Fourteen Weddings

We’ll get to the wedding part, first…why haven’t I been posting more frequently? Well, We have been moving around a lot, and that might be part of it. I think that the bigger thing is that we have now been in country for nine months, in our site for 6 months, and things just don’t stand out the same way they did earlier. Our days are still full of stuff, but most of it is seeming more normal now, so the inspiration to write about them has lessened. None the less, there are good things to share, I just have to work on the writing them down part.

So I’ll start with the fact that we took our first weekend away from our site to go visit another part of the country. By saying that, I have to admit that I don’t count our trips to the capitol, or the time we went back to San Vicente for training. We decided to go to Apaneca, which is actually where I went for immersion days (see previous post), it also is the site of another volunteer, Laura, who’s site is linked on the left there. The area there is also up in the mountains, cooler, a lot like our site as far as climate. It is also completely different for historical reasons. Apaneca is part of the coffee production region of El Salvador. This has quite an impact on the social structure there. It is almost all larger landholdings, owned by “rich” people. The rest of the folks that live there just support the coffee industry and now tourism. In contrast our site is all fairly small land holdings, most 2 acres or less.

Anyway, we went there for a nice escape as well as to see if there were some things we could learn from that area, that would apply to our site as well. We had a great time looking around, eating good food, and even seeing a waterfall or to. Our more random day was where we meet up with a friend from my previous visit, Don Jaime. He is a great guy, to the point of almost being over helpful. He gave us a breakfast, we'd already had one, but that didn't matter! He took us to lots of the vivieros in the area to look at plant and worm projects. We also through him ended up attending a meeting for the local police and listening to the problems of various folks. this resulted in him sending us off with a woman that was there, to give us a ride back to San Salvador that afternoon, no bus for us! She took us to the site of the waterfall, on her property, near her restaurant...and of course fed us lunch! We had a comfortable ride back to San Sal, arriving fairly late, and driven straight to our hotel. All in all a good weekend and some new ideas for our community as well.

Now, back to the wedding stuff. So, we only found out about it a day before... mostly because everyone in the community knows, so they assume you know, and therefore, don't make any special mention of it! Anyway, we went to the church, early in the morning in the back of a pickup. The wedding was in a community that was about 7 km away. The Padre makes the rounds of all the churchs in the area, and he was here this Sunday. It wasn't until we had arrived, that we found out it was a big group service for 14 couples!! Big day! Lucky for us, they did most of the service as a group... only the vows were individual.

After, we went back to our community and attended the reception. Good stuff, lots of fun photo ops. Putting up here a few. Next week or so I hope to have a more thought up blog enrty, lots of stuff to share, just have been very busy and not in the mood to spend the time thinking and writing. Cheers for now!