Noviembre

It's November! The rain has turned off like a faucet. Parent conferences went well last month, and we're already nearing another round of progress reports. My class is trucking right along. We've even got centers set up! On Thursday, I shared a little bit about Mexican Día de los Muertos celebrations that we have many of in Texas, and I brought them some sugar skulls to color - they loved them!

We finally got our first day off last Friday for Día de los Difuntos. Some of my friends and I went to Parque Nacional El Imposible (there used to be a pass that was near impossible to cross until they built a bridge). We rented a pickup and somehow managed to miss the correct highway and go in a big triangle instead of a straight line on the way there...the good thing is that El Salvador is so small that it didn't really send us too far out of the way. It was a good idea to get a truck - going anywhere in ES is pretty risky when you're not sure if the roads will be paved or not (they're usually not). We also had a fun surprise when we turned on the CD that was in the stereo: a random mix of 80s and 90s, heavy on the Air Supply.

We stayed here for the weekend, and it was awesome. All the food at the restaurant was made to order from scratch, so it took a while to get fed but was sooo worth it. We usually took a deck of cards with us and just played games while we waited. The day after we got there, we walked about 1/2 a mile to the entrance of the national park and hired a guide for the day (you can pay them whatever you want - there were 4 of us, and we paid $10, which is pretty good). We hiked about 8 km round trip: first up to a mirador to see the tree tops, then alllll the way down to a swimming hole to eat lunch, then back up again to the park entrance. It was a pretty steep hike, but well worth it.

That evening, we ate dinner at the hostel and asked if there was any place to make a campfire. The hostel employee shrugged, looked around our cabin, and pointed to a spot in the dirt among a lot of foliage. Ha! Smoky the Bear would not approve! We made it anyway, and managed to avoid burning down the whole park. Hot dogs, s'mores minus the graham crackers, and quite a lot of beer were consumed.

We woke up to a wonderful, homemade breakfast at the restaurant, took a picture with our awesome truck, and headed home to see Skyfall (IT'S ALREADY OUT DOWN HERE, SUCKAHS). Great weekend! Just two more full weeks of school, then it's time to celebrate Turkey Day Salvadoran style (at the beach).

Y'all go vote tomorrow.