So this is the new year

I can't believe it's 2009!

New Year's Eve was actually much like Christmas. Except possibly stranger. During the day I learned how to make tamales (yum!) If you don't know what those are, they are corn mash stuffed with all kinds of things and sometimes sugared or made with young corn for a sweeter taste. Ours had chicken or beans inside.

Then a friend-ish woman in my community invited me to her house at 4 pm. I hadn't seen her in a long time so I expected to just drop by, chat, maybe eat still more tamales.

I got to her house and about 20 kids were sitting around with bibles. "Let the culto begin," said my friend's sister.

For background, I have been scared of Salvadoran evangelicals ever since my friend was dragged to their church during training and discovered that at the end of each sermon they spend half an hour crying. He was yelled at for not being "triste" enough. I have heard similar stories from other volunteers. And, come on, they call their worship sessions "cultos!" Luckily, there are hardly any evangelicals in my community, so I don't really offend anyone by spending most of my time with the Catholics. I'm not Catholic either but at least I know what I'm in for when I walk into Mass (thanks, Grandma.)

Were they going to make these kids cry???

Thankfully, no. They made some of them feel slightly bad for not bringing Bibles, then they talked about Noah's Ark, then they all sang songs about God that seemed pointless to me ("The butterfly flew over the hill and what did he see? He saw God. The end.") During all this, I stood there clapping awkwardly and wondering how I got into all this.

After the singing, they passed out toys and bowls of fruit salad heaped on top of vanilla ice cream and the kids played jump rope. Then the culto was over.

Evangelicals aren't so bad.

Neither was the rest of the night. I went home and had dinner with the family. All the family ever. Think 40 plates. By the time seats were found for everyone and one of the tíos said the longest grace in history, the chicken, rice and tortillas were cold.

Luckily, dinner ended so late that we all missed 4-hour church again. Score! After my cult meeting, I 'd had more than enough religion for one day.

Then all the kids threw firecrackers for 4 hours. I could barely hear an hour in. I destroyed a few plants trying to get the hang of Salvie fireworks.

At midnight, the church bells rang and everyone hugged each other and said "Feliz Año." The family is so big that this took 15 minutes. The whole world threw firecrackers and then we all went to dance. I danced with an old drunk man for about an hour because he kept following me.

The next day I woke up at 9 a.m., which is Earth-shatteringly late here. An hour later, I was still in my pajamas when the family invited me on a hike for which they were leaving that instant. Are you kidding me? I thought. I had slept about 6 hours, which is double what anyone else slept, as drunk people were waking them up all night (I guess after college I just tune them out?) I did have a reason to stay back, which was that I had agreed to help a friend with her English homework. I was later informed that it's a tradition to sleep for like three hours and then go hiking to the river on New Year's Day. Whatever floats their boat.

There are no pictures of all this craziness because the computers are once again refusing to cooperate. Maybe I will have more luck in San Vicente when I show up there on Thursday for 2.5 weeks of more training! Yay group reunion!

In other news, Saturdays were once my "day off" and now they are the busiest day of my life. I've signed on to teach computer classes all morning and an English class in the afternoon before youth group meetings. So it looks like you'll be hearing from me on Sundays from now on if I haven't melted down.

Paz y amor!