Part Three
Inventions and Innovations
As many of you know, driving in a car for six hours can be a bit mind dulling and can cause you to fall asleep. Here are a few of the innovations I came up with during this time.

Postures: 
1. I call this one the Last Resort Posture. Keep sitting back as far as you normally would. Then, hug the steering wheel. Hopefully, this will cause an interesting curve in your back and will definitely give it a change of pace.
(If you want to know why it's called Last Resort, ask me.)

2. The Granny Posture:  Hunch up your shoulders like a grandma and drive with your face really close to the steering wheel. This helps relieve your shoulders after you begin to feel like their hanging like rocks off your neck.

Activities
1. To get the wiggles out: 
a. Turn to the Oasis Network (radio station with lots of old timey church music) and direct their songs.
b. Or imitate how you think their singers are singing.
c. Or you could try stomping your feet for as long as you can
d. Or turn your steering wheel into a drum


2. To prevent boredom, I have: 
a. Held my breath as long as I could without getting light headed. This constructive activity is a great one for musicians.
b. Turned to stations with bad quality music and sang along with them. The lesser quality of song, the more likely you can predict the next thing.
c. Waved at all the single males.
     (Just kidding, Mom and Dad! Never did that)
d. Done vocal warm-ups
e. Tested the different air pressure by sticking my hand out the window at various angles while going 70 mph.
f. Tried to memorize the 5 mountains I drove over in order.
g. Tried to remember which was the last hairpin curve when going down Shenandoah Mountain. If I get it right, I give myself kudos. I now know it is the 5th or 6th curve after the graffiti on the rocks, and it has 3 turn signs.
h. Timed how long it takes to drive over Shenandoah Mountain. I forget how long it is. It's either 10 or 14 min.

The firsts of a new country are generally jarring. My impression of El Salvador began when my mom and I stepped out of the partially air-conditioned, mostly traffic controlled instituional airport and out into a sort of gigantic carport. Immediately, I noticed two things:  one, that there were about 104 brown eyes on us, belonging to various colors of El Salvadoranean people. Two:  I noticed that my mom was doing a bit of a loop, walking around with a searching and bewildered look on her face. She was seemingly nonplussed by the 104 brown eyes staring at her. I gently guided my mom out of the bare, open space where we were the sole performers, to the side, where we became fair game to men and boys eager to carry our bags for us. They grabbed at our arms, bags, and wrists in a blatant violation of our American personal space. American personal space usually gets lost in Central American practicality and the hand to mouth existence.

As we stepped out from the shade, we were greeted by the sun, who also seemed to be edging in on our personal space. The rays warmed us to the core, and I fleetingly wondered if there was anything like cold winter.

After being picked up, arriving at the guest house, and eating lunch, we were off to the market. He we tramped through the rows and rows of varying degrees of rank smells. Eventually, my mom tired, and we sat and rested while the others, a missionary couple and two visiting girls, jaunted off to see the floral part of the market.

As my mom and I rested beside some dusty, dingy cages filled with sickly looking rabbits and squawking parrots. Across the aisle from us sat a few school girls sitting on makeshift seats, with some working diligently and others giggling, poking each other, one mimicking (so realistically, I wasn't sure she was faking) a baby's cry, and one skipping, jumping, and chattering in front of the rest, trying to attract attention, but mostly doing it because she was a little girl, and that's what little girls do. One slightly older girl sat on a pile of feed sacks on a pallet, bouncing up her pantless baby sister and trying to catch my eye. Eventually, she discarded the pretense of using her baby sister as a prop to gain my easily given attention and simply grinned a big, lovely, I-a-carefree-teenager smile at me. Soon after, an old lady with a head scarf, knee length skirt, a thick, mama-like trunk, and lips who seemed to have disappeared shoved the little dancer our way with a stool. The little dancer shyly approached us with a twinkle in her eye, but with the lightness gone from her feet. She nervously zipped her thumb in her mouth and bit. When we smiled and thanked her, the rest of the girls, who had paused in their activities as she approached us, burst into giggles as the little girl returned. 

I finally worked up the courage to try my Spanish which I learned as a teenager. I asked her name. Upon hearing me speak such a personal question, three other girls hopped over and crowded around me, shyly with huge smiles on their brown faces. The little chunky dancer with the broad smile became Valentina; the one with the baby was Rebeca, and the baby was Daniel (fem). They began to tell me various different things which they thought I would like to know. After flubling around in my mind for a point of connection, I asked to see the book. They giggled and went for the book. Up popped the book's owner, a snaggle-toothed, skinny girl of about ten years. I looked through her matematticas book, her sciencia book, and grammaticas book. They were much more interested in showing me their pictures of Hannah Montana and Zac Efron than their sketches of parallelograms and the various parts of a tree. We chatted with my mom translating, but mostly with both of us smiling and laughing.

When my group arrived back, it was with disappointment that I waved good-bye and nonchalantly said "Adios (One of the few Spanish words I never stutter on)" to the crowd of chattering girls. As always, I thought to myself of how much I would love to break the language barrier and talk to them meaningfully. But I joined the train and trotted off to the next tourist attraction.