I have less than an hour to write this...

So, I believe I may have made a mistake in my last post (other than the obvious grammatical and spelling errors). What I called Guasapa is rightly called El Sitio Zapotal, I think. Well, I'll ask Aynn.

I believe I left off talking about where I stayed in Santa Marta. My host-dad there is called Nicolás and he was involved in negotiating for the form/structure/location/agenda of the peace process. I conducted an interview with him the last night we stayed there (it was a double interview, as Tomas interviewed him at the same time). This was after we talked a bit with COCOSI, the council against AIDS, a project in Santa Marta to educate people about AIDS and such. It was an interesting meeting, but my main question after meeting with them was why all this education needs to be done by the Civil Society as opposed to the government. The answers are obvious and numerous, but the question then becomes a criticism. Should the education of the populace about things like AIDS be left up to an uncoordinated and generally locally specific civil society? Shouldn't it be formalized, regurlarized across the country? The trouble comes though when AIDS awareness talks about (gasp) condoms. El Salvador, while it used to have one of the more liberal churches in the world, is now home to one of the most conservative church regimes there are hoy en día (today).

The interview with Nicolás went very well as he talked at length about the peace process and such. I was more interested in him and his role, which he was slightly more reserved about, but I understood completely that I was a gringo he'd known for a few hours and who slept in his house, not a close personal friend or anything. The next day we packed everything back up and went to Radio Victoria for the last time. This was Wednesday the 24th. I helped produce a PSA about smoking and about women's rights. My voice is on Salvadorian radio as Papa, who dies after saying his few lines due to throat cancer from smoking too much. That, and for the women's rights spot I said the "and the students of SIT Nicaragua" after the Radio Victoria girl said "This message is brought to you by Radio Victoria". Yeah, I'm famous.

We returned to San Salvador on a long busride. I listened to Steely Dan the whole way. People laughed at me as I grooved to Deacon Blues in my seat. The wind felt incredible as it rushed through my hair. The combination of the wind, the music, and where I was emotionally made the trip quite enjoyable. I just listened to music and thought for a few hours. I resolved a few pending issues, thought more of the trip we'd taken to the UCA in El Salvador and how it affected me, thought about the whole Katrina break up thing, and how all of these things related. In the end, I was, as Mr. McPartlin my 11th grade AP US History teacher would say, "moving and grooving". Or in normal person speak, I felt like I was making progress.

That night we went to the Photocafé in San Salvador - a psudo-revolutionary joint where you can sip an Irish coffee while perusing the excellent photography on the walls. They had a small theater, and we watched Innocent Voices, a movie (based on the childhood of one of the producers) about how the children of El Salvador were effected by the civil war. It was shocking, but after all we'd seen already, it wasn't something that really phased us. It was moving and highlighted a part of the war I hadn't given much thought to before, but it wasn't, as I'd been warned, something that would move me to tears. Maybe it would have before, but I believe that threshold has been changed somewhat of late.

The next day, Thursday the 25th, we spent most of the day with university students from Santa Marta who attend the University of San Salvador. When we arrived in the house they share (supported by a fund began by an SIT alumna after visiting Santa Marta and seeing that the kids there, while well educated up until secondary ed, couldn't attend University due to the financial obstacles) Jake and I were introduced to Tulio, our guide for the morning, and we were off immediately for class. The house they lived in was both beautiful and ideally situated close to the campus. How they had the good fortune of procuring such a house is beyond me, and the rent is more than affordable (so says the gringo used to making $150 a week part time - an unheard of sum for a university student in El Salvador).

The class we went to was Modern Philosophy. The entire class all I could think of was Paul Voice, my most wonderful of philosophy profs, and all of the things he said. They were going over Descartes - which if you think is hard in English, try in Spanish - and thanks to Paul I could understand, more or less, the subtleties of the discussions. The class had 3 students (the school had 40,000) because one didn't show, and took place in the prof's office. It felt kind of like Bennington, but more formal. Small, intimate, but with an underlying structure that in Bennington would be a joke. When they got to Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am), I was so excited to jump into refuting Descartes and foundationalism (his method of inquiry), that I was almost disappointed to realize that I was a gringo who was there to observe and that I hadn't read the "First Meditations on Philosophy" (I think that's the name of the book) in two years. But the prof did it for me, which made me all kinds of happy.

We lunched at the University Comedor (eatery?) and then went back to the house. There, a few of us started messing around with a soccer ball. That tid bit is important for later. Then we went to the Museum of the word and image. This was a museum to preserve the historic memory of El Salvador. The curator of the museum is the man who started and throught the civil war continued with Radio Venceremos, the guerrilla radio of the FMLN. We were lucky enough to have him be there during our visit and he spoke to us a bit about the museum and how he sees its role and such. I asked him how he saw these two projects, Radio Venceremos and El Museo de la Palabra y Imagen, were there ties between the two? He said that they are the same project, one done in war, the other in peace. Raise awareness and preserve historic memory, these are the goals of both. Very cool guy.

Upon our return to the house of the students, we started fooling around with the soccer ball again, and eventually were asked if we could play soccer (gringos vs. slavadoreños) that night. We said sure, if Aynn said it was okay (I need to ask my mommy first). Aynn said it was fine, but that they'd have to walk us home after the game that night. In the mean time we went to a field (a basketball court in a public park) to play. If you'll recall, my shoes were still a bit ruined, so I was wearing flip flops. I'm not sure if I described how I messed up my right foot at Radio Victoria, but suffice it to say that Aynn was convinced one of my toenails would fall off. It hasn't yet, but there is still blood under the nail. Gross. So as we were playing, I was barefoot. I'd cleared all the sharp things off the field beforehand, so I was safe in that regard. There was one time though where I overextended my leg to stop the ball from going out and stepped on the ball, but rather than being able to bring it back where I wanted it my weight was such that I continued to roll and my foot was scraped along the cement for a bit. That was gross, but as I didn't have any hydrogen peroxide to deal with it at the moment, I decided to forget about it and continue playing. We had a great time during that game, and then later, after we ate about a thousand pupusas (small tortillas filled with cheese or beans or spinach and such) for dinner, we played again. This time was uneventful. We met a woman (gringa) from Michigan who was working across the street from the Santa Marta house teaching English and she played on our team for a bit. She was nice and the Salvadoreños all made crude jokes when she helped walk us home (in good humor, of course). That was the last night we would spend in El Salvador. We watched the Boondock Saints (the spanish subtitles were a bit off) and then I went to sleep.

The next day I already talked about. We got up and headed to the legislative palace. Nonsense ensued and we left without speaking to the ARENA party. We went to the mural, I took some pictures, and we left for a market. I was a bad capitalist and didn't buy anything. We lunched at the Galaría Fernando Llort, the artist that did the front of the national cathedral (he pretty much created the style of art associated with El Salvador), where I was a good capitalist and bought some art (hopefully for Christmas for the family) and a book for myself. We returned to the Casa Oasis for the last time, finished packing, had a long evaluation/check in, and left for the airport. There we pigged out of DIANA junkfood (the main junkfood dealer in central america, $.50 for a big bag of popcorn and such) and hung out listening to music and such. We got on the plane, and just as I was falling asleep (about 30 minutes later) we began our descent.

Awaiting us was a wonderful potluck dinner put together by all of the moms, there was music and much frivolity. I ate, spoke with my host-mom breifly, and we left. I crashed around 10, feeling like I was, more or less, home. What's it going to feel like when I come back to the US? I can only imagine.