It would appear that the protective instincts that Jose fails to show when he is at home, really come to the front when we are in El Salvador. Except to me, it doesn´t seem to be protective, but rather a belief in my general incompetence to cope with any hardship. Unlike rural Kentucky, most of the transportation in El Salvador is done by bus. With regular gas prices at 3.73, diesel at 2.73 and a bus ride across town .25 …well travelling by bus makes sense. However, Jose feels that travelling by bus would be too much of a hardship for me. So he told his entire family that I wouldn´t want to travel by bus. And he tells me that it´s too dangerous. If by dangerous he means that I may be asphyxiated by the fumes of the diesel engines that run amok among the streets in el Salvador, well then maybe. Or perhaps he means that there might be an accident … and after being on the bus when the driver decided that he didn´t want to wait in traffic and decided to back up …. Yes I said back up a big school bus sized vehicle in the middle of a busy street during a busy time of day …. Well.. I can believe that too. I´m quite sure that no where in America would a bus decide to back up in main street and get away with it. So on the days when Jose wanted to go out with Eliseo, I was essentially a prisoner of the house. Which, if you know me, isn´t anything too bad … as long as I had a fan and a book. But then there was Isaiah, who wanted someone to entertain him, or wanted someone to keep him from eating something rotten from the floor, or to keep him from falling from the 2nd story floor … quite selfish of him, I know … did he not realize that this was my vacation … I think not.
Luckily, Cristabel, my sister in law, decided one night to take me to the Plaza de Mundo. So she grabbed up Isaiah, and we walked up to the bus station, got on the bus, and were there in just a few minutes. The Plaza de Mundo is essentially a mall … nothing too extravagant. It has the hint of air conditioning, but nothing that really satisfies you desire to be cold. But thank god that Cristabel broke the bus barrier, because the next day, Jose, Elijah, Eliseo, Isaiah and I all took the bus to the souvenior shop … which is a whole different entry … Although Jose would look at me and say, we´re going to have to walk a few blocks. Which made me grumpy … but I suppose to be fair, he knows that I´m not much of a walker, despite my maiden name, and would most likely complain …
