All of November
Well, I’m well overdue for a good blog update. Why has it taken so long? It’s the usual answer for this stuff, we have been busy. We had wedding, our local school’s graduation, followed by the insituto (high school) graduation, then Thanksgiving, followed by a big wedding up here, along with a surprise visit from our family from San Vicente, then our mid-year medical exam, the graduation of the newest set of volunteers… and finally an environmental camp across the country in Perquin.
November was a busy month! Probably the busiest since we have been here. Since I really can’t go into tons of detail about all of the things, this is going to be more of a photo update type of blog. Because of the way Blogger can be kind of a pain about inserting captions under photos… just arranging the photos in general is kind of a pain. Instead I will just talk about a little bit of everything I have photos of, and the photos will appear below all of this words, in the rough order that I talk about them in.
First stuff was a wedding at the Evangelical Church here. We got an official invitation, so we pretty much had to go. Plus, my video camera was being used to tape the thing…though for this one I didn’t have to run it. It seemed like this wedding was pretty fancy, lots of dresses and outfits specifically made for the wedding, ect… It was a guy from way across the river (in Honduras) marrying a local girl here. Both families were well enough off that it was an expensive affair. They even fed everyone carne (not chicken, the cheaper meat) for the lunch afterwards! I talked to the groom for a while before the wedding, her probably wondered why this gringo was at his wedding! Anyway, he was part of a coffee cooperative, and work with “fair trade” and “organic” label buyers.
The next thing on our agenda was our local school graduation. Katie was the official photographer, and I had to be on the panel to hand out diplomas. It was an interesting mark in our year of service…basically the first real community event we ever participated in up here was last years graduation. Plus the knowledge now that we probably won’t be around for next years graduation… Anyway, we only had two kids who graduated from 9th grade, that’s them with Katie in the photos below. Then we had a ton of kids that were graduating from Kinder or Parvularia. So lots of young kids all dressed up trying to follow directions and being told to pay attention to a very boring cultural ritual… All graduations have long speeches…usually way too much about god for our taste.
After that graduation, we hadn’t had enough of long boring speeches, or god, so we went to the Instituto graduation over in Las Pilas. We knew quite a few of the kids that were graduating, my counterparts oldest son was one of them. Again we took photos, and even video of the big event. It is really a big event though, getting your Bachillerato (more or less high school diploma) is about like getting your college degree back home, rare enough to be worth something, and most of the parents never got them, so they are very proud.
Then came Thanksgiving! We were invited to attend a more typical American Thanksgiving at an embassy worker families house. It is a really really nice thing that the folks from the embassy do for the PC volunteers! It was great fun, and we met a really nice couple that couple that put us up for two nights, saving us lots of expenses in San Sal. She had just started her first tour as a Foreign Service Officer…she had lots of interesting things to say about the work. More interesting than I had thought. The event itself had plenty of great food, turkey, cranberry, pumpkin pie… everything that you need. Good fun.
Then it was back up to El Centro so that we could be at the biggest wedding of the year, some claimed for over a decade. It was a teacher that was one of our first friends here. Katie had really hit it off with her. Of course, she is marrying a “Salvie” (San Salvadorean in PC speak), so she will now be moving away, down to San Salvador which means our school lost one of it’s better teachers, and we lost a friend. Still the wedding was something to see. It had the whole promenade walking through town to the church, the whole town joining into the walk. I don’t think a single person from the town didn’t attend. I do know they served over one thousand people lunch!
That’s the last thing I have photos of, but after that we did head back to San Sal for our mid-service medical exam (we are both apparently ok!), and more importantly, the swearing in party for the newest volunteers. This is the group that we knew better than any of the in-between ones, because we participated in their training, and met them many more times.
Ok, so that wraps up November…and hey…if this gets posted today..well, it’s not January yet. I promise to try to be a bit more frequent. One reason I haven’t been as into writing blogs is that I have been practicing writing fiction…and that takes up my morning writing time… anyway, I believe this will be followed on the same day by a post of December, the month of camps! Cheers!
November was a busy month! Probably the busiest since we have been here. Since I really can’t go into tons of detail about all of the things, this is going to be more of a photo update type of blog. Because of the way Blogger can be kind of a pain about inserting captions under photos… just arranging the photos in general is kind of a pain. Instead I will just talk about a little bit of everything I have photos of, and the photos will appear below all of this words, in the rough order that I talk about them in.
First stuff was a wedding at the Evangelical Church here. We got an official invitation, so we pretty much had to go. Plus, my video camera was being used to tape the thing…though for this one I didn’t have to run it. It seemed like this wedding was pretty fancy, lots of dresses and outfits specifically made for the wedding, ect… It was a guy from way across the river (in Honduras) marrying a local girl here. Both families were well enough off that it was an expensive affair. They even fed everyone carne (not chicken, the cheaper meat) for the lunch afterwards! I talked to the groom for a while before the wedding, her probably wondered why this gringo was at his wedding! Anyway, he was part of a coffee cooperative, and work with “fair trade” and “organic” label buyers.
The next thing on our agenda was our local school graduation. Katie was the official photographer, and I had to be on the panel to hand out diplomas. It was an interesting mark in our year of service…basically the first real community event we ever participated in up here was last years graduation. Plus the knowledge now that we probably won’t be around for next years graduation… Anyway, we only had two kids who graduated from 9th grade, that’s them with Katie in the photos below. Then we had a ton of kids that were graduating from Kinder or Parvularia. So lots of young kids all dressed up trying to follow directions and being told to pay attention to a very boring cultural ritual… All graduations have long speeches…usually way too much about god for our taste.
After that graduation, we hadn’t had enough of long boring speeches, or god, so we went to the Instituto graduation over in Las Pilas. We knew quite a few of the kids that were graduating, my counterparts oldest son was one of them. Again we took photos, and even video of the big event. It is really a big event though, getting your Bachillerato (more or less high school diploma) is about like getting your college degree back home, rare enough to be worth something, and most of the parents never got them, so they are very proud.
Then came Thanksgiving! We were invited to attend a more typical American Thanksgiving at an embassy worker families house. It is a really really nice thing that the folks from the embassy do for the PC volunteers! It was great fun, and we met a really nice couple that couple that put us up for two nights, saving us lots of expenses in San Sal. She had just started her first tour as a Foreign Service Officer…she had lots of interesting things to say about the work. More interesting than I had thought. The event itself had plenty of great food, turkey, cranberry, pumpkin pie… everything that you need. Good fun.
Then it was back up to El Centro so that we could be at the biggest wedding of the year, some claimed for over a decade. It was a teacher that was one of our first friends here. Katie had really hit it off with her. Of course, she is marrying a “Salvie” (San Salvadorean in PC speak), so she will now be moving away, down to San Salvador which means our school lost one of it’s better teachers, and we lost a friend. Still the wedding was something to see. It had the whole promenade walking through town to the church, the whole town joining into the walk. I don’t think a single person from the town didn’t attend. I do know they served over one thousand people lunch!
That’s the last thing I have photos of, but after that we did head back to San Sal for our mid-service medical exam (we are both apparently ok!), and more importantly, the swearing in party for the newest volunteers. This is the group that we knew better than any of the in-between ones, because we participated in their training, and met them many more times.
Ok, so that wraps up November…and hey…if this gets posted today..well, it’s not January yet. I promise to try to be a bit more frequent. One reason I haven’t been as into writing blogs is that I have been practicing writing fiction…and that takes up my morning writing time… anyway, I believe this will be followed on the same day by a post of December, the month of camps! Cheers!
posted by Jon & Katie | 8:33 AM
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