Every year, there is the Winter Festival here in my site. Vendors come from all over to sell their goods and people come to see the dances and celebrations. It sounds great, like the thousands of people who flock to Times Square every year for Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rocking Eve, which, by the way, has been changed to Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rocking Eve with Ryan Seacrest (mom, you called it from the beginning, Ryan is totally the new Dick). I digress. Basically, the native New Yorker hates the overflow of people and the security nightmare that cramming all those people into a tight space entails. That is sort of like the Winter Festival in my site on 1/10000 of the scale. My usually calm, cute town, along with the people trying to make an honest living, was filled with Che Guevara, sickle and hammer wearing young, faux hippies, who hadn’t the slightest clue what this international counterculture symbol actually stood for, only that he was “revolutionary”. I certainly support freedom of expression/opinion, but being revolutionary entails more than a scraggly beard, a Che t-shirt, a Che hat and camo pants. As a result of the civil war and the overall political environment, Che has become so immensely popular, without being understood (trust me, I’ve asked). Since Che’s very ideas were about armed class struggle in order to achieve equality, the very idea that he would still be so popular is interesting. El Salvador went through that armed struggle for so many years and it devastated the country. It seems kind of like the some of the good ole boys at my former institution of higher education who would wield the confederate flag. They would paint the flag in their frat house, wear Confederate flag belt buckles, start speaking with a bit of a twang, all whilst being from way far north of the Mason-Dixon line. Symbols stand for things, they often and important part of our past, but are misunderstood and misused in the present.

Long story short, these hippies were using my bathroom (unauthorized) and I didn’t like it. They used my toilet paper and prices are only going up these days, I can’t be sharing my TP with just anyone.

Also, during this week, I was a model for Japanese culture day (RANDOM). But there is JICA, the equivalent of the Japanese Peace Corps, and they had a Japan day during the festival (oddly, there was no American day). Also, the view is from my room on a cloudy day, not bad.

Also, I hiked to see a waterfall a few miles away from me. Very nice, very nice.