit longer after church. We hit the jackpot that day: Vietnamese subs! Later that day, we hit up the metro and went down to Union Station and found several fun latin festivals going on, then went to see the stars in Hollywood, and finally ended up in Little Tokyo for some yummy sushi. I was really impressed with every bit of LA that i saw...very clean and it felt very safe.

Union station:






There are many people with interesting "talents" in LA....





Hollywood!

Jennifer Aniston's brand new handprints

art museum:

Monday - Friday was pretty intense. My class that I was taking, Lifelong Leadership Development, is normally given as a 10-week course. Well, we did it in 4.5 days! We were in class from 9-5 and then had 3-4 hours of homework every night. But it was great! Because of the intensity of the class and the depth of the material (they weren't joking about it being "Lifelong"...we analyzed every part of our lives from birth to see how God has been shaping us), the 20 of us in the class became real tight, real fast. There was a wiiide range of people in the class, ranging from 25-65 years old, coming from Uganda, Zimbabwe, Russia, Canada, Dominican Republic, England, Korea, China, etc. Obviously, this intense school/study schedule left little time for having fun at night, although we did manage to sneak in some frozen yogurt runs (this concept of serve-yourself frozen yogurt and toppings was new and amazing to me), dinners with friends, and even a movie screening for a movie with lots of big stars that will be released in October! I would tell you the plot, but then i'd have to shoot ya. We were sworn to secrecy...let's see if they take my advice and make any changes before it is released!

my sweet small group (minus one):


Only the best fries I've ever tasted:

Friday night, we headed down to San Gabriel...the part of LA that makes you totally forget you are in the US and makes you think you are in China. ALL the store signs, banks, restaurants, etc are in Chinese and i definitely would not have been able to even order dinner without Kelly and Brian's mad language skills. So, I had my first "real" Chinese food experience and i was highly impressed, even without goopy, sweet, deep-fried chicken balls typically found in American chinese food. Then, we went for a true cultural experience....to get hour long Chinese foot massages!! Wow, i wish i had a picture of this....I'm still trying to figure out how my back feels bruised after a foot massage. Oh, maybe because it's middle-aged men who don't really understand when you gasp "softer please!" and therefore continue to try to break you by pounding your pressure points with their elbows. Hehe sounds painful, and it was at times, but i do think they worked out all the knots that had formed while sitting in class all week. It was fun because we were all in one room in very chinese-y recliners, wrapped in blankets and getting these intense massages. When they got to my feet, i couldn't control myself and kept laughing so much because it tickled so much! It was a very unique experience...one of the first times in many years that i felt like i couldn't communicate and didn't really get all that was going on.

Saturday, Kel and i went spelunking at the beach in Santa Monica. Real cute beach, real cute town. My favorite part of the outdoor shopping mall we visited was that people would just bring their guitars and amps and set up in the street to make a few bucks. Including this rock band of brothers:







This guy was on American Idol:








Then, we explored LA in search of the "Renegade Craft Fair" that was going on in a park near Chinatown. We were extremely impressed with the number of people selling fun, homemade indie crafts. "crafts" makes me think of something made with popsicle sticks, so i wish i had a better word to use because these homemade works of art were AMAZING! Another fun part of the fair was that there were several food trucks parked nearby, so i was able to have my first food truck experience. Yum!







Thanks so much, Kel and Brian, for your hospitality and for showing me around your fun town and for introducing me to Fuller!