Poco a poco

I got a hammock last week at the market in Usulutan and finally decided to hang it up in my room Saturday night after getting back from the capital. In related news, I've read about 300 pages and taken some serious naps in the last couple days.

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Walking up the cobblestone path to my host family's house the other day, I ran into a guy I've talked to a couple times before and we started talking about all sorts of things, exercise, life in the States, discrimination, Salvadoran history, human nature... just had a really good conversation for about a half an hour. Afterwards, I'm thinking, man, what a motivated dude. This guy really wants things to change for the better in his country and seems like he is willing to work his ass off to do it.

The next evening, I'm throwing rocks at a mango tree and I hit the jackpot. The only mature mangos in the tree fall in a cluster all at once, knocked loose by a round rock about the size of a baseball thrown like a pitcher out of the stretch. I hear someone say my name and I turn around and it's Manuel, the guy I talked with the day before. The kids scatter to collect the mangos and I walk over to the fence. It's about 5 pm on a Sunday and he's wasted, tells me he just vomited and asks me for a dollar.

It's hard to get a read on people here. I've been in the country about two and a half months, and here in my site for two weeks and some change. At the end of the first two months living in the community where I had training, I was feeling really comfortable with my host family and a few of the other people in the community. Now I'm starting over with a new village, and it'll take a while before I really know what's what here. I'm certain Manuel is a good guy, but just like me or anyone else, he's not perfect and it's important to keep an open mind about people while I'm getting settled in here.

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Everyone here is a fan of either Real Madrid or FC Barcelona. After the first 38 times I was asked which one I supported, I just decided to go with Barcelona and stick with it, for no real reason other than I visited Barcelona once for a couple weeks when I was 17. The two clubs played each other Saturday in Madrid and a friend and I made a bet. If Madrid won, I owed him a $1.50 calling card for his cell phone. If Barcelona won, he had to buy me dinner at the pupuseria, which is pretty much the same price. Dinner was delicious.