so tuesday was my 21st birhtday!! wooo whoooo...and no i did not go to the bars to celebrate (not that i couldnt get in before since the drinking age is 18 here...wah wah). at midnight i was presented with a block of sharp cheddar cheese (if you know me at all you know how obsessed i am with cheese...thats my true wisconsinite coming out...and ive been thouroghly dissappointed with most dairy products here specifically the cheese, so it was a huge excellent surprise!) and a wine cooler. i took one sip of and set it on my desk where it sat for like 3 days until i finally threw it out, lol... then in the morning i got up and had frosted flakes (a huge treat cuz we´ve never had frosted flakes in the house since we´ve been here, only regular corn flakes) and a few bites of cake...basically the perfect birthday breakfast filled with tooth-rotting sugar. then i chilled at the house with people preping for a debate that we were going to have in spanish class. then we all went to class and had a debate about globalization, capitolism, privatization and such (quite heavy topics if i do say so myself) after which we went back home to eat a delicious lunch. then i hung out with people all afternoon since i finished my philosophy paper the night before so i wouldnt have to do homework on my birthday. i went to this massage place thats sort of near our house with my friend christine because our theo teacher told us about this place that had hour long 2 for 1 massages for $10 each so we were going to do it. they didnt have any openings that day so we signed up to do it the following tues (which is tomorrow! and we´re super pumped). i´ve never gotten one before so its gonna be my birthday present to myself, wooo whoooo.
on thurs. i had lunch with Trena (one of the people who runs our program) and then she had to go pick up her girls from school so i got to see their international school. the girls were super excited to see a student with their mom and they showed me all around their school and classrooms. Trena said they learn everything in spanish first and then english... what an awesome opportunity for their kids.
friday was Matt´s birthday and we took the famous casa picture at 6am (no thats not a typo...that was just thoe only time everyone in the program could be there, lol) which is now up on the casa website. one with the whole program http://cms.scu.edu/studyabroad/casa/ and the other with just the students from the US http://cms.scu.edu/studyabroad/casa/students/index.cfm check them out if you´d like! for dinner we went over to casa clara (one of the other houses in the program) and we shared a meal and then Mark (a Jesuit, our philosophy professor, and my spiritual director for the semester) shared his life story with us which was so awesome. we´ve been asking him to tell us about his life since pretty much the first day...idk why but we have this strange fascination with his life...and after hearing his story, we had every right to.
saturday my praxis partner (katie) and i decided to go on an adventure to Suchitoto where our theology teacher Sister Peggy lives. it started out fine until we got on the right bus but it was going the wrong direction... we decided to just wait it out and ended up riding the entire 42A route, haha. oops. when we finally got there we ate lunch at this sweet place that had a ton of artifacts from the war. then we went on a mission to find Peggy and we just started asking people in the town where she was since everyone knows her. she has this peace art center that shes working on right now which we toured around when we found her. its not done yet but its a beautiful building and the plans she was telling us that she has for it sounds so excellent. she showed us around town and then we went and chilled at her house for a while.
today at praxis, my class (well more so the teachers of my class since the kids are only 1 and 2, haha) surprised me with a little birthday celebration. they had a cake and all sang to me, it was so cute. then the teachers kept asking the kids, whose birthday are we celebrating and they would all respond MEEEE (meaning themselves, not actually me, haha) then we all ate the delicious cake and they pretty much stuffed their chubby little faces. there was frosting and slobber everywhere, it was really funny.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
well thats a special talent....
a few updates from a crazy week:
- monday i felt my first legit earthquake ever. it was mas o menos 5pm and my friend Karina and i were sitting in the living room chatting when all of a sudden my chair started to shake a bit. my first thoughts were...who is playing loud music with heavy bass...but then i realized that i didnt hear music and the floor and house were also moving and it kept increasing. karina kind of yelped and we looked at each other like...what the hell do we do? bahhhhh, no thoughts, earthquake, no thoughts, bahhhh was pretty much the irrational sequence of thoughts running through my head and i even started laughing a bit cuz i was so thrown off and then she grabbed my hand and we headed for the door to go to the backyard but by the time we got there it had passed but it was pretty nuts. no damage was done, thankfully. it was pretty sweet. (ps i also heard that St. Louis had an earthquake this week...what? thats just crazy talk...so sorry i missed it)
- friday we had a talent show which we have been saying that we were going to do for the last like 2 months but of course no one started preparing until this week. ill give you a quick overview of the various acts we were graced with: marybeth and emory did an indigo girls duet (because they secretly...not so secretly...want to be the indigo girls), casa ita did 2 skits where one person would lay flat on their back on the ground and the other person would sit on top of them with their legs covered by a sheet so it looked like the persons legs laying down were the person sittings legs, felipe and austin did a scene from anchorman (the one where will ferrel is playing the flute in the bar, "totally unprepared"), 6 of the casa romero girls did an irish dance (2 of them, who taught the other 4, did irish dancing for like 10 years), casa silvia (my house) did the dance scene from little miss sunshine (which we first started practicing 45 minutes before the show started and Andy played Olive, the little girl...we were pretty much peeing our pants), a few people did "the cup game" but they added other sweet steps to it, i actually sang "stand by me," acapella which was supposed to be a duet with my friend matt but he wasnt feeling well so i did it solo with Tam and Andy doing the beat in the background (i was so scared i thought i was gonna hurl before hand, haha, i very very rarely sing in front of people and even more rarely do i sing solo...pretty much almost never. i have a ton of pena(nervousness/embarrassment) but i got through it!), and casa romero did a dance extravaganza to the song "lady marmalade" for the finale. basically it was a sweet show, wildly entertaining and my abs hurt afterward from laughing so much.
- yesterday we climbed a volcano which was definitely one of the most intense things i've ever done in my life. i knew i was out of shape but damn, i thought i was gonna die by the end. the hard thing was that we didnt just climb up and down the volcano...oh no, we had to climb a hour down a mountainside to get to the bottom of the volcano, then climb up the volcano which was so steep i literally was on my hands and knees crawling at some points, then climb back down (which was definitely my favorite part because it wasnt really climbing so much as sliding down the side of the volcano along with the volcanic rocks hoping to god you didnt slip and fall forward) and then climb back up the mountainside to where we started from. i was tired but doing fine until we had to climb the last leg back up the mountain. by then everyone's legs were feelin a bit like jello, it was super tough. standing at the top of the volcano though was so incredible, we could see for miles and miles! definitely worth all the hardwork. want an intense workout too. when we got to the top of the mountain we all scarfed down lunch. i ate so fast my tummy hurt...oops. we had apples, juice, and sandwiches with white bread rolls and molidos (delicious salvadoran refried beans), avocados, and cheese. a sandwich that in most other parts of the world would not fly, but here they eat beans with everything and im not gonna lie, it was like the best tasting sandwich ever...probably partially due to the fact that my stomach was eating itself after the vigorous workout i had just pushed it through...im fairly confident that had i eaten tree bark at that time it probably would have tasted like a delicious granola bar or something. nevertheless, i would definitely try making the sandwich again (maybe with the addition of tomatoes...) and the hike up the volcano/mountain was more excellent than i ever expected.
- monday i felt my first legit earthquake ever. it was mas o menos 5pm and my friend Karina and i were sitting in the living room chatting when all of a sudden my chair started to shake a bit. my first thoughts were...who is playing loud music with heavy bass...but then i realized that i didnt hear music and the floor and house were also moving and it kept increasing. karina kind of yelped and we looked at each other like...what the hell do we do? bahhhhh, no thoughts, earthquake, no thoughts, bahhhh was pretty much the irrational sequence of thoughts running through my head and i even started laughing a bit cuz i was so thrown off and then she grabbed my hand and we headed for the door to go to the backyard but by the time we got there it had passed but it was pretty nuts. no damage was done, thankfully. it was pretty sweet. (ps i also heard that St. Louis had an earthquake this week...what? thats just crazy talk...so sorry i missed it)
- friday we had a talent show which we have been saying that we were going to do for the last like 2 months but of course no one started preparing until this week. ill give you a quick overview of the various acts we were graced with: marybeth and emory did an indigo girls duet (because they secretly...not so secretly...want to be the indigo girls), casa ita did 2 skits where one person would lay flat on their back on the ground and the other person would sit on top of them with their legs covered by a sheet so it looked like the persons legs laying down were the person sittings legs, felipe and austin did a scene from anchorman (the one where will ferrel is playing the flute in the bar, "totally unprepared"), 6 of the casa romero girls did an irish dance (2 of them, who taught the other 4, did irish dancing for like 10 years), casa silvia (my house) did the dance scene from little miss sunshine (which we first started practicing 45 minutes before the show started and Andy played Olive, the little girl...we were pretty much peeing our pants), a few people did "the cup game" but they added other sweet steps to it, i actually sang "stand by me," acapella which was supposed to be a duet with my friend matt but he wasnt feeling well so i did it solo with Tam and Andy doing the beat in the background (i was so scared i thought i was gonna hurl before hand, haha, i very very rarely sing in front of people and even more rarely do i sing solo...pretty much almost never. i have a ton of pena(nervousness/embarrassment) but i got through it!), and casa romero did a dance extravaganza to the song "lady marmalade" for the finale. basically it was a sweet show, wildly entertaining and my abs hurt afterward from laughing so much.
- yesterday we climbed a volcano which was definitely one of the most intense things i've ever done in my life. i knew i was out of shape but damn, i thought i was gonna die by the end. the hard thing was that we didnt just climb up and down the volcano...oh no, we had to climb a hour down a mountainside to get to the bottom of the volcano, then climb up the volcano which was so steep i literally was on my hands and knees crawling at some points, then climb back down (which was definitely my favorite part because it wasnt really climbing so much as sliding down the side of the volcano along with the volcanic rocks hoping to god you didnt slip and fall forward) and then climb back up the mountainside to where we started from. i was tired but doing fine until we had to climb the last leg back up the mountain. by then everyone's legs were feelin a bit like jello, it was super tough. standing at the top of the volcano though was so incredible, we could see for miles and miles! definitely worth all the hardwork. want an intense workout too. when we got to the top of the mountain we all scarfed down lunch. i ate so fast my tummy hurt...oops. we had apples, juice, and sandwiches with white bread rolls and molidos (delicious salvadoran refried beans), avocados, and cheese. a sandwich that in most other parts of the world would not fly, but here they eat beans with everything and im not gonna lie, it was like the best tasting sandwich ever...probably partially due to the fact that my stomach was eating itself after the vigorous workout i had just pushed it through...im fairly confident that had i eaten tree bark at that time it probably would have tasted like a delicious granola bar or something. nevertheless, i would definitely try making the sandwich again (maybe with the addition of tomatoes...) and the hike up the volcano/mountain was more excellent than i ever expected.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
so i know thats its been a while....
so i have been really bad at updating this the last couple weeks but we had parents weekend (which my mom, dad, grandma and grandpa came) and then we just had spring break. so i'll give a little overview of what ive been up to lately:
- parents weekend: it was really awesome to have some of my family come see for themselves a bit of what im doing here. it was information and activity packed, im sure they were exhausted after the 6 or so days they spent here. they arrived on thursday, just in time for pupusas. then friday we went to the UCA, a couple classes (they got to experience sister peggy and gene for those of you casa alums, haha). they came on a great weekend too because it was all the romero celebrations. on saturday we went to the romero march in the city center and then mass at the cathedral with all the masses of people. it was a pretty incredible thing for me to experience and even thought none of them speak spanish, just being in the presence of the march and the people was really powerful i think. sunday we went to the beach which was beautiful and very relaxing. the place we went to had a big water slide too which was super fun too. then monday my parents and grandparents came to San Ramon with me for praxis. in the morning we were at Centro Hogar playing and using their last bits of energy with all my little kiddies. then we went to the Soya for lunch and they met all the ladies at the soy project. then we went to Anita's house (where they do the celebration of the word and where the co-op is) and first we did some serious shopping in the co-op which was great because my family loves shopping and the co-op has seriously beautiful things, plus it was nice to support the co-op. then they came with Katy (my praxis partner) and i on a couple home visits. they learned a ton more about the history of the community of San Ramon and the celebration of the word. it was nice to have them there asking a lot of the questions because although Katy and i knew a lot of the answers to the initial questions they were asking, it always seemed to lead into deeper things that we wouldnt necessarily think to ask about, so we learned a lot from those home visits too. then they left on tuesday morning and returned to the states. it was a short trip but a good one, i hope they enjoyed it!
- i just got back from spring break yesterday which was incredible...and thats not doing the experience justice. a few friends and i (my 2 roommates Tamara and Karina and our "fourth roommate" Andy) adventured through guatemala and belize over the last week. it took us essentially 2.5 days to travel through guatemala up to Caye Caulker (pronounced "key") which is a small insanely beautiful and chill island off the coast of belize. we got there by bus and boat, which was sweet but also allowed for the creation of some insane stories along the way. we stayed for a night in Antigua, Guate which was really fun. its a really cute internationally influenced (and pretty touristy) city with tons of artesian crafts and cute shops all over so we did a bit of shopping. then we spent a night in Dangriga, Belize which was this crazy little carribean town. it was pretty weird because they speak english in Belize so for the first like 2 days of the journey i was like tripping out and kept talking to people in spanish...oops. then we got to Belize City on monday midmorning to take the boat to the caye and actually met up with the other group of 4 from the casa that we were planning to meet in the caye. we traveled in 2 groups just to split up a bit for safety and convenience purposes which was a good idea but it was really fun to all be together on the caye. we chilled the first day but the second day we were there we went on a day long snorkeling sailboat trip which was incredible. and since we had a big group we got a discount. there was the 8 of us from the casa plus then the other group of 4 met these 2 girls from Finland actually on their way here so they kind of became part of our group so we had 10 people total and it ended up being like $43 (in US dollars) for the trip per person. it was from 10:30am until 5pm and included all the equipment we needed to snorkel, plus lunch, water and fruit the whole day, a pre-dinner snack and rum punch while we sailed back to shore, and a guided snorkeling tour through 3 spots for like an hour each. not to mention that the barrier reef that we were snorkeling in is the 2nd largest in the world. basically it was one of the sweetest things ive ever done. we were swimming with sharks, barracudas, turtles, eels, a billion different kinds of fishes, not to mention the incredible reef itself. absolutely worth it. we couldnt believe how cheap it was. the next day we just chilled and soaked up the sun at this beach on the island called "the split". our hostel was right on the beach, white sand, palm trees, hammocks, the whole deal...pretty ridiculous. everybody that was staying at our hostel was awesome too, its been really fun talking
to everyone and hearing their stories. then thursday we left about midday for punta gorda, spent the night there and then left on a boat for a town called Livingston in guate because we heard from a woman at our hostel in caye caulker that we could take a boat from there up the rio dulce which went through like the jungle of guate to a port town that we could take a bus from there to guatemala city. we chartered a boat for pretty cheap to take us through the jungle and we stopped at these hot springs and caves for a while. then when we got to the port city we got on a bus to guate city which was supposed to be like a 5 or 6 hour ride but it ended up taking like 7 to 8 hours because the bus broke down on the side of the highway like 20 minutes outside of the city. we stood on the side of the road in the dark for like 45 minutes with all of our stuff until another bus picked us up to take us the rest of the way. then we got into guate city at like 10pm and found this little crappy hostel across the street from the bus station for $4 a person and just crashed there cuz we were so tired. then we got up in the morning and took a bus back home to salvador. theres sooo much more stuff that happened in between all that, but thats the rough overview of our adventures. if youre ever in Belize, definitely make it over to the Caye's if you get a chance, it was incredible. i could have hung out there for another 3 weeks and been totally fine.
- parents weekend: it was really awesome to have some of my family come see for themselves a bit of what im doing here. it was information and activity packed, im sure they were exhausted after the 6 or so days they spent here. they arrived on thursday, just in time for pupusas. then friday we went to the UCA, a couple classes (they got to experience sister peggy and gene for those of you casa alums, haha). they came on a great weekend too because it was all the romero celebrations. on saturday we went to the romero march in the city center and then mass at the cathedral with all the masses of people. it was a pretty incredible thing for me to experience and even thought none of them speak spanish, just being in the presence of the march and the people was really powerful i think. sunday we went to the beach which was beautiful and very relaxing. the place we went to had a big water slide too which was super fun too. then monday my parents and grandparents came to San Ramon with me for praxis. in the morning we were at Centro Hogar playing and using their last bits of energy with all my little kiddies. then we went to the Soya for lunch and they met all the ladies at the soy project. then we went to Anita's house (where they do the celebration of the word and where the co-op is) and first we did some serious shopping in the co-op which was great because my family loves shopping and the co-op has seriously beautiful things, plus it was nice to support the co-op. then they came with Katy (my praxis partner) and i on a couple home visits. they learned a ton more about the history of the community of San Ramon and the celebration of the word. it was nice to have them there asking a lot of the questions because although Katy and i knew a lot of the answers to the initial questions they were asking, it always seemed to lead into deeper things that we wouldnt necessarily think to ask about, so we learned a lot from those home visits too. then they left on tuesday morning and returned to the states. it was a short trip but a good one, i hope they enjoyed it!
- i just got back from spring break yesterday which was incredible...and thats not doing the experience justice. a few friends and i (my 2 roommates Tamara and Karina and our "fourth roommate" Andy) adventured through guatemala and belize over the last week. it took us essentially 2.5 days to travel through guatemala up to Caye Caulker (pronounced "key") which is a small insanely beautiful and chill island off the coast of belize. we got there by bus and boat, which was sweet but also allowed for the creation of some insane stories along the way. we stayed for a night in Antigua, Guate which was really fun. its a really cute internationally influenced (and pretty touristy) city with tons of artesian crafts and cute shops all over so we did a bit of shopping. then we spent a night in Dangriga, Belize which was this crazy little carribean town. it was pretty weird because they speak english in Belize so for the first like 2 days of the journey i was like tripping out and kept talking to people in spanish...oops. then we got to Belize City on monday midmorning to take the boat to the caye and actually met up with the other group of 4 from the casa that we were planning to meet in the caye. we traveled in 2 groups just to split up a bit for safety and convenience purposes which was a good idea but it was really fun to all be together on the caye. we chilled the first day but the second day we were there we went on a day long snorkeling sailboat trip which was incredible. and since we had a big group we got a discount. there was the 8 of us from the casa plus then the other group of 4 met these 2 girls from Finland actually on their way here so they kind of became part of our group so we had 10 people total and it ended up being like $43 (in US dollars) for the trip per person. it was from 10:30am until 5pm and included all the equipment we needed to snorkel, plus lunch, water and fruit the whole day, a pre-dinner snack and rum punch while we sailed back to shore, and a guided snorkeling tour through 3 spots for like an hour each. not to mention that the barrier reef that we were snorkeling in is the 2nd largest in the world. basically it was one of the sweetest things ive ever done. we were swimming with sharks, barracudas, turtles, eels, a billion different kinds of fishes, not to mention the incredible reef itself. absolutely worth it. we couldnt believe how cheap it was. the next day we just chilled and soaked up the sun at this beach on the island called "the split". our hostel was right on the beach, white sand, palm trees, hammocks, the whole deal...pretty ridiculous. everybody that was staying at our hostel was awesome too, its been really fun talking
to everyone and hearing their stories. then thursday we left about midday for punta gorda, spent the night there and then left on a boat for a town called Livingston in guate because we heard from a woman at our hostel in caye caulker that we could take a boat from there up the rio dulce which went through like the jungle of guate to a port town that we could take a bus from there to guatemala city. we chartered a boat for pretty cheap to take us through the jungle and we stopped at these hot springs and caves for a while. then when we got to the port city we got on a bus to guate city which was supposed to be like a 5 or 6 hour ride but it ended up taking like 7 to 8 hours because the bus broke down on the side of the highway like 20 minutes outside of the city. we stood on the side of the road in the dark for like 45 minutes with all of our stuff until another bus picked us up to take us the rest of the way. then we got into guate city at like 10pm and found this little crappy hostel across the street from the bus station for $4 a person and just crashed there cuz we were so tired. then we got up in the morning and took a bus back home to salvador. theres sooo much more stuff that happened in between all that, but thats the rough overview of our adventures. if youre ever in Belize, definitely make it over to the Caye's if you get a chance, it was incredible. i could have hung out there for another 3 weeks and been totally fine.
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