Escuela

This is my Spanish teacher Magda and the school's assistant Lidia. Magda is the granddaughter of Guillermo Flores Avendaño, a former Guatemalan president who served for 6 months before being ousted. She's got 22 years of teaching experience but only makes 15 Quetzales an hour. That's about 2 dollars. We went on a trip to around the city today and we swung by the farmacy so she could pick up her medication but couldn't afford it because the owner is running late and hasn't paid her. I bought it for her, it only cost $5.

Antigua, Guatemala

There happened to be a cheap shuttle from my hotel to Antigua so I cut my time in El Salvador short and headed north. I sat up front and got my first taste of Guatemalan culture talking to the driver. They speak amazingly clearly here (possibly my favorite thing about the country) but they are always kidding around, so much so that frequently I can't tell when people are serious and when they're just joking. I've even heard they'll actually promise to meet you somewhere, expecting you to know they're not coming.

Anyway, it turns out that this town is one of the best places in the world to study Spanish, so in a last ditch effort to get fully fluent I'm taking classes. I'm staying just a few blocks away from Iglesia La Merced (pictured right) in a pensión run by a sweet little lady named Yolanda. It's mostly full of high school aged girls going to a fancy preparatoria on government scholarship but there are a couple other gringo students as well. I can feel the wanderlust starting to burble up as I hang around one town not really doing much traveling but I think it's worth it to spend my last few days here doing something constructive, especially since this town is world renowned for language and isn't bankbreakingly expensive either.

Salvadoran Surfing

El Salvador is famous for more than just bloody civil war and gang violence. Most notably the surfing here is legendary. La Punta Roca just outside La Libertad is often hailed as the best waves in Central America. And of course, with the mad skilz I picked up from my one attempt on a gentle beach break in Panama, I was there. Though I asked around to find the gentlest surf on the coast I still got my ass handed to me, pounded repeatedly by waves much taller than myself.

Luckily that night a big storm brought weaker surf and less crowds (though notably dirtier water), and the next day I was able to catch a single wave and a massive sunburn. I also chatted up a local with a delightfully clear accent who hacked open a fresh coconut with a machete for me---no idea how I avoided trying one sooner, having been in palm tree land so long.

Gang Problems

El Salvador has a huge problem with gang violence. You see, after the war a lot of Salvadorans started emigrating to other countries for work. Guatemalans often jest that there are Salvadoran prostitutes all over the world (Guatemala and El Salvador don't get along very well) although of course Salvadoran migrant workers do a lot more than that. They're remesas (money sent home from abroad) are also responsible for a booming economy. Unfortunately, they also sent home Los Angeles crime. The already established Mexican gangs kept harassing the Salvadoran migrant workers, that is until they formed the MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha.

Now possibly the most brutal gang in the United States, Mara is allegedly composed of 10,000 members, primarily from the CA-4 region. The Salvadoran government campaigns against them---in fact the current president was elected on the campain slogan "Super Mano Dura", or super hard hand, a follow up to the failed "Mano Dura" campaign. However the legal system is still very third world here and convictions are rare. This frustrates the public and now police arrest people just for having tattoos and baggy pants. They don't stay locked up for long though, and the cycle leads to more people interested in joining the MS.

King Lear in Spanish

My favorite thing about Central American capitals is that they've got some culture. I never see proper theaters anywhere else. So of couse I was stoked to find a production of King Lear, and in Spanish no less, conveniently located in a mall (why would you put a theater in a mall?) just a five minute walk outside my guesthouse and in a non-sketchy area I could actually walk safely to and from at night---there aren't many such places in San Salvador, this is MS-13 home turf. Unfortunately my Spanish is worse than my Middle English so I didn't get a lot of the dialogue but I was still able to tell that there is definitely some talent in this country.

Feria Internacional

San Salvador's international fair is nothing to shake a stick at. I was surprised but they've got the works, from fantastic and overpriced fair food to terrible cheesy looking rides. They even had a marching band accompanied by baton twirling models which navigated its way throughout the entire fairground.

However there were definitely some notable differences between this and the fairs I've been to back home, and not just because they've got delicious churros instead of that funnel cake cardboard I'm used to. For example, why are these people dressed up as crazy monsters and dancing terribly? They weren't even that bad compared to the marauding clowns who appeared to be random strangers with no apparent clown training, trying to hustle people into artisan shops. Also, why is there a boxing ring in the middle of a furniture store with a singer accompanied by two scantily clad women and a giant inflatable-chicken-suited man?

Dope Architecture

I'm actually rather surprised but I'm still not sick of cool looking churches, but I'm not. San Salvador has some really big ones, too. Unfortunately my favorite, Iglesia El Rosario, is really ugly on the outside, and you can't take pictures from inside. Well, maybe you can but I was getting too many where-did-this-gringo-come-from stares to do it discretely and I didn't want to offend. Anyway, it's got huge stained glass walls and lots of scrap metal in a very non-churchy way. It also had these cool statues hiding out front behind the trees.