Some Technical Difficulties/Feliz Navidad

We've been experiencing some technical difficulties with the Internet, thus the lack of blogs lately. Seems that my family is rather accident-prone. With computer in hand, my dad sad down in one of the plastic patio chairs, and immediately regretted his decision. Well...maybe not immediately, but definitely after he found himself flat on his pack with plastic chair pieces lodged in uncomfortable places and scattered all about. His computer made the trip with him and although it survived, the Internet chip did not. I'd have started in on the weight capacity jokes, but a.)I broke the swing, and b.) Alec, a friend who came with our group last year, had a similar experience with these plastic chairs during a rousing game of "Catch Phrase." So I just chalk it up to poor craftsmanship on the part of Guatoplast, or at least inferior plastic.

So, I'm currently paying to use the Internet at a "hotel" down the beach. The term "hotel" is used very loosely. None of the hotels around here have any resemblance to our Western equivalent, but personally, I really like them. This one is called the El Dorado and is run by and generally rented out to, French Canadians. It's really small, probably less than 10 rooms and right on the beach. It has some sweet palapa topped decks lined with hammocks and big love sacks (big fan of those), a nice pool, and a great palapa bar area. All in all, it totally reminds me of the movie, "The Beach." It's pretty exclusive, full of characters that I would suspect enjoy mind expanding drugs and who just surf all day. Not sure where these Canadians picked up surfing, but they seem very much at home here.

Christmas time in El Salvador is an experience. I've obviously never been involved in any sort of warfare, but I'd imagine battle would sound much like Christmas Eve here. The constant and unrelenting sound of gunfire, or in our case, fireworks.

Fuegos artificiales all up in this place! Every size, shape, and variety to create the most impressive displays of pyrotechnics and, literally, deafening blasts. The novelty of legalized firework possession and detonation quickly faded as the night went on. What was at first a treat for the eyes and the ears, became tortuously redundant, especially when the clock informed us that Christmas Eve had slyly turned into Christmas. There were brief periods of silence that deceived us into believing the Axis had been successfully beaten by the Allies...and then, in a moment, the piercing reminder that Hitler was still very much alive.

By Christmas morning a seize fire had been issued, but not soon enough to get in a full REM cycle. And, since kids are impervious to any sleep deficiency on Christmas, the adults were forced to medicate with their caffeine of choice, which for me, meant Exedrin. We watched the little ones fulfill their dreams of opening up their gifts that had been taunting them daily for the past 3 weeks. John graduated from "feeling up the gifts" to actually opening them...there are just way too many inappropriate jokes to be made about this, but it's Christmas and he's my innocent little nephew, so I'll show some restraint. Grandma and Grandpa finally received their $0.50 secret, which, much to my dad's chagrin is just a little short of retirement.

With Grandma and Grandpa's help and clothes, the kids dressed up like Mary and Joseph and put on a little Christmas pageant to surprise their parents. I'll get some pictures up soon...pretty classic. Later, Eliana gave us a very accurate lesson about the story of Jesus' birth, complete with drawings on her whiteboard. "Away in a Manager" was also sung a lot. I made the mistake of changing the lyrics to a couple of Christmas songs, which, in my defense were about love and other Jesus-like attributes...but I was quickly reprimanded by Eliana for my irreverance.

"You are not supposed to change Bible songs!"

That's one thing about this kid...once set, a rule is nonflexible. She's going to make an amazing hall/safety monitor...might not have any friends, but when you get to comb the halls in the distinguished fluorescent vest, who needs em.

Had anyone joined us for the remainder of Christmas, they probably would have assumed that our calendar was about 6 months off. Our activities closely resembled the festivities of a different holiday, namely the 4th of July. The weather was a pleasant 88 degrees, we spent the majority of the day at the beach or in the pool (even floating on a raft with a picture of the American flag followed by the word, "Pride"), we had hot dogs and beer for lunch, played games around the swim up table in the pool and found ourselves again at the front lines, where all loss of ammo from the night before had been replenished with a new shipment of fireworks.

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!