Mayday!

Friday was another trip to Universidad de El Salvador, this time to participate in a panel discussion on renewable energy organized by an environmental group, Unidad Ecológica Nacional de El Salvador (UNES). Basilia and her mom took the bus with me across town to UES and attended part of the panel. The turnout was not as big as for the embassy-sponsored events the week before at other universities, but it was a chance to get to know the UES campus and people better. Some departments were having graduation the same morning, so the campus was bustling. As requested, I gave a talk on the distinctions between renewable energy and sustainable energy. The event started late and some presenters ran over their allotted time, so in the end there was unfortunately no chance for audience questions or comments. My favorite part of the event was Roberto Bonilla of solar energy company SEESA. He's a real character, very opinionated and animated but with great messages to share. There was also an interesting talk by a researcher who has been doing monitoring to quantify the wave and tidal energy resources of El Salvador and has quite a bit of data.

I spent the afternoon working at the Antiguo Cuscatlán campus, then went home in time to greet our good friend Mayra and her mother Eva who came over from Honduras by bus to have a short visit with us. Like Basilia, Mayra married a Peace Corps volunteer and now lives in California, but she's currently visiting family in Honduras. In the evening we all went over to the anthropology museum, where there was an event with live music and food. The museum stayed open until 10 pm, so I finally had a chance to go through the galleries. It has some nice exhibits. The social event was in the courtyard. The headline act was Coast to Coast Jazz Ensemble from the U.S. Their repertoire is pretty diverse, from Route 66 to Django Reinhardt, and the two guitarists in the group are phenomenal.

Early yesterday Basilia's mom left to go back home to Guajiquiro, Honduras. Mayra, Eva, Basilia, and I took a bus down to Salvador del Mundo in the western part of the city center to check out the May Day workers' march. Some Salvadorans had cautioned us to stay away from the event, that it could get ugly. But we couldn't pass this up. As it turned out, it was quite a wholesome and upbeat event, with many families present. FMLN red was everywhere, not to mention gorillas playing samba drums. There were lots of police, but they seemed relaxed and friendly, not at all confrontational from what we saw -- many of them were posing for photos with people or being interviewed by student journalists. It felt as safe as, say, the San Francisco Gay Pride parade.  It was very heartening to see how mainstream the pro-labor left is in El Salvador - the turnout was enormous, energetic but peaceful, and still growing when we decided it was time to go.

Come on, how dangerous can an event be if it's got drum majorettes?

Wanting to make the most of the day, we next caught a bus out to La Libertad on the coast and from there another to El Tunco where our friends Noelle, John and James live. Noelle was away interviewing people as part of her research, but we visited with John and his son James. This was shaping up to be the first really rainy day of the wet season, but we wanted a dip in the ocean. We walked out to the beach and swam for awhile in the warm water. A nice thing about the rain was you didn't have to go looking for a shower to get the salt off your skin after you got out of the water. How nice to stand in the rain in swim trunks and not feel at all cold!

In the evening back in San Salvador we went to bust our bellies at our favorite restaurant, the Salvadoran cuisine buffet at Las Cofradias. After that we went to Plaza Futura and Las Galerias, two upscale shopping centers that are pretty close to each other in the Escalón part of town. Early this morning Eva and Mayra headed back for Honduras, leaving me and Basilia alone in our apartment for the first time in many weeks. We're using today to rest, do laundry, catch up on the blog...