Pupusas

My favorite food here is still pupusas. Last week, our Spanish maestra taught us how to make them. She sent me the recipe, which I translated into English and am posting here along with some instructional pictures!

Pupusas

·      Masa de maiz (corn flour, can be bought at the supermarket I think)

·      Water

·      Cheese

o   Here they buy 2 types of cheese – really soft and bland queso fresco and really hard and sharp queso duro (shredded), and then mix them together with their hands till they are completely blended. This way the cheese is soft, but has the sharp flavor of the hard cheese. In the US, the best comparison would probably be to buy mozzarella cheese and then kneed in some shaved parmesan

o   Also, here people often add to their queso chopped loroco (the national flower - its buds are a common seasoning). Loroco barely has any flavor so leaving it out will not harm the taste of the finished product.

·      Filling

o   Most common filling here is fried pork skin and refried beans. Pork skin is not my thing, so I prefer to leave it out and just use refried beans. You can buy refried beans, or make them yourself! (If you buy the refried beans, make sure you heat them up a little on the stove with some oil so that they are warm and malleable when you start forming the pupusas)

·      Vegetable oil

Mixing cheeses (Kara is mixing dough in the background)

Pupusa ingredients [top left: dough, botton left: cheese; top right: loroco; bottom right: beans]

Directions

·      Mix 2 cups of masa and 1.5 cups of water. Mix until a soft dough is formed. Wet hands, and form a small ball of dough (a little bigger than a golf ball). Poke a hole in the dough, and add a little bit of cheese and a little of beans. Re-roll into a ball, with the filling in the middle. Flatten the ball into a fat tortilla.

o   The only thing I can compare making pupusas to is how Mio makes rice balls. Therefore, as you can imagine it is really really hard for me (since I still haven’t mastered rice balls after 22 years).

Making the pupusas

·      Heat a little vegetable oil in a fry pan over medium high heat. Place pupusas in fry pan and cook, flipping occasionally. Cook until browned and cheese inside appears to be slightly bubbling

Cooking our pupusas. They usually don't look this messy

Salsa Roja

·      Large (roma) tomatoes

·      Green pepper, chopped (optional)

·      Vegetable oil

·      Onion, chopped

·      Garlic cloves, chopped

·      Cilantro

·      Salt (as needed)

·      Hot pepper such as jalapenos (optional)

Amounts will vary depending on how much salsa you’re making

Directions:

·      Blanch tomatoes in boiling water, remove and place in bowl. Remove skin of tomatoes; blend (in blender or food processor) with chopped pepper, cilantro, hot pepper (if using – people here usually don’t use it, but I prefer it!).

·      In saucepan, heat oil and cook onion and garlic till slightly brown. Add tomato mixture and simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add water and salt as necessary

·      [Salsa here is very liquidy (resembles tomato soup) and is served hot over the pupusas] 

Tomatoes and peppers in the blender

salsa and beans on the stove

Curtido

·      Shredded cabbage (not too fine)

·      Sliced onion (not chopped)

·      Sliced carrot

·      Green beans (cut in half)

·      Beetroot (optional)

·      Cauliflower, cut into small pieces

·      Vinegar

·      Water

·      Oregano (optional)

Directions

·      Mix all ingredients together (should be ¾ vinegar, ¼ water) in a big bowl, put in the fridge. You should have about equal parts all veggies, although more cabbage than anything else. Not sure on exact measurements, but should kind of look like coleslaw.  Here, they use a vinegar made of fruit, but I don’t think it matters what kind you use as long as there is no specific flavor to it

Veggies for salsa and curtido

Curtido   

Eating

Salvadorans usually peel their pupusa in half (so they have 2 round tortillas with filling on top) and then put curtido and salsa on top of these halves, tear them into chunks and eat with their fingers. I prefer to tear my entire pupusa into chunks (so the filling remains in the middle) and put curtido and salsa on top and eat it all with my fingers. This way, I am able to keep molten cheese from sticking to my fingers and burning me (most of the time).

[Note: pupusas are NEVER eaten with a fork. That would be sacrilegious]

Finished product! 

Free Weekend - Playa San Diego

This past weekend was our “free weekend”, aka we had Saturday night off and therefore could spend it away from our communities. Therefore, 14 of the 15 of us rented a beach house on Playa San Diego in La Libertad and spent Saturday and Sunday there. It was the perfect, relaxing weekend. We hired a driver to pick us all up from our communities at 6 am on Saturday, and after stopping at a super market we arrived at the beach at about 8 am. The house was perfect – 3 bedrooms with enough space for each of us to sleep, a big kitchen, and a long living room with glass doors looking out to the yard, and beyond the yard the ocean. The backyard had 2 hammocks, a huge patio area, and a pool. The backyard led right onto the beach, so we really didn’t have to leave our house to enjoy all of the beach. We spent the day relaxing, tanning, swimming, and eating American food. It was very awesome. However, once again I have learned the lesson of the El Salvador sun. Although Sunday I was only out in the sun for 4 hours, and I applied SPF50 twice, I am completely fried. It is very very uncomfortable. 

We returned to our communities feel happy, rested and relaxed! 

Our pool!

Ashley, me, Morgan and Rachael 

Playa San Diego, not too bad!

a sunbathing cow

Immersion Days

This weekend we had Immersion Days, which is when every trainee goes and stays with a current volunteer to observe their life, etc in site. Shawna and I both went to stay with a volunteer living in Sonsonate, which is the southwestern region of El Salvador. We left San Vicente at 7 am on Thursday to travel there. We had to travel up through San Salvador before heading towards Sonsonate, and altogether the trip took about 4.5 hours. The site was a pueblo in a really beautiful location. It was up in the mountains of Sonsonate, and driving up to it there were very beautiful views. Unfortunately, once in the pueblo you couldn’t really see the views very well.

It was really cool to get to see the kind of work we will be doing. We got to observe an English class, a sex ed class, as well as a seed planting project. We also got to hang out and walk around the town a lot. Unfortunately, I had to stay with a host family while I was there, which was pretty awkward. They acted mortally offended when I refused my 4^th pupusa at breakfast. One benefit of staying with the host family, though, was some introduction into how the food here is made. I guess I didn’t realize how “urban” Tecoluca is, but we buy all our cream, and cheese, and prepared beans. This weekend my host mom was making queso fresco (the typical cheese here), by massaging cream and some sort of prepared pills on a board as if it were dough. I also got to help shell black beans, which was pretty cool. Also, there were tons of puppies and kittens around the pueblo, so I got to have some animal therapy, which was really nice. On Sunday, we left our pueblo and headed farther west to a town called Juayua (I think that is spelled wrong…). This town has a huge food festival every weekend – it was amazing! The food was great; I had grilled steak, “grilled cheese” made out of tortillas, salad, pico de gallo, and chocolate cake!! There were also lots of artisan craft stands and booths, so it was really fun to browse. At the festival we met up with Ashley and her volunteer host, as well as another current volunteer. It was fun to talk to the other volunteers, too. And then Ashley, Shawna, and I were able to travel back together.

After our gastronomic event, we boarded the bus and headed on our 5 hr journey back to San Vicente. We splurged the extra $.50 to take the “super especial” buses to San Sal, and from San Sal to San V, so that we could make the trips without any stops, and also in buses with AC (rather than old US school buses that failed inspection). Therefore, the trip was pretty painless. 

kittens!!!!!

making queso fresco

black beans in their pods

a kind of view of the pacific from the pueblo

lychee fruit - so good

a view of the drive up to the pueblo

Health Promotor - La Pita

On Monday, Ashley, Jeremy, and I shadowed my host dad, Zeniff, at his job as a health promoter. Health promoters serve the most rural villages. Every “big” town has a health center, and from that center promoters disperse into the nearby villages where they take care of pregnant women, monitor weight gain etc of newborns, and do various health campaigns. We did a rabies vaccination campaign for cats and dogs.

We left Tecoluca at 6:30 am. At some point (not sure where) we got off the bus and got pupusas and Coke for breakfast (my need for caffeine outweighing my need to not have soda before 8 am…) After breakfast, we got in the back of some guy’s pickup truck and he took us to the health center. Pickups are a form of public transportation here, but the public transport pickups are bigger and have reinforced bars all around the bed of the truck. This pickup was just some guy’s personal truck. It was terrifying riding in the back of it, even though the road was straight and paved. We were very happy to arrive at the health center. At the health center we collected the materials and boarded a public transport type pickup to take us to La Pita. La Pita is a tiny caserio (rural neighborhood) of about 25 houses on a stretch of dirt road that runs parallel to the Rio Lempa as it opens out into the Pacific Ocean. The houses were mainly of laminate or mud, although all of them had electricity (we saw one mud hut held up with sticks that had a TV!) Vaccinating the animals was really cool, and we were even allowed to do some of the vaccines ourselves, although I preferred not to since the animals cried pitifully. One thing that is great about El Salvador is that basic medical care is free, and so were all of these vaccines, even though they were for animals. Only 1 family refused to have their animals vaccinated, because really why not let us do it? It cost them nothing.

The last few houses of La Pita are literally right at the tip of the land. To get to them we had to cross a very rickety bridge over a little finger of the Lempa. When stepping down off of the bridge and onto the sandy ground it looked as if the sand was moving. The ground was covered in tiny holes, and into those holes were scurrying millions of crabs. You literally could not put your foot down without landing on a crab. It was very very cool. Apparently, they eat some of those crabs, but only the ones that are big enough. We also saw a snake (of the garter variety), and one man owned a bright green bird (cockatiel?) that he let us hold. And, of course, tons of puppies!

Funnily, there is a hostel/restaurant in La Pita. Since it is the tip of the department of San Vicente (there are 14 departments in El Salvador – they are the equivalent of the US states), and right on the ocean, La Pita is a popular departure spot for anyone trying to get to the islands on the mid-eastern stretch of the El Sal coast. We ate lunch at the restaurant attached to the hostel on a wooden dock protruding out over the river. I ate an entire fish grilled and it was delicious. The view was very beautiful, although the river was brown due to the intense rainfall the night before turning up the riverbed. According to Zeniff, the water of the Lempa is fairly clean (I’m not sure how true that is). 

Main (only) street of La Pita

Vaccinating a puppy

Where we ate lunch

Crossing the bridge

Crabs

Zeniff

Cutest puppy

San Salvador

On Thursday, we had a trip to San Salvador. This trip started at 6:30 AM, and involved 4 different buses to get from Tecoluca to our ultimate destination, the David Guzman Museum of National Anthropology (or something like that). The museum was fairly interesting, much better than the museums I’ve been to in other third world countries, which surprised me. They had tons of indigenous artifacts, which I enjoyed looking at. After the museum we went to PIZZA HUT! Pizza Hut is a big deal here – it is a sit down restaurant with a huge menu. I had salad, pasta, and iced coffee!!! It was amazing. Much to my dismay, though, I discovered on paying that the salad bar (not listed in the menu) was $10 – double the price of all other food items. So my bill ended up being $20, while everyone else’s was about $7. It was worth it, though. After lunch we went to the Peace Corps main office in El Salvador. It’s a really nice office, and they have a huge lending library of books for volunteers, which we all took advantage of happily. We then went to a shopping center downtown. Apparently there was a store there that had American food (such as Kraft Mac and Cheese), but I didn’t find it unfortunately.

All in all, I was disappointed in San Sal. It was definitely functional in that it had tons of stores that I could visit frequently for supplies and such, but there was no charm, interesting architecture, or culture that I could detect. It definitely did not feel like the heart of the country the way some capitals do. However, I will be happy to travel back there to get iced coffee, salad, and go to El Salvador’s only movie theaters!

Lago de Apastepeque

Sunday 11 of the 15 trainees took a trip up to the crater lake Lago de Apastepeque, which is only a 10 minute ride from Apastepeque where some of us are stationed for training. We had to leave Tecoluca at 8:15 and take our normal bus to San Vicente, where we went to the Super and bought snacks and drinks for the day, and then take a pickup up to Apastepeque. Pickups are the most common mode of transportation here, aside from the bus system. They are literally just oversized pickup trucks with bars around the bed of the truck and people cram onto them and ride standing up. We took one up to Apastepeque, where we met the rest of the group, and then boarded another one which took us the 10 minutes to the lake. The lake was very small but very beautiful. It is a crater lake, which means it has no flowing water, so the water was kind of murky, but we still all swam, which was amazing. Here when you access bodies of water there is never just a public beach or grassy area where you can hang out and relax. Rather, you have to pay an entrance fee (usually $1) to get into a sort of complex that includes bathrooms, picnic tables, hammocks, and usually a pool. The one we went to yesterday also had a large wooden dock that went out over the lake, which is where we hung out when we weren’t swimming. We were the only people at the lake wearing normal bathing suits, and therefore we got quite a few stares. Also a couple of Salvadoran men blatantly started taking pictures of us in our bikinis until Tricia told them to stop. That was creepy.

When we were done swimming we walked about ¼ mile around the lake to this little shack where they catch fish for you and cook them right there. Only 3 of us did that (not me), but the fish looked amazing and it was a great place to sit and hang out in the shade.

I got a very bad sunburn all over my body even though I wore SPF50 and was only in the sun for about 3 hours. I guess I’m going to have to adapt to the sun down here, since it’s so much more intense!

Another thing I would like to note about photos. Photos taken here make all these places look WAY nicer than they actually are. I think it’s all of the greenery, flowers, and bright colors. For example, in my photo below of the complex we were swimming at, it looks like a freaking resort, when in actuality it was fairly muddy and there was trash and stuff everywhere. It was still amazing, just wanted to let you all know that these places are not what I would call the lap of luxury and probably would not meet American standards for relaxation. 

Some trainees swimming

The "resort"

Ashley and Jamie at the "restaurant"

Yesterday in San Vicente, we all went to the market with our Spanish maestras. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring my camera (too dangerous). The market is pretty big – it takes up a few city blocks, but there are no souvenirs or anything there, just the necessities for locals. Therefore, there were tons of stands of fruits and vegetables, as well as raw meat everywhere (unrefrigerated fish, beef, and chicken feet), and blocks of fresh cheese. Needless to say that the smell was pretty potent. There were also stands selling things such as shampoo, soap, rope, etc. We all bought an assortment of Salvadoran fruits and vegetables and brought them back to the training center for samples. At the center, the maestras divided us up and taught us to make 4 traditional Salvadoran dishes: fresca de arrayanes (juice made from arraynes – an acidic, pear tasting fruit), red salsa, curtido (the slaw put on top of pupusas), and yucca. I was in the fresca group. We also sampled various fruits such as lychees and jacotes. I must admit I don’t like most of the fruit here. It’s lots of little berry type things that are really sour.

In the afternoon, the pan dulce lady stopped by so that we could all have a snack. Pan dulce is a local sweet that is AMAZING. It literally translates to “sweet bread” and that’s pretty much what it is – trays of bread that are covered, filled or coated with different sweets. For example, there is a chocolate pan dulce, a pineapple pan dulce, and a miel duro (hard honey) pan dulce.

Last night there was another baile in my street. At about 7:30, the power blew in the entire town (I blame the baile and all of it’s music and strobe lights). However, they were able to get a generator and the baile proceeded undeterred. Once again, it was pretty much just an awkward group of teenagers swaying to too-loud music. There were a lot more people there, though, and the music was better than the first night. I still went to bed at about 10:30.

We have this whole weekend off to spend in our communities. Tomorrow, though, we are all going to try to meet up and go to a crater lake that is near the town of Apastepeque, where 3 other trainees are currently located.  Some relative of my family’s was telling me about the lake last night, and she said there is a pool there, so I’m just hoping that they haven’t turned this crater lake into a water park like the one we went to in Santa Ana!

One thing that has become abundantly evident in the past couple weeks is the lack of tourism in El Salvador. I haven’t been able to find a single postcard (apparently they’re only sold in the post offices), and walking around the market there were no crafts or touristy souvenirs. Just the basics of life. Also, Ashley and I spent about an hour yesterday trying to find a way to get to the nearest beach (because Tecoluca is only 30 minutes from the ocean), and we couldn’t find ANY information on Google. It’s crazy. According to the training director, lots of El Salvador’s tourism efforts are directed at Salvadorans – just trying to get them to travel within their own country. I guess that’s why they don’t really have postcards or anything.

Fresco de Arrayanes

Assorted salvadoran fruits

pan dulce

Daily life

We have settled into a pretty normal routine for training by now. 2 days a week we all head into San Vicente for our training sessions (cultural lessons, medical information, technical training, etc etc). We have to take a bus to get there, which is always interesting. Yesterday there were 2 women carrying live chickens on the bus with them. In San Vicente we also are able to go to the Super Selectos to stock up on groceries and stuff. Yesterday we bought Starbucks Frappuccinos there – it was really awesome. The days we don’t go to San V we spend in the community, having Spanish lessons and doing “community investigations”. Community investigations basically just means we go to a certain institution (school, local government, health center), and interview whoever is in charge there. Today we went to a nearby village (canton) to talk to their development committee and do a community diagnostic. It was really interesting, but also very depressing.  The committee gave us tons of information about daily life and their current projects (aka trying to get potable water and latrines). The canton was huge in terms of land, but all of the houses were made of mud or laminate. They were so dark and hot and depressing inside, filled with people, pigs, cats, chickens etc. I think the most depressing thing about these places is the kids because they really don’t have any opportunities. We also came across a very very adorable litter of puppies. The dogs here are so sad – they are either strays or abused guard dogs and people always laugh when we are kind to them or coo over them.

In other news, we are in the middle of the fiestas paternales of Tecoluca. This has huge implications for my daily life because my house is in the center of the town. At 4 AM every day they start shooting off roman candles. The first morning I woke up literally thinking there was a shootout outside my house. Also, every night we have “bailes” on the street outside of my house. These bailes go from 9-2 and are what every middle school dance we ever had was like, but with armed guards milling about. The music is so loud I can feel the bass in my chest, even when I have my headphones in and am trying to sleep. So with the bailes and the roman candles, it’s pretty hard to get any sleeping in.  

Another part of the fiestas paternales is the rides. There are 5 rides straight from a 1970s amusement park – aka they are terrifying to ride, but my little sisters love them! There are flying cars, bumper cars, a ferris wheel that goes way too fast, a carousel, and a roller coaster. I rode a couple of them the other day with my sisters and it was really fun, if pretty scary. I will definitely write more about the fiestas once they are over and I have a better feel for them as a whole, because right now it still feels like things haven’t fully kicked off.

Tomorrow we go to the market in San Vicente which will be awesome. I will update soon.

My little sisters and cousin on the rides 

a goat with lots of character

a house in the village