Nacho Libre, Jauyua, and adventures in the back of the truck

Ok so this is going to be a random blog post but we thought it was time to throw some more pictures up here of our fun adventures. Don´t worry we are also working very hard! We just also know how to play hard.

This is us first wave girls with the cheetah from the World Cup advertisments in South Africa. The World Cup began this last week and it is SUCH a BIG DEAL here. Every person we sit next to on the bus or every taxi driver has their own opinion about who is going to win and who has the better team. It is always fun to ask them who their favorites are and to have them explain why. In our English Conversation Club on Friday morning the theme was the World Cup. We talked all about the differences between Latin America´s view towards it and the USA´s. They all think that we are so strange for not knowing a lot aobut it or evening really caring about soccer.

One Saturday night we treated ourselves to Benihana´s and a movie at one of the malls here in San Sal. The malls here are actually quite incredible. We were pretty impressed with the chef, especially Brian.

In El Sal we travel by every mean possible, but one of our favorite ways is in the back of a truck...especially when it is pouring down rain. This picture doesn´t really do it justice but all of us were crammed in the back of a friend´s pick up and we were getting drenched. It was awesome!!

Here´s me (Juliann) and Esther traveling back from English class in the back of a truck.

And here´s America, Christina, and Esther again.

Here we are again in a much bigger truck traveling with our partner organization Balsamo to the rural communities we are working with.

Once again it totally poured down rain on us. You don´t have a lot of options when you are in the back of a truck in the rain, so you just hope that your big black trash bag will be enough.

Here we are in all of our trash bag glory. They actually did the trick and kept our clothes nice and dry...just not our heads or arms or legs. ha ha This is Kassandra, Kenna, and Esther. Kassandra already had a rain jacket so she decided to use her trash bag as a skirt thingee. She was drier than all of us. Peter, Juliann, Tyler and America

The weekend that Tropical Storm Agatha decided to roar into town we decided to go out and explore La Ruta de Las Flores. This is a historic route that goes through several colonial cities. They all are supposed to have fun little markets, cool central plazas, and food festivals on the weekends. We rented a micro van and all went along for the ride. But of course because of the rain almost everything was shut down. We were a little bummed but still had a great time. We accidentally sat in on a catholic wedding at one of the cathedrals. Jauyua is the biggest city on la Ruta de las Flores and it has some really fun stuff to do there. They have a Festival de Gastronomia (I know that sounds gross but it actually just means a big food festival) there and we could pick between tons of different delicious options.

One of the options was frog...which of course Tyler ordered. He said it tasted like...frog.

The thing that made all the rain and the traveling worthwhile was that we finally found the movie Nacho Libre. Kenna and several of the other volunteers had been wanting to watch it ever ince they visited a Catholic Seminary for boys that looked exactly like the little orphange in the movie...big ugly school bus and chunky little kid included. We had made it a "SMART" goal to find it at one of the many piraterias here and watch it. We had asked at every one of them and never had any sucess but finally in Jauyua, Peter found it for us and we all freaked out! It was great.

Some of us also went dancing and we had a blast. Esther, who is studying dance education at BYU taught us all how to move our hips. What a good-looking group!