Apulo turned out to have many different surprises including: my first dog bite, getting sick, plaza mundo adventures, Suchitoto trip, and getting my new visa.
One day I was supposed to go to the Pancino there in the morning I had gotten bit by a dog on the leg the night before so my family was really worried and we went on an adventure to the hospital that day which was really quite fun to see what the hospital was like. Like normal though it was the extremely long waiting process like all emergency rooms and we got sent around different places and they mostly said the same thing and asked the same questions. I learned new vocabulary though but I don't know if its spelled with a u or an o Mordar is how I think its spelled though.
The Hospital was very cool because it had kinda an outdoor feeling. I'm not sure that mix of air would be great for the patients but I liked the feeling of being inside the hospital with the forest right next to me. It was a very big emergency room that was crowded with people all the time. They had a good system though which seemed to work pretty fairly. The most interesting part is that its not like the US is now with computerization so it was interesting to see all the charting and writing that went on and how long that extended the process. During the whole time that I was there I did a lot of talking, listening to my ipod, and oh yeah they cleaned my cut with water and nothing else. I wasn't surprised they didn't need to do anything but I was a bit agitated when they asked me the same question for the 4th time. All was not lost that day though because as we were leaving I met a doctor who asked me how my visit was and we got to talking some and I said I was going to university to study biology and then later go onto studying medicine and we exchanged contact info and hopefully I can go back and volunteer there for a few days so we'll see how that works out. I also just found out recently that Manelio has a pediatrician friend so I might go visit his work for a day or so when I have the time.
Getting sick was basically just a quick two day thing but it was no fun. I still ended up teaching and doing fine I wasn't forced to stay in my bed but still... no fun. Oh and they gave me a mountain of medicines which once I googled what they were for and since I had already been taking an antibiotic I didn't use most of them so we have some extra medicine for the trip haha.
The first time I went to plaza mundo I was impressed but it was also extremely hilarious because I was thinking what were the construction workers thinking when they put up the words in English. One of the interesting things about plaza mundo is they have about half of the stores with English words in their signs like Mister Doughnut and then instead of putting “Pastel!” they put “Cakes” pretty much the same amount of letters but I guess they wanted to confuse El Salvador by putting English letters on all of the stores. I tried to not laugh but it was just too funny to see all of the stores I knew here in a spanish speaking country. Its like the least they could do is translate a few words so people can understand and the words can be useful to the public. My other favorite part about Plaza Mundo is the food court. First of all its beautiful and amazing with a waterfall that wasn't working but they are close to putting it in I think. Also they had subway and many other different kinds of foods which I tried China Wok, and Subway my two times eating there. I love it because everyone pronounces the shops with Spanish pronunciation. I guess that's kinda obvious but I never thought that other people in the world know the same restaurants but think of them in a different way. It was quite baffling as well because most of the shops have a reason why they are named that but they don't understand why one shop like KFC has that name KFC or why Subway is named Subway. Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to say that salvadorans are stupid because they are anything but. It was just hard to understand the thinking behind putting stores in English in a Spanish speaking country (the least they could do is put a translation underneath for a few words)
Apulo was fun because in all my adventures I usually had my “caravan” tagging along with me. At least I always had one person with me which was actually nice for company but sometimes I felt bad that I was forcing them to come along but actually they were really happy to come along and wanted to so instead we just joked about having my caravan with me all the time. My caravan consisted of three tortugas (Fran, Margot and Mirtala) and their kids or sometimes grand kids. The biggest Caravan I had was on my trip to Suchitoto... We had a total of 9 people including me. We had a good time though resting on the bus playing in the plaza in Suchi and having lunch an breakfast in the market. I got everything I needed there like money, stuff for my new visa and saying hi to a few of my good friends. After we got back to the Apulo area we went to Plaza Mundo for ICE CREAM which I treated my caravan too and it was a great experience. My community in Apulo LOVES to take pictures haha so I'll post some of those pictures today as well. On our way back to Apulo from Plaza mundo I even helped out some as a Cobrador ( the guy who yells where the bus is going when it pulls up to the stops and shakes his hand to see if people want to come on the bus. Overall a great time was had by all.
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