Adentro Cojutepeque

First, you will be happy to know that the rest of my classes since that first disaster have gone swimmingly. I teach some more next week.

I would now like to name my Real Salvadoran Heroes, and those are my two host mothers, Esperanza and Margarita (Margarita is actually Esperanza's daughter but both are like mothers to me.) Every Friday at 3 am they hop in the back of a truck with huge bags of citrus fruits to go sell them in a market an hour and a half away, in a city called Cojutepeque. Esperanza actually does the same thing several more times a week, only she usually goes to a much smaller and closer town. It is worth mentioning that Esperanza is in her sixties and that these two women, with huge families to care for, don't have time for a nap during the day when they get back from market at 11 am.

So when they first asked me to come with them one Friday to Cojute, I balked at the idea of getting up at 1:30 am, but just for a minute. After all, if these two women could do this every week, certainly I, 22 and in the prime of my life, could do it once. And I did want to see Cojute and see what these women had to do for a living.

In true Salvadoran fashion, I was misinformed about the time the truck would come and ended up waking up an hour earlier than I had to. It was FREEZING COLD and continued that way all morning. Whoever thinks El Salvador is always warm is sadly mistaken. We finally got to market at 5 a.m. and all the selling was done by 7. The women don't actually walk around hawking their wares, I learned. They sell their tons of fruit to the vendors who actually have stalls and do the reselling. So they make a crapload of money (like $50, actually, which is not really enough even here) and celebrate by eating pupusas and buying stuff at the market until it's time to head home.

All in all, it was a fun experience to go with them, but I did end up passing out at home after it was all over. Not sure if I'll be back some other Friday.

I did take some pictures of the market but of course my memory stick is not with me. You'll get those later.

First meeting of English class today, and my boyfriend's coming to visit again. Since grocery shopping is a daylong affair here, I of course have not had time to go lately and have nothing to feed him. Wonder how this will pan out.

Paz y amor.