Showing posts with label Maya. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maya. Show all posts

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Our Excellent Excursion to El Salvador

Last night we got home from the best vacation ever. Seriously- this vacation was so awesome. We left early Thursday morning to go to El Salvador by bus. K has a friend from El Salvador whose family lives there. We wanted to visit them and have dinner with them, and they ended up going above and beyond to make sure we had a fantastic time in El Salvador. We arrived in San Salvador in the afternoon, and the T family took us to see the San Andres Mayan ruins.


Then, they took us to see a volcano. We had to hike up a little bit to see the crater. We took the easy path.


The pictures really don't do the view justice, but here is a picture zoomed in to see the crater. If you look closely you can see someone has written "Punk" in white letters.

Or, you can't really see it, but you'll have to take my word for it that it does say "punk."

We then went to the San Salvador temple open house. It's a really pretty temple. To see the temple is the reason we had planned this trip, and it was cool to go see it and go through it on the open house tour.



You can't really see us super well, but this is
K and I with Hna T in front of the temple.

We ended the night going to the T family's house and eating pupusas. Salvadorian pupusas are the best. We also drank Kolashanpan which is a Salvadorian soda.

Also, here is a picture of most of the T family.


On Friday we went to the beach, which the T family also helped us with a lot. It was a lovely day to spend at the beach. My shoulders didn't like the sun so much, but it was worth it.

Us at the beach.

The ocean! The waves were kind of big to go swimming in, no one else was in the ocean, so we had it all to ourselves.

Align Center
We also swam in the pool, which we also had all to ourselves for a little while. Here we're sitting at the pool bar- don't worry, we didn't drink anything alcoholic, we actually didn't drink anything here. We saw the guy spray bugs with bug spray directly over the food and drinks he was preparing, so that would've been a bad idea.

Just chillin in a hammock on the beach... best day ever.

After the beach we went back to San Salvador where we met up with my friend who is there this summer with a service organization. We had a good time talking over a dinner of pupusas.

Unfortunately, every vacation has to end sometime- Hno and Hna T took us to the bus station on Saturday. Hna T made pupusas for us to take with us. It was nice to come home at the end of vacation and heat up some pupusas to eat for dinner. We've had a meal of pupusas everyday for the past four days now, and are happy that we still have some left to eat.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Adventures en la capilla

Last night we went to a YSA dance at our chapel. I learned how to dance bachata, merengue, and punta. Okay, so really that statement is pretty generous. I tried to dance bachata, merengue, and punta. It was way fun. Here's some of us at the dance:


K and I also ended up walking home after the dance, where we had the unique experience of being catcalled by transvestite prostitutes. This was an experience that I had never thought of to want to avoid.

We arrived home safely at the super late hour of midnight(for those of you who know my sleeping habit tendencies you know I'm being sarcastic, but at the same time I'm being serious because here I have grown accustomed to going to bed at 11 because I actually have to get up at a normal time in the morning). Since I was up late it felt super early when I got up this morning for our taller at 8am, which was back at the chapel. At least for that walk we didn't have to worry about transvestites catcalling us.

It was the last portion of the taller that we taught today, which means they all graduated. This is the second group that we have graduated now. They are such an amazing group! Here they are:


Hna N, one of the graduates from today, came over and helped us cook an amazing meal today. One of the other participants gave us presents today; they're little Mayan statues. It was so sweet of him. Here we are with T and our little Mayan statues: