Life Catches Up

Yes, I'm starting to have longer gaps between blog entries. Life is catching up and I'm getting busier, not so much  spare time to fool around with blogging and suchlike pastimes. But that's a good thing, isn't it? This entry will be long to make up for my delinquency.

The cool weather of my last entry is a distant memory. The last few days have been quite warm, working their way up toward full-on hot. Since I last checked in with you, my mother-in-law Basilia, (the younger) Basilia's sister Oneyda, and Oneyda's 7-year-old son Emilson have been visiting with us. Last Friday Basilia took a bus to San Miguel to meet them coming in on the Marcala (Honduras)-San Miguel bus.

While they were en route to San Salvador Friday evening, I went to a "conferencia magistral," an event at the Radisson Hotel celebrating the publication by the Universidad Don Bosco Press of the Central American edition of a papal encyclical on truth and charity. Quite a formal event, my first of what will no doubt be many occasions of feeling under-dressed and outclassed. I thought I was doing pretty good by putting on a button-up long sleeve shirt, tie and slacks but I turned out to be the only man without a suit jacket.

Saturday we all went on the bus back out to Playa El Tunco for what was Oneyda and Emilson's first-ever visit to a beach. We checked in at the Eco del Mar Hotel (a nice, simple but elegant place, I recommend it) and headed for the surf. We met up with Noelle, John and James, spent a little time at their house, and also saw the other family we met last time at El Tunco: Walter, Jeri Ann, and Orion, this time with Jeri Ann's other child, Maya. The kids all played together on the beach, but we adults all played just as hard. Mellow surf in the morning, that got a bit rough in the afternoon. We went out to eat twice, Mexican food at Taco Guanaco and some really good pizza at Mopelia.

Doña Basilia, James, John, Noelle, me, Basilia, Emilson, and Oneyda at Playa el Tunco

Emilson's first time in the ocean

Oneyda and the two Basilias knee deep in the warm Pacific

Sunday (after an early swim) we came back to Antiguo Cuscatlán about noon, me sporting my first real sunburn in quite a few years. We hustled to get together a veggie lasagna, some salad, and a coconut vegetable curry in time for Basilia's 4pm birthday party. We had quite a few guests over, including the Burgos family, Beatriz and her mom, all the Fulbright Scholars I could round up (Anne, Chris, Joshua, and Mike), and Walter and Jeri Ann with their two kids. The one bummer was that Noelle and family had a car breakdown on the way in from the coast and had to miss the event. The cake from Jardín del Pan was awesome.

Basi safely extinguishes a household fire

Yesterday was Basilia's real birthday. El Salvador celebrated by having an earthquake (a harmless 6.0 centered in Guatemala, but it felt long and strong enough to be spooky on the heels of Humboldt's nearly harmless 6.5er nine days earlier and the horrific one in Haiti last week). I got back into the working routine for the day, then we all went to the cinema at Merliot Plaza to see the new Chipmunks movie, here known as Alvin y Las Ardillas 2. All were entertained.

Today I made a road trip to Citalá, Chalatenango with UDB's Nelson Quintanilla, his wife Norma, and Oneyda to have a look at a site where a French Canadian priest is building a mountain retreat center in a beautiful setting just a few miles from the Honduran border. The priest wants help with designing an off-grid renewable energy system for the center. The wind resource maps from SWERA (a great web resource) and the local ridgetop topography suggest the place has some real possibilities for wind energy, and solar is certainly an option. The project architect and engineers met with us and gave us an electronic set of project design documents. Nelson and I are going to rough up a load analysis and some design options for a wind system with generator backup, possibly incorporating solar as well. Will make a fun case study to share with the students in the renewables course.

The view from inside the under-construction church at Citalá, Chalatenango