Mom and Dad's visit! Photos from hiking around El Carrizal, to my highly technical composting charla, to building a stove in Aaron´s site and dinner at Don Ismael, the school director's house. And our trip to the lovely Suchitoto!

More pics snatched from Am and Jay's collection!

Visitors!!

March was the month of visitors! Mom and Dad just left after spending a week in El Salvador, mostly at the lovely San Jose Carrizal. In the short time they were here, they watched the construction of a serious compost pit, hiked around my host fathers piñal (pineapple farm), visited half my neighbors, watched the construction of a cocina finlandia (fuel-efficient stove), took a short vacation in Suchitoto, talked global politics with my San Vicente family, visited a cooperative farm with a massive Talapia piscina, and were generally inundated with fresh fruits and veggies, mangoes, mamees, platanos, avacadoes and oranges; papaya and pineapples and countless hugs. All in all, a pretty amazing week.

Amanda and Jay were here just the week before. The first day they arrived we cargo-trucked it with my neighbor, Petrona and Fatima's family, to a oceanside water park for the day, and then dropped them at a beach resort. A few days later, I picked them up, took some surfing lessons and headed back to El Carrizal in time for the grande finale of the fiestas, an all night dance and a massive firework display. We then took off for my first week as a tourist here, to see the views from Puerto El Diablo, climb Volcan Izalco and snorkel the coral pools in Cobanos, a tiny beach town in the West.

Finally putting up pictures...and getting back to work!

Full Moon Hike!

Pictures from a night hike in the hills above Apaneca, a tourist town in Western El Salvador. We built a fire, made smores and listened to bluegrass music and and it was gorgeous. All of it.

Caminata Chanjoute!

Campaña de Reciclaje

Wrapping up the recycling campaign (aka campaign: remove all plastic bottles from local roads and terrenos!) and the alumnos increibles from Centro Escolar Carrizal have collected a whopping 16,000 plus bottles even travelling to neighboring villages to cargar back massive sackfuls. Ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was the half school day spent crushing bottles mosh pit style, the visit from the mayor in the afternoon and the other half-day spent counting each individual bottle to determine the winning grades. There's a chance we could make upwards of $100 from the bottles alone, which would be amazing. But so is having a slightly cleaner canton, and 350 students in the habit of snatching every bottle off the roads, ditches and homes.

Breakdancing tailler in northern Chaletenango

Painting the Casa Comunal with the youth group! We had originally planned to paint the inside first in white and blue, but the mayor's office decided to take back the paint they had donated to touch up the town for the fiestas patronales. And the family that is in charge of the key was out of town for the day. So we painted half the comunal and all of the outside of the health center white and are waiting on the rest of the paint... On the upside, we had a pretty good time. And soon enough the CC will look amazing.

Group shots