Thursday, April 3

Today, I went with Don Jesus, Don Carlos, and about 70 students from Caluco to Sonsonate to watch a play, called "La última Ginda," or, "The Last Race."
In order to get to Sonsonate, we took public buses. What an experience! The buses are basically recycled school buses from the U.S., and they cost $0.25 to ride. On the way to Sonsonate, we took two buses. The first bus wasn't very crowded, and we only rode it for about 3 miles or so, but the second bus was a VERY crowded ride! The seats filled up quickly, but the bus kept stopping and picking up people. There were bars installed in the ceiling of the bus for people to stand in the aisles and hold on. That bus became a 50 mph sardine can! People were PACKED in the aisle, to the point where there were even people standing in the open doorway of the bus, as it's moving, because there was just no room to squeeze forward. Finally, in Sonsonate, the bus emptied and we got off. We walked to the Palacio Cultural where the play was. I think that our group arrived early and the play started late, because we waited almost an hour for the play to start. The play itself lasted only an hour. It was about the civil war in the 1980s. I didn't understand all of the Spanish, but I understood enough to get the gist of the play.

While there, I sat with some of the 11th graders whom I'd met the day before. A small group of kids took a particular liking to me, and they asked me to sit with them and they even bought me an apple nectar drink.

After the play, we had to run all the way across Sonsonate to the bus terminal. By the time I got on the bus, all the seats were taken and so I got to experience riding a bus standing in the middle and holding onto a metal bar for dear life! I felt really bad for all of the locals squashed against me, because everyone around me was just tall enough so that their noses were level with my stinky, sweaty armpits. You see, the theater had no air conditioning, and then after practically jogging a mile in the sun to the bus, well, I was a mess. After a long, bumpy ride, we finally made it back to Caluco. I could not believe how crowded the bus got! It got to the point where I thought I might fall over because I had only enough space to stand on my tippy toes so that other people could squeeze in around me! One could say I was getting intimate with the locals. What an experience!