We were never known as cooks before we left on our trip and we certainly haven't picked up any cooking tips along the way (unless it involves making PB&J), but it's always good to eat something that you make yourself.  On Sunday, after going to the grocery store, we cooked ourselves some pasta and drank some wine.  While that may seem perfectly normal, we haven't cooked ourselves a meal in months or had our own kitchen.  Hooray for some sort of normalcy!

So we're settling in to our new apartment in San Salvador, El Salvador, our home away from... well, where we used to call home.  We're volunteering for 3 months with a young non-profit that's affiliated with where I used to work in Chicago, and in exchange we got set-up with a pretty cozy apartment and a few other perks.  More to come about that, for now, we talk about shopping.

Our place is furnished, but we needed the essential things like dishcloths, hangers, and wine glasses, and like most ladies starting a new job, I needed a new outfit.  I think I almost fried Kyle this weekend though, because we made two trips to the same grocery store and bought stuff from five malls (including 2 more grocery stores).  Now we didn't over do it, and we only spent about $100.  It's just that so much is different here, and there's no Super Target to one-stop-shop.  We have no car to just load up the back seat, so it was tougher than home.  It was actually sort of funny because I ended up carry a two pack of pillows around for a while and into a movie theater. 

So, if I were to tell you that this past weekend we went to a baseball game on Friday, grabbed some lunch at McDonald's and headed to the lake on Saturday, then spent most of Sunday water skiing on the lake, what location do you think I am in?

A)  Suburbs of Chicago
B)  Minnesota

   We haven't driven in 3 months
+ We rented a crap-tastic car

Indiana Jones is descending into a dark tomb where scary music is playing and there are scorpions running about.  All of a sudden the theater starts to shake a bit back and forth.  Is this a new special effect?  Is it like one of those Disneyland rides that is both a ride and a movie at once?  No, this is San Salvador, a city surrounded by volcanoes where occasionally the ground moves without notice and that was a little tremor.

For those of you who have not experienced something like this, it is quite weird.  It's kind of like when you step off of a moving walkway onto non-moving ground; everything around you looks like it isn't going anywhere, but you feel like you are moving.  I must admit that it is a little nerve-wracking, too, as it comes on without any warning and there's really nothing you can do about it.  Especially given what has happened in China recently I would prefer my ground to be closer to the static end than the moving end.