EL SAlvador: Celebrating El Salvador’s independence and, more importantly, reaching the halfway mark as a PCV

September has been a very busy month and, as I say at the close of every month, I can’t believe it’s already over. However, the end of September is actually kind of significant for me because in September we had 2 pretty big milestones: the celebration of the independence of El Salvador (and all of Central America) from Spain, and our 1 year anniversary as PCVs.

First, I’ll tell ya a little about Independence Day down here. As in the US, Independence Day is a pretty big deal. One advantage (or maybe disadvantage…I’m not sure) that El Sal has to us is that theirs falls during the school year, so they get to celebrate it in the school. More than anything, they do this through national pride parades. My school started preparing for their parade in July, when the school band began practicing a couple of times a week. Don Mario is a very skilled musician and has created a pretty strong music program in our school, so even though it’s small, our school band has a pretty good reputation and is in high demand. Therefore, while a normal school will have 1 parade/celebration for Independence Day, our school band ended up playing in 3 separate parades. On Thursday, the 13^th, they played in the Gotera Kindergarten Parade. On Friday, the 14^th, they played in the parade in my community, and on Saturday, the 15^th (actual Independence Day) they played in the Gotera parade.

My favorite of the celebrations was the parade in the community on Friday. All week, the school was abuzz with preparations for the celebration. Each day, different groups of kids would put on different cultural performances, all in competition to decide who would get to perform on Friday. And Friday, we all got up very early and met at the end of my street (about a mile away from my school). The band, the dancing girls, the color guard and about 75% of the rest of the students dressed in traditional Salvadoran clothing (long flowy skirts for girls and loose cotton tunics for boys), all arranged themselves in marching order and we proceeded to parade from my house all the way down to the school. All community members came out to watch the parade go by and it was really just a great community bonding-esque event. There were some slight mishaps, such as running out of water less than halfway through the walk, and holding up the bus on its normal route for about an hour, but in the end, everyone arrived at the school safely and in 1 piece.

marching through the center of town

traditional salvadoran dancers

causing a traffic jam with the bus

Then, once we got to the school was time for the ceremony. This involved singing the national anthem, reciting the pledge of allegiance (which is about 50 times longer than America’s and very hard to say), and then the best performances from the preceding week doing their acts for the audience. I served as Master of Ceremonies for this event, which was fun and not as terrifying as I had anticipated. A lot of people showed up, lots of cute little kids did cute little dances, and it was a fun day.

The parades in Gotera were nice, too. The kindergarten parade was great because, aside from the bands, all of the groups marching were solely kindergarteners, so it was really really cute. And the parade on the 15^th was nice because it was all of the best bands in the area, so there was some pretty good music, although it was an absolute madhouse since so many people turned out to see it.

master of ceremonies

the interminable pledge of allegiance

some very cute "indio" dancers

On September 17 Tricia, Jamie, Kara, Andrew, Tyler, and I completed our first year as PCVs. This means we also entered into our final lap as PCVs, since the assignment is for 24 months. This past weekend, in celebration of this momentous occasion, we headed out west as a group to party.

First, we headed out to Ataco, one of the cute, touristy, artisanal towns on the Route of Flowers in the department of Ahuachapán. I visited Ataco when my family was visiting last Christmas, but it is a beautiful, fun, funky little town and I was very happy to get back. We bought some souvenirs, ate goat cheese and eggplant pizza, drank amazing coffee, and went to a restaurant called the Portland Grill that had real cocktails (collective intake of breath), and had an all around great time. The next day, after Andrew and I talked each other into some ill-advised henna tattoos from the man on the corner of the park and ate chocolate covered bananas the size of my forearm, we all packed up our stuff and headed south to Tacuba to hike EL Imposible .

the ladies (jamie, kara, myself and tricia)

andrew and i embrace our inner gangster

hanging out in downtown ataco (andrew´s shirt is off so his tattoo dries, not just for fun...)

Tacuba is a little town on the edge of the biggest national park in El Salvador, El Imposible. On Sunday, we went on a 6-hour waterfall hike through El Imposible. The hike was incredible – we basically wound our way down a river, jumping off at various points (waterfalls) into the freezing cold water. The jumps were slightly terrifying at times, but it was awesome to be in pristine nature and surrounded by such beauty, and we all had a really fun time. The evening was spent horizontal, playing card games and planning our next group trip (Nicaragua, baby!)

Now I’m back in site, experiencing the post vacation blues. But these upcoming weeks are super busy, and I’m sure we’ll manage to squeeze in some fun excursions and activities amongst all the work.