(a day in the life, continued from below...) I’m often invited to people’s houses for lunch but really prefer cooking my own food to the overcooked-oversalted-overgreased meals available at other’s houses… anyway, I eat, then work for an hour or so on the nutrition-information posters I’ve been making to hang in the Unidad de Salud. I bring the posters to the Alcaldia so the employees can proofread what I’ve written before finalizing the poster. Despite the fact that the Alcaldia employees are educated professionals (“educated” being defined as having completed high-school), they too are shocked to learn from the poster that soda is really really bad for you. While there, I help a few employees with some computer issues… another project I’m working on is improving employee-employer relations within the Alcaldia and promoting efficiency, but it’s not a priority today as the Alcaldia is undergoing an audit.
While in the Alcaldia, I help a woman translate a US visitor’s visa application so she can hopefully visit her son living in Houston. I say hopefully because the bar to receive a visitor’s visa is set very high to prevent immigration-- thus, many Salvadoran parents haven't seen their kids for many years, or their grandkids ever... I’ve had to help several people with their applications because the US State Department prints parts of the application and instructions in English. Although the State Department unwittingly commits a great number of bureaucratic errors, I’d imagine that printing English instructions for non-English speaking visa applicants is a “happy error,” or an unofficial, non-formal way of further raising the bar for visa seekers.
Just before the Alcaldia closes, we notice that there are horses grazing in the town’s very pretty and well- maintained central park, so we throw mangoes to chase them away.
After the Alcaldia closes I head home. Many days I'm completely exhausted and don't want to interact with anybody or speak another fumbling word of Spanish, but today I'm feeling lonely. I head over to Don Beto’s house, where I’m always welcomed and whose family I’ve kinda adopted as a substitute for my own. I help him rake and water his small grassy backyard for an hour or so—backyards of this sort are not common in El Sal, and helping out with American-style yardwork is kinda relaxing and helps remind me of home. Further, once we’re done (or more accurately, once we’re about halfway through) he sends one of his kids on a run to buy us a few Pilseners. Yardwork and beer, kinda like home.