Wow! It has been so long since I've posted, and so much has happened! Over 3 weeks is way too much time. I apologize to all the people who complained to me about not posting.

I have had a crazy awesome past week! We had to go to San Salvador to renew our visas at the immigration office. That's where we started out Tuesday when we took the express bus down the mountain. That was a mistake we do not plan on making again. Can you say, car sick? Blech. But we got to the immigration office with Carmen, the woman we stayed with, and Pedro, our driver. They kept our passports there and said to come back on Thursday. So from there, we decided we needed lunch. And since we were in San Sal, we wanted American lunch. Burger King was amazing. :D Afterwards we walked around through the mall, Metro Centro, and did some shopping. That night when we got back to Carmen's house, she made us some pretty great chicken and potatoes. Nathan also had a fun time playing futbol with the little boy across the street, Jonathan.


Wednesday was a super fun day of all touristy stuff we wouldn't normally get to do. We got up that morning and headed to the zoo!




We had a blast. It was a pretty nice zoo, actually. When we finished there, we ate lunch at Pizza Hut! Salad bar and all.

We went to a museum afterwards. It was the national museum, even though we had been planning on going to the museum of arts or something. But it was kind of interesting. Nathan liked the stuff about jaguars:



Thursday turned out to be amazing as well! I've decided that Pizza Huts in America should take a lesson from the ones here. Salvadoreno Pizza Huts serve breakfast! And it is pretty yummy, let me tell you. That's where we ate that morning and met up with Joel. They surprised us by taking us to the beach afterwards! It was so beautiful. Some of the group that came this past March got to go and ride horses there. Unfortunately for us, the storms caused too much debree and junk to wash up and now the beach isn't flat enough for them, so they weren't there anymore. But we still had a great time going up and down the pier, seeing all the nasty dead fish, the gorgeous ocean, the boats and fisherman, everything. It was a ton of fun. There was a cute little popsicle stand, and we just had to stop there. They had all sorts of flavors; spicy ones, fruity ones, chocolatey ones, etc. I was feeling super adventurous, and had officially the weirdest thing I have ever tasted in my entire life. An avocado ice cream bar.

I only had a little, and then Joel took it. But I was glad I'd tried something new. He took us to a different part of the beach, then, where we could actually go up to the water.

And then we went to one more and had some delicious sea food with a great view. It had a little pool down on the beach with a geyser thing that blew when a wave it. Nathan wanted to swim so bad, but we didn't have time. He did, however, get to walk down around it with Joel.

When we drove back to the city, we had to go to the immigration offices again, praying they were done with our passports and that we could take them and go home. They were! :) Joel came back and stayed the night here in La Palma. The guys played a ton of Halo last night.

Today, we had a great time again! I went with Teresa, Joel, and Nathan, and we met up with Cristian at the park. There was a big festival going on with dancing and stuff to celebrate the anniversary of the start of the signing of the peace papers that ended the civil war here. We got some lunch, and then basically went exploring. There's one store that we were wanting to go to, but it didn't open till later, so we walked around town. We went out on this edge and checked out a gorgeous view of the mountains. (WLH!) There was another pretty hill we walked up, and it had an amazing view as well. It was crazy, unreasonably windy. Apparently it always is in October. It made for some really cool pictures! They're on Teresa's camera and not mine. She's going to be putting them on facebook, though. Well it has (obviously) been a pretty long week, and I'm ready to go chill and watch some Hulu. Thanks always for the prayers!
More to be posted soon!
su amiga,
Erin