Wednesday January 14, 2009
Today was a travel day for us. We left the cool mountains of El Salvador and traveled South, down out of the mountains, into the heart of the land. The road, even though it was nicely paved, was extremely dusty. At one point we followed a sugar cane truck for some distance before we could pass, and the dust was so intense you could hardly see out the window.
One of the most memorable moments on our entire journey occurred when we stopped for lunch at a mall in the City of San Miguel. We were each give $10.00 and told to get lunch and meet back at the bus in 1 ½ hours. Since I didn’t have any real plans I decided to follow along with a group and make use of the signal that I was finally getting on my cell phone to touch base with home. There is no telling when or if I will get a signal again while here in El Salvador, so I thought that I had better take advantage of the opportunity while I had it.
We went upstairs to the food court and after wandering around trying to decide not necessarily what I wanted the most, but instead, what might be the easiest to order, even after all of these days, my Spanish is pretty limited. I finally decided on a place that had a picture of a hamburger and French fries with the word Hamburgesa $ 4.00. Whoohooo I thought, this looks easy. All I have to do is say Hamburgesa, and point at the picture and then I noticed that they had Coke in a refrigerated glass case and I know how to ask for a coke in Spanish, you say coka-cola and the problem is solved.
So after I ordered, they immediately pulled out a picture type menu from under the counter, flipped through a few pages and pointed to an $11.00 chicken dinner and the only word I recognized was pollo which means chicken. I politely said no and pointed a little more explicitly at their picture, to which they pointed equally as explicitly to their picture of the chicken dinner for $11.00. What I had thought was going to be so easy, seemed to have turned into a potential international incident.
Thank goodness that our professor John showed up at that moment to see if everything was ok. He was able to interpret and he told me that they wanted me to know that actually the hamburgesa was a chicken sandwich and they didn’t want me to be confused when my order came out. Apparently they don’t actually have hamburgers regardless of what their sign showed. Ohhhhhhh I thought, chicken is good, so I said Si un coka-cola and pointed to the one in the case. You can’t order just a coke from the fountain because not only are the fountain cokes made from their tap water, but so is the ice, so all soft drinks and water have to come from bottles or cans.
With my ordering complete, I pulled out a $5.00 bill, I figured the meal was 4.00 and the coke was 75 cents, $5.00 should cover it. They reached into the cooler, pulled out my coke, and handed it to me, but they didn’t ask for money. Hmmm, Back home, you don’t get anything until they have the money first. They just pointed to a nearby seat and said Quattro something which I took to mean that it would take about 4 minutes. I didn’t even open my coke, they have me trained so well back in the states that I felt guilty drinking any of it without paying for it first. (Which might be weird since I do it in sit down restaurants all the time LOL)
A few minutes later they handed me a humongous chicken sandwich with a plate full of French fries and I pulled my $5.00 bill back out and the young man said Quattro something, which I think was $4.75. He took it and opened the cash drawer and I think that he was looking for change so I just motioned for him to keep it and said Lo siento, mi espaniol es No Bueno, which I either said, I’m sorry, my Spanish stinks (is no good,) or your mother wears army boots, either way, he laughed and said gracias (Thank-you, I understood that one) and I took my tray to the opposite side of the food court to meet up with the rest of the group.
About one minute later, one of the employees from the place where I ordered my food from came and gave me a large saucer full of catsup for my French fries. All I could think of was how incredibly thoughtful that was. She certainly didn’t have to do that, and I can assure you that no one in our malls would have made the effort to walk clear across the food court to give someone who was a foreigner a plate full of catsup. So not only did I overt an international incident, but I made friends as well.
Today was a travel day for us. We left the cool mountains of El Salvador and traveled South, down out of the mountains, into the heart of the land. The road, even though it was nicely paved, was extremely dusty. At one point we followed a sugar cane truck for some distance before we could pass, and the dust was so intense you could hardly see out the window.
One of the most memorable moments on our entire journey occurred when we stopped for lunch at a mall in the City of San Miguel. We were each give $10.00 and told to get lunch and meet back at the bus in 1 ½ hours. Since I didn’t have any real plans I decided to follow along with a group and make use of the signal that I was finally getting on my cell phone to touch base with home. There is no telling when or if I will get a signal again while here in El Salvador, so I thought that I had better take advantage of the opportunity while I had it.
We went upstairs to the food court and after wandering around trying to decide not necessarily what I wanted the most, but instead, what might be the easiest to order, even after all of these days, my Spanish is pretty limited. I finally decided on a place that had a picture of a hamburger and French fries with the word Hamburgesa $ 4.00. Whoohooo I thought, this looks easy. All I have to do is say Hamburgesa, and point at the picture and then I noticed that they had Coke in a refrigerated glass case and I know how to ask for a coke in Spanish, you say coka-cola and the problem is solved.
So after I ordered, they immediately pulled out a picture type menu from under the counter, flipped through a few pages and pointed to an $11.00 chicken dinner and the only word I recognized was pollo which means chicken. I politely said no and pointed a little more explicitly at their picture, to which they pointed equally as explicitly to their picture of the chicken dinner for $11.00. What I had thought was going to be so easy, seemed to have turned into a potential international incident.
Thank goodness that our professor John showed up at that moment to see if everything was ok. He was able to interpret and he told me that they wanted me to know that actually the hamburgesa was a chicken sandwich and they didn’t want me to be confused when my order came out. Apparently they don’t actually have hamburgers regardless of what their sign showed. Ohhhhhhh I thought, chicken is good, so I said Si un coka-cola and pointed to the one in the case. You can’t order just a coke from the fountain because not only are the fountain cokes made from their tap water, but so is the ice, so all soft drinks and water have to come from bottles or cans.
With my ordering complete, I pulled out a $5.00 bill, I figured the meal was 4.00 and the coke was 75 cents, $5.00 should cover it. They reached into the cooler, pulled out my coke, and handed it to me, but they didn’t ask for money. Hmmm, Back home, you don’t get anything until they have the money first. They just pointed to a nearby seat and said Quattro something which I took to mean that it would take about 4 minutes. I didn’t even open my coke, they have me trained so well back in the states that I felt guilty drinking any of it without paying for it first. (Which might be weird since I do it in sit down restaurants all the time LOL)
A few minutes later they handed me a humongous chicken sandwich with a plate full of French fries and I pulled my $5.00 bill back out and the young man said Quattro something, which I think was $4.75. He took it and opened the cash drawer and I think that he was looking for change so I just motioned for him to keep it and said Lo siento, mi espaniol es No Bueno, which I either said, I’m sorry, my Spanish stinks (is no good,) or your mother wears army boots, either way, he laughed and said gracias (Thank-you, I understood that one) and I took my tray to the opposite side of the food court to meet up with the rest of the group.
About one minute later, one of the employees from the place where I ordered my food from came and gave me a large saucer full of catsup for my French fries. All I could think of was how incredibly thoughtful that was. She certainly didn’t have to do that, and I can assure you that no one in our malls would have made the effort to walk clear across the food court to give someone who was a foreigner a plate full of catsup. So not only did I overt an international incident, but I made friends as well.
( OH NO! I just figured it out while I was typing this up. As we were leaving the food court, I dumped my tray in the trash and heard a loud thunk. I asked John, "Was our food on glass?" to which he said no, yours was on Styrofoam just like mine. So I didn't think anymore about it, until just now. I think that maybe the saucer that she brought the catsup in may have been glass. No good deed goes unpunished and I bet that's the last time they help out a confused gringo)
This experience really brought home to me how difficult our Hispanic population has it. It is VERY difficult to shop and order from a menu when you don’t speak the language. No one in El Salvador has been short with me, because I couldn’t understand what they were saying, No one has said to me “Go Home, and don’t come back until you have learned our language.” Perhaps we should learn to be more patient, kind and understanding to those that we come into contact with that don’t speak our language as well.
We then reached our final destination, Nueva Esperanza which is a cooperative living farm and homestead community. There are about 101 families all living cooperatively. Each family has a small, very humble dwelling and a small amount of land of their own. They have a school, daycare and medical facility, and they cooperatively work a large farm. These people live together in community, work together and play together in order to make life easier for everyone.
When we got to our accommodations, I guess that the word that would best describe them would be humble . I have a very small room with 2 very low small beds, one small table and a fan all in a room slightly larger than a prison cell. The walls are unpainted concrete block, and there is one window, but there are no screens so I am hesitant to open it because of the bugs. There is one bare light bulb that seems to add to the starkness of the room. I mentioned that it was similar in size to a prison cell, but size isn’t the only similarity, the door itself is a large steel door that when it bangs shut, you pray that it will open again. One of the members of our group refused to close her door the entire time we were there, she chose instead to put a mattress in the door frame.
Our dinner tonight consisted of beans, rice and potato pancakes. We then sat around, played cards and talked until bedtime. Oh and by the way, the bathroom is an outhouse, and the shower is a room that you go in and fill a trough with water and take a bucket and dunk the water on your head. Oh my, this could be a long couple of days. The other bad news is that I seem not to have a cell phone signal here and there also seems to be no Internet, at least not that I have seen yet.
This experience really brought home to me how difficult our Hispanic population has it. It is VERY difficult to shop and order from a menu when you don’t speak the language. No one in El Salvador has been short with me, because I couldn’t understand what they were saying, No one has said to me “Go Home, and don’t come back until you have learned our language.” Perhaps we should learn to be more patient, kind and understanding to those that we come into contact with that don’t speak our language as well.
We then reached our final destination, Nueva Esperanza which is a cooperative living farm and homestead community. There are about 101 families all living cooperatively. Each family has a small, very humble dwelling and a small amount of land of their own. They have a school, daycare and medical facility, and they cooperatively work a large farm. These people live together in community, work together and play together in order to make life easier for everyone.
When we got to our accommodations, I guess that the word that would best describe them would be humble . I have a very small room with 2 very low small beds, one small table and a fan all in a room slightly larger than a prison cell. The walls are unpainted concrete block, and there is one window, but there are no screens so I am hesitant to open it because of the bugs. There is one bare light bulb that seems to add to the starkness of the room. I mentioned that it was similar in size to a prison cell, but size isn’t the only similarity, the door itself is a large steel door that when it bangs shut, you pray that it will open again. One of the members of our group refused to close her door the entire time we were there, she chose instead to put a mattress in the door frame.
Our dinner tonight consisted of beans, rice and potato pancakes. We then sat around, played cards and talked until bedtime. Oh and by the way, the bathroom is an outhouse, and the shower is a room that you go in and fill a trough with water and take a bucket and dunk the water on your head. Oh my, this could be a long couple of days. The other bad news is that I seem not to have a cell phone signal here and there also seems to be no Internet, at least not that I have seen yet.
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