hiking

Yesterday Elvis and I took Suzy to an ecological park on the side of the volcano here in town which is chocked full of ripening coffee trees right now. We used to go a lot when we had our dog, Quesito, and he used to go at full-speed up the mountain and we would run after him. Not the same with an almost 2 year old! She took her sweet time, chatting non-stop to every single coffee bean she found, butterfly, piece of dirt, etc. She also wanted to help Minnie Mouse walk which obviously took a while as well. It was hilarious but next time we'll be sure to start earlier! We got to the top just in time for the sunset.

Punkins

a fall recipe

We don't have fall here in El Salvador, but last week it was cool enough (at least at night) to make me start craving fall-time foods and drinks and smells. We bought some cute little pumpkins at the grocery store for decoration, and i busted out one of my two precious cans of pumpking that my mom brought last trip. We made cream cheese pumpkin bars, and i had a little bit of pumpkin left over, so we decided to make some carrot and pumpkin soup. According to my brother (the soup expert), the key to the soup is adding lots of ginger, garlic, and any spices that smell like armpit. It just so happens that my hubby is the resident expert at making curries, which uses several spices that smell like armpit. (Maybe i'll have elvis share his recipes for curries one day!) If you don't want to make your own curry, you can buy already-made curry powder. Anyways, we cooked carrot, pumpkin, garlic, ginger, curry, coconut milk powder (or the real thing) in chicken broth, then threw it in the blender and had some yummy soup! It's great with a few drops of lime.

Sorry...I'm not great at giving recipes with exact ingredients and measurements, because that is not how we cook. Plus, the real recipe is this one, another variation of something we had at my brother's house:

Get some flour tortillas, put some creamy white cheese in it (use Brie if you live in a country where it is affordable....we used Monterrey Jack and it was delish), slice up some green apples and put them inside the tortilla as well (they add a delightfully contrasting snap!), and then spoon some of that yummy carrot pumpkin soup into the tortilla, fold 'em up and cook them on the stove in a litle bit of olive oil. YUM! Bam, there you have it...the most ooey-gooey delicious fall quesadillas ever!




OK, I only have one precious can of pumpkin left, plus our table decoration which i plan on using too....i need your best fail-proof pumpkin recipes please!

Musou Band

Last night our friend WanChen hooked us up with VIP passes to see a Taiwanese all-girl band at the National Theater downtown. The theater was beautiful (we'd never been before) and the music was awesome! Again, it was a fun intercultural experience to see many Salvadoran-Taiwanese families with bilingual children! The girls were definitely working the fact that they were all drop dead gorgeous and wearing mini skirts, but were really impressive on their instruments as well, which were all really old traditional Taiwanese instruments. I had never seen anything like some of those instruments before! They played a wide range of songs, from traditional Taiwanese songs, to the theme from Titanic, to "La Bamba", to "Flight of the Bumblebee" to a traditional Salvadoran song. And they played each song with the most sentimental expressions on their faces, as if they were pondering a rainbow in the distance or smelling freshly washed linens while watching puppies bound through a field of daisies.





I called this song the Taiwanese bluegrass song, featuring the two-stringed violin, which was my favorite instrument:



And here are some snippets of some of the instruments:







Flight of the Bumblebee....

It's working!

It's kinda scary trying to raise a bilingual child. I mean, being parents for the first time is scary enough without worrying about if you will screw up your kid speaking two different languages to her. I had read that if the same parent always speaks the same language to the child, they will be able to distinguish between the two. But I never knew what would happen since she only hears me speaking in spanish to Elvis. But it's actually working! We didn't even try to teach Suzy baby sign language because i figured she would definitely not start talking until she was 25 if we threw three languages into the mix. Of course she pulls out the spanglish sometimes and reverts to the Suzy unknown language sometimes, but I'm really proud of her and really amazed at how the brain works.
Here she is, reading the same Elmo book, first with Elvis in spanish and then with me in english.

Free at last!

After being couped up in the house for 2 weeks, we finally were able to get out this weekend! We went to 3 different parks, one being an orange grove. Last night I had a wedding shower, so Elvis took Suzy to a fun park where they spent several hours playing. Suzy has been really interested in kites lately in her books, and we saw one in the sky this week. So when they were selling kites at this park for $1, of course Elvis bought her one! She also made a friend at the park who was the same age she is, and everybody thought they were twins, especially because of the same hair and both were wearing striped sweaters.
For all you foodies out there, this is the Salvadoran version of food trucks where Elvis and Suzy ate last night at the park. They sold all kinds of typical foods...Suzy had a pupusa and also a rigua which is like a fresh corn pancake filled with beans and cheese which are cooked in banana leaves.
The kite got it's debut today at the orange grove:








Here's a little video of Suzy at the orange grove

hallelujah!

just kidding...

The sun yesterday was but for a fleeting moment. It's raining again. It sure was nice while it lasted. We were finally able to play outside yesterday and when we went out suzy said, "WOW! Sky! Blue!"

At school the teachers have been working all week to pack up donated food and clothes and send them to various parts of the country. The pastor (who is about 6.5 feet tall) said that in the town he went to yesterday to deliver the stuff, the water in the streets and the houses was above his waist.
I heard on the news today that since all the rivers have flooded (and most major bridges collapsed) people that live near the rivers have found CROCODILES in their homes.

a ray of sunlight?

It's finally not pouring rain today, just a little misting every now and then. The sun even came out for a few minutes...i hope it's enough to get some diapers dry! I had to break down and just buy Elvis some new socks because all of his are wet/dirty. But hopefully things will start to get back to normal soon. Still no school tomorrow. Teachers are going to help sort and bag up food and clothing that has been donated to the church.

I can't believe that i didn't take my camera, but our Taiwanese neighbors had us over last night to teach us how to make dumplings! They taught us how to make the dough, pass it through the dough stretcher machine (the dad says you have to get the machines made in Italy...the ones made in China are not as good!). Then we cut out the circles, filled them up with soy meat and veggies, folded them up (some prettier than others) and threw them in a bit pot of boiling water. I really liked being part of the cooking process (even though we probably won't go through all the work again) because i got to make sure no sesame oil was going in there! We don't want any more Hitch-like reactions. Plus, the time we had to talk while stuffing those dumplings was priceless, hearing about their lives and beliefs. Oh, and we got to eat like 30 dumplings each which we would have never done in a restaurant! Suzy loves going over to their house. They have a very calming effect on her and she will sit and play with any of the family members for long periods of time even when they can't always communicate in any language. Maybe the Taiwanese cookies they generously give her help too.

Be afraid...be very afraid....

....of our laundry basket which has erupted.

That's what happens when you can't wash clothes for over a week because of the rain. And the clothes we had to wash on Monday (remember the throw up incident?) are STILL not dry, even the ones hanging up inside. I washed my hair at 3 pm on Saturday afternoon and let it airdry like always, no ponytail or anything, and at 11:30 when we were going to bed, it was STILL wet. I realize i have extraordinarily thick hair, but that's just uncommon. The moisture in the air is disgusting. The walls of our house are literally crying (you can see the water coming through the walls) they are SO soaked.

Aside from the not so serious comment about our clothes, we are really burdened for our country. The fact that we can't wash clothes is really such a non-issue when you see how others are suffering. At this very moment, it is not raining and it looks like the sun might want to come out, but this morning it was raining which makes one complete week of rain without a break. That doesn't sound so bad if you've never lived in such a fragile and vulnerable country like El Salvador. School will probably be cancelled the rest of the week b/c almost all the schools are being used as refuge centers for people that has lost their homes due to flooding and mudslides.

A 15 year old in our church lost his home on Saturday where he lives with his single mom and 4 siblings, one being a 2 month old baby. That's starting to hit close to home when you have a face that goes with news like this. He only lives about 10-15 minutes away. We took up donations yesterday at church for his family and for our sister church in Comasagua which is a mountain town that has been completely isolated due to the rain. Both entrance ways are closed due to mudslides so the members of the community had to hike down the mountain to get the donations and then hike it back up. Another friend of mine who lives about 10 minutes away was evacuated because of potential landslides since she lives near the base of the volcano. Dinora could not come to watch Suzy today because the main highway going out to her town is blocked from landslides. Usually during this time of year, there is a change in the weather and the rains stop and the wind picks up. Always before a change in weather, there is a little tremor. Our fear right now is that if the ground shakes like it usually does, all of this loose earth will not be able to handle it and that could cause even more damage.


Right now, 32 have died and over 20,000 have been evacuated from their homes.





p.s. you know how i mentioned at the beginning of this post that it wasn't raining anymore? Well, it started again already.