This past sunday morning, a group of us from our church went out to the town of Comasagua to do a children's program for our friend Jose Luis's church. one of our friends randomly had a chipmunk costume and a panda costume, so i wanted you to see this:
Meanwhile, while we were hanging out with the chipmunk and panda, the High Heel Marathon was taking place! i wanted to clarify that the participants were not just walking, to see who could last the longest...they were actually sprinting in high heels, and the fastest 10 girls won free high heels for a year, and a medicine kit from a local pharmacy (i guess to heal their wounded ankles). the point was to raise money. here's a video of the starting line:
in other news, the countdown is on...mom and dad get here in 6 days!!! this will be the first time they have been here since our wedding, so we are super pumped!!!
So, one part of life that i have just not gotten used to here in el salvador is that we have not ever had hot water in our house. now, the cold water feels pretty good in the afternoons, since its so hot here usually, but 5:30am showers before work have just always been a punishment for me. we have checked into getting one of these electrical showerhead things that you install (aka The Widowmaker because apparently its easy to get shocked by them), but it was gonna take a lot of work and money to run new cables from the breaker box downstairs to the shower upstairs. anyways, i had become resigned to the fact that i will always have cold showers. however, this week, we talked to the owner of the house about changing the older electrical outlets in the house (several didnt work anymore), and she agreed, so they ended up having to basically rewire the whole house. so, while they were doing all that, elvis surprised me and asked them to go ahead and do the wiring for the hot water showerhead and to install it! sooo, guess who gets to take 20 min long hot showers in the morning now?? thats right! and they even grounded the shower (i guess thats how you say it in english) so we won't even get electrocuted. so, we no longer call it the "Widowmaker", but rather the "Happy Wife Maker". =)
in other news, you may be aware of the "high heel" culture here in el salvador. women here wear high high heels 24/7, even when you have to walk a mile to work, or hold your baby and groceries while standing up on a crowded bus, etc etc. we have a good friend who wears them so much (even when getting around the city alone with her 2 year old son) that she says her feet actually hurt when she wears flat shoes. we like to joke that her feet are shaped like Barbie's...naturally shaped in that awkward inclined position. anyways, we saw this billboard this week, for a "High Heel Marathon" that will actually take place this coming Sunday. apparently, all these women will put on their high heels, and start walking, and whoever lasts the longest will win a new pair of high heels! im thinking about participating....nah, id rather just take a hot shower.
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:
So, we made it back to el salvador after a very relaxing christmas break in NC- there were so many fun times...playing Catch Phrase with 89-year old Memaw, singing carols with the fam, eating hot white chocolate macademia nut cookies with mom and dad pretty much every night, playing Pit with good friends, thrift store finds, Elvis catching some huge fish for dinner, getting to eat all those comfort foods i sometimes miss, etc etc etc.
Me with MemawElvis with Grannymom and dad with the flamingo flower pot we made them
Here are some pics from when elvis and marty went fishing with some real fishermen out on the open water in 19 degree weather..yeah, elvis learned what long johns were that day....
watch out, they let marty park the boat!Anyways, it´s always interesting to come home and see how the plants survived our absence, what rotting vegetable we accidentally left in the fridge, etc, and yesterday i took the lid off of our compost bucket that we havent looked in on in about a month, and found a pleasant surprise! well, let me back up by saying that thanks to marty and sara´s organic influence on us this summer, we decided to start a compost pile. i wasnt sure how that would work, since we have no backyard, only a small patio, and i was worried about the bugs. so, we opted for a compost bucket, with a lid. we dumped in dead leaves, dirt, fruit and vegetable scraps, etc etc and let nature take its course, i mean the worse that could happen was that it would rot, which is exactly the desired outcome!!
anyways, we took the lid off the bucket to throw in some new leaves, and to our delight, we no longer saw just trash, but rather actual soil instead of trash!! and the best part was that out of that soil was growing a new, very green plant, a cool symbol for this new year. i have no idea what kind of plant it is, but surely its from one of the old fruits or veggies that we threw in there. imagine, new life springing up from what was just trash before. it just made me think about how God is, and how He always brings something good and new and beautiful, even out of a rotting, stinking situation. ive been thinking about Romans 8:28 a lot lately, about how God works everything together for the good of those who love him. and how always, after a while, we can see that new green plant bursting out of what used to just look like trash. when you look back on your life and all those good and bad situations, you can start to see a glimpse of the perfect quilt that God is weaving together through those situations. i like something that i read from The Shack...that God doesnt justify those bad things that we have to go through....He redeems them and makes them into something beautiful...beauty for ashes.
so, i would encourage you to start a compost pile (if you have a big yard) or a bin (if you dont have a big yard). a good, easy website for making a bin is:
well we made it to NC (after a disappointing airplane ride where we were only offered a bag of peanuts instead of the usual lunch!) and we have been busy having fun doing nothing with the fam ever since! well now i guess we have been busy... i mean we have been busy eating outrageous quantities of food, went to chapel hill for the bball game where tyler hansbrough broke the scoring record, and have been taking funny pictures as well...what else would you expect from this crowd?? merry christmas from the baldwin/bywaters/henriquez crew!
Guess who is a quarter of a century old today?? ELVIS!!! i love getting to celebrate the life of the absolute most amazing person ive ever met. i think all of you that know him...even if you have only exchanged"Nice to meet you".... can testify to the fact that he radiates peace, love, and joy to all those that are near him. And i can testify to the fact that he is like that 24/7! and what better way to celebrate than to be finished with college classes FOREVER and to be heading to NC in 2 days!! In other news, we have been super busy this week...here are some pictures from a couple of our activities. First of all, these pics are from a Christmas party we had here at the house for the girls from church. Thanks Mom for the christmas dishes!!!
These pictures are from a trip that elvis took with his niece Camila to "Tin Marin", a really cool children's museum here in town. She got to dress up as a doctor, firefighter, make tortillas, go shopping at the grocery store, go to Greece, Taiwan, a butterfly farm, and a gravity house. im not sure which one of them had more fun playing all day!!
This past friday, my school took all of the staff to the beach for our christmas celebration. Oh the advantages of living in a warm climate all year long!! Here are some pics:
Here's a shot from the way to the beach...at the far left is Izalco volcano which naturally has no vegetation, and to the far right is Santa Ana volcano, which is bald halfway down because of the eruption a couple of years ago...we hiked it a few months after it erupted. but thats a whole different story...
This week, I was sneaky and got Elvis tickets to the Juan Luis Guerra concert for his birthday...i was proud of myself because its not so easy surprising him when i cant exactly move around the city by myself. so thankfully, his family was in on it with me and he was totally surprised! Juan Luis Guerra is from Dominican Republic and is one of the legendary singers of merengue and other tropical music, and so we danced all night long! He became a christian several years ago, and so he sang his old songs but also his newer songs with a christian message but with the same tropical dance beat. i had concerts this past wednesday, thursday, and friday, so it was a nice treat to just get to listen to the music and dance! Here's a video of the song "Ojala que llueve cafe" (Tyler, didn't you have to study this song in spanish class in college?) this video is actually from another of his concerts this year, but it was the same idea. i liked the video they showed behind him singing...
In other news, we are both down to the last week of school!!! and one week until we head to the states!! whoohoo!
Happy belated Thanksgiving! i pondered the idea of making a list of all the things i was thankful for, but whoa i would never finish! and i could never mention each one of you and what you mean to me. so, instead, i will tell you a little bit about our thanksgiving... yesterday the american teachers at my school were treated to an amazing, authentic american thanksgiving FEAST (not just a lunch....it was literally a feast!) Judy, our pastor Wally´s wife and my boss Cady´s mom, cooked Thanksgiving lunch for all of us, and boy can she cook! Those of you that have come down for mission trips can testify to that! She´s from Texas, so all the food was very familiar and sooooo good. I havent had some of those dishes since covered dish luncheons back from my childhood! We had homemade yeast rolls, ambrosia fruit salad, green salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, two types of turkey, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole (fried onions on top and all!) cranberry sauce, corn, and oh the homemade desserts: pecan pie, pumpkin pie, cherry cheesecake, and chocolate mousse ! and real sweet tea! we ate each and every dish mentioned above, and it was all so special because you cant even get half of the ingredients for those dishes here in El Salvador, but Judy had brought them back from the states. We ate about 1 o´clock, and elvis and i literally could not move ourselves from the couch until 5 o´clock when we had to go home because we were so stuffed. thanks judy!!!
It probably wasn´t such a good idea for me to eat all that, seeing that last week i went to the hospital with what we thought was appendicitis. luckily it wasnt, i think it was because of those gigantic black berries from the last post...last saturday i ate a big plate of strawberries and blackberries, then after my concert people we could get free food at the cafe so i drank 3 fresh strawberry smoothies, then ate a plateful of strawberries and black berries the next morning for breakfast. all those little tiny seeds did a number on my insides! so, unfortunately we havent been able to enjoy those anymore. but i wasnt gonna let a doctor´s order mess up my thanksgiving!! we have some pretty exciting 2 weeks coming up...amongst lots of activities at church and with my band, elvis´s birthday is december 14th, the day he also will be finished with his college career!!! then we head to NC the 16th..we can´t wait!!! hope to see you soon!
This weekend was one of those marathon weekends where you just run from one event to the next...i think we spent about 5 minutes awake at home this weekend. The activities ranged from going to a fishing seminar, to grieving with a friend who lost his mother this weekend, to having baptism in the lake, to having service at church every night with a father and son missionary team that came to visit (i guess you can call it "revival", even though i think its interesting that in the South we call it "revival" anytime we plan 3 days in a row at church with a visiting pastor, instead of "revival" being a spontaneous outbreak of the Spirit ...luckily this weekend was both!)
I wanted to share some about the baptism that i mentioned...since our church meets in an old bar/pool hall, we don´t exactly have a baptism pool like most churches do. So, the options were to bring in a kiddy pool and have baptism there at church, or pack up and head to the lake. you can guess which option appealed to us the most! We went to our favorite lake, Lake Coatepeque, to our favorite hippy hideout that you have already seen pictures of here on the blog. It´s really a funny place because there are pictures up everywhere and they hand out stickers there saying that on Dec 12th, 2012, the volcano beside the lake will erupt again (it erupted 2 years ago) and aliens will come take over the hippy hideout on the lake. They chose the date 12/12/12 because it is the last date of the Mayan calendar, and therefore supposedly the end of the world. After years of going to this place and talking with the owners, we still can't figure out if they are serious, or if its a gag to get hippies to come stay there. Anyways, we like to go there with our friends from church and even took the mission team from Quaker Gap there because it is a lovely place, but a little dark in the whole alien aspect, so we like to shed a little light there if you know what i mean. So maybe they were a little taken off guard when we drove up with 18 people ready for a baptism service! Elvis led a study on baptism when we got there, and then our pastors Wally and David bravely jumped into the freezing cold water to baptize 6 of our friends. I can´t think of a more beautiful place to share such a neat experience!
Meanwhile, while we were hanging out with the chipmunk and panda, the High Heel Marathon was taking place! i wanted to clarify that the participants were not just walking, to see who could last the longest...they were actually sprinting in high heels, and the fastest 10 girls won free high heels for a year, and a medicine kit from a local pharmacy (i guess to heal their wounded ankles). the point was to raise money. here's a video of the starting line:
