Yes, a blog on birds.

Could it be? Yes, I'm going to dedicate a section of my blog to the birds surrounding my house. I feel like a good chunk of my experience is constantly sensing these lovely (or err, tal vez, not so lovely animals) From the roosters as my official clock, to the occassional "oh no, i stepped in poo again", moments.
As I'm sitting here writting my blog, surrounded by a million animals, mostly birds, I felt it only to be appropriate to write a short blog on my bird ecounters these past week.

- My observation: The peerekos (small parrots) here are treated more like pets then dogs.
- I had my first rooster pooping on my head experience ( No need to explain more)
- And last but certainly not least, the two doves that manage to make it under my bed every single night no matter how much stuff I put there to block the entrance (even somehow managed to pass through the roll of medical tape I used to circle the bottom section of my bed off. The worst part isn't the poop that I slide on when I walk through my room. The worst part are the noises they make - a noise I can't even describe but I think I do a pretty darn good impression of. So my family decided after 4 months of me being here, that the chuchos (dogs) are out to get these birds and that they need to sleep inside. I almost didn't believe them until I saw the chuchos attempt to eat the duck one night. That explains that ducks missing foot.


On to some more exciting events - like my New Years Eve. It can be summed up with: Good friends, lots of fireworks, no ball dropping, Hugs at random moments throughout the night, more fireworks, more hugs, and FREE surf lessons. That pretty much sums up my New Years at the Playa Tunco! Of course the surfing part comes with a story, a brief one. I met a surf instructor and he gave me free surf lessons. My friends like to call him Tarzan because his hair looks mine when I wake up in the morning.
Anyway, the surfing is much more difficult then it looks. Needless to say, it wasn't much of a success, but it was still fun.

So all this week, there was a festival here. Let me recap the week in a nutshell: bicycle race, concert at the school, men climbing a post (5 men on top of each others shoulders) for money at the top, some thing with horses/the madrina/gifts, and dances! I was alittle iffy about drinking at the dances, but hey I can't lead my community in believing that I don't drink once in awhile, so what the hell I had a beer (or 3). The next morning I was ready to see what the community said about this. Some lady actually told me its bueno. "It's good for a stomach ache" were her exact words, minus the sarcasm.

I have never met anyone so depressed as my host mother and I hope I never do. All the life is sucked out out of this lady and there is literally nothing left but a body of a woman, a blank stare into space, and cries and moans at random times throughout the day. I might have mentioned this in a past blog, but its worth mentioning again since its such a a big part of my life here. There are times where she won't leave her bed for days , and also where I don't even see her eat for days. I don't know If i'll ever fully understand how she got to be this way, but I wish the day comes for her with the hope, life, energy, or whatever it is she may be looking for. My 4 sisters need a mother.

So I'm starting to have these delusions. For example, I thought my host sister was eating a chocolate chip cookie the one night before bed (mmm, where did she get that? what a great late night snack i thought!), but it was just a tortilla with burnt spots. The other day I thought I saw a truck driving through my community pulling a jet ski but they were just pulling sacks of frijoles.

Some other random moments: My 4 host sisters quickly leaving the room to watch an airplane flying overhead, followed by a "It's going to the USA" To them, only 2 countries exist in this world. Spending my sunday morning attempting to get 2 goats to make babies.

Oh El Salvador.