Back in ES; Rooting ourselves

After the week at Ario’s Mom’s house we headed back to stay at Edenilson’s house, partly to have a little respite (kids are a lot of work!) and to see if there were any housing opportunities around where they lived, in Santa Tecla. Ario had visited one house in Apaneca (I was supposed to go too but I had an extremely unsettled stomach that day). Apaneca is a mountain town about 20 minutes by car from Chalchuapa that was very nice but too expensive for us ($500 a month, fully furnished). It’s strange for me to think that that’s expensive for us after we paid $1500 a month in rent in SF! So while hanging out in San Salvador we put out feelers out there, and in Chalchuapa, with people to try and look for a home. We went and checked out one unfurnished home in Chalchuapa but it didn’t seem to be in the best condition so we didn’t pursue it.  Unfortunately that Wednesday night the runs took a hold of my intestines, and they hit me hard again. That night I had the chills and woke up Thursday with a fever (I haven’t had a fever since I was a child!). From Thursday through the weekend I barely ate and even the smell of food made me nauseous. All I did was sleep hoping my stomach would get better. By Saturday night Ario wasn’t looking so good either. Here’s a picture of him suffering:

Monday afternoon I learned that I had parasites and was so excited to hear that and that there was a medicine that was going to make me feel better.  Ario got the medicine too because he was convinced he had them too. It took over a week for my body to return completely to normal and a little bit less for Ario. We think we got them somewhere in our travels, through unfiltered water we drank somewhere in Nicaragua. L

My reward I gave myself for surviving the parasites was a haircut! Yeka, Ario’s Mom, Bety and I headed to the salon for a girls’ outing. Yeka re-colored her hair:

Bety got a pedicure:

And I chopped 10 inches off my hair! Whoever comes first from the US will be taking my pony tails back to send to Locks of Love! (My goal had been to wait longer to cut my hair but I just couldn’t wait with the heat!):

Adding to our list of good happenings (first one being the killing of each and every one of our Entamoeba Histolityca invaders), we found a house on Avenida Dos de Abril Norte, in Chalchuapa and signed a lease for six month beginning September 1^st.

The house is spacious, it has a huge living room, kitchen and dining room, plus, two rooms that each has their own bathroom. The house is in the historical and bohemian part of town. To top it all, we live across the way from a beautiful restaurant where local bands and songwriters play and sing every weekend. The name of the place is La Rinconchita, and is home of some of the best pupusas in town, but we have to admit, the search is still going on. During our first night at the house (September 1^st, also being our 4 year anniversary), we enjoyed a yummy dinner of pupusas and later enjoyed a bottle of wine with a couple of newly found friends, the Chalchuapan poets Kike Zepeda, and William Morales, originally Edenilson’s friends, but now officially part of our peeps here in this lovely land…

We hope people won’t be too disappointed that we decided to change plans, and gave up Nicaragua…. Here are some pics of our place (and the furniture that we bought and borrowed):

Our living room set that we bought used from our landlord's friends

Our new fridge!

Our mini stove/oven with which we received a two frying pans and a set of dishes

The Master Bedroom :)

So… now six weeks into living in our new home, we are settled and still parasite free!!  Hooray!! We hope you’ll come visit soon!!! (we have tons and tons of filtered water, we swear)

P.S. We appreciate the blog followers we still have (Thanks Mom and Dad!) and hope to be better at updating now that we've gotten some routine in our lives. Stay tuned for stories of locking ourselves in and out of the house, fiestas, and visa renewing!