A medley of friends

Today's odd and delightful mixture of meetings and meals reminds me why it's so essential to come back home. I had breakfast with the Sisters (my favorite cereal that Sr. Rose Anna gets for me when I'm back accompanied by a dish of glorious rhubarb sauce that Sr. Joan set out for me), then met with Sue Nies, co-director for our CSJP Associates on the west coast, to talk about ideas for the new Associate program - we opened the Constitutions and Bible and our new magazine, Living Peace, and had a grand time finding resources and making connections.

Then I dashed over to Seattle to have coffee with Lisa Dennison, a good friend from St. Patrick Parish. We talked joyfully over lattes about Ignatian spirituality, the enneagram, our families and a million other subjects. And I dashed back to Bellevue for the monthly lunch of women from the Queen Anne High School (Seattle) class of 1959 - great hugs from some dear lifelong friends and the puzzle of trying to remember what I ought to know about some classmates I haven't seen since we graduated.

Then I drove peacefully back to St. Mary-on-the-Lake where Sister Sukyi Hur treated me to a wonderful hour of acupuncture, massage, and reflexology, designed to strengthen my lungs and soothe an aching shoulder. Renewed, I stopped at PeaceHealth's System Office, in Bellevue, to pick up a reconstructed computer and connect with some fellow staffers. And then I took my nephew Dan Roben out to dinner at The King and I, a long-time Bellevue favorite Thai restaurant.

How could a day hold more than this? Time with friends, Sisters and Associates, family, my PeaceHealth community, food and coffee and conversation, and even acupuncture - what riches! Best of all, I didn't have to stop for a minute to wonder how to say something - I just opened my mouth and English naturally flowed out.

Don't get me wrong - I'm looking forward to going back to my other home in Suchitoto on Saturday, revisiting my Salvadoran friends, basking in the tropical sunshine and continuing the struggle to say it right in Spanish. But I'll go back strengthened and filled by the joys of friendship, community and connection.

Up and Down I-5

This week and next, Kathy Garcia and I are selling artesania from El Salvador at our PeaceHealth regions - yesterday at St. Joseph Hospital in Bellingham, today at St. John Hospital in Longview, tomorrow at the System Office in Bellevue, next week at the Riverbend and University District campuses of Sacred Heart Hospital, Eugene. It's been great to see many friends from mission teams, meet some folk who are eager to travel to El Salvador, and sell a few Christmas ornaments. We've been delighted as well to have many contributions to the fund for water filters and to our Support-a-Tub program that pays the cost of shipping our tubs of medications to El Salvador.

It's been fun, too, to travel up and down the I-5 corridor - especially with Kathy in the car, so we could sail along in the HOV lane. But after El Salvador travel, it's almost too peaceful - I've had to drink vast quantities of coffee to stay awake, which has never been a problem in El Salvador, where the many interruptions and potential catastrophes breed hyper-alertness. Not complaining, you understand!

Kale

On Monday, I'm happy to say, my doctor, Anita Shaffer, listened to my lungs and pronounced them clear. It's a joy to be up and about again, doing some of the things I treasure during my trips home. One of them is cooking kale - with garlic and pinenuts and olive oil, braised rapidly, it's a glorious dish, all the better because kale never, ever shows up in Salvadoran markets. I cooked that tonight along with a bean soup that I learned to make in El Salvador - roasted tomatoes, onion, garlic and jalapeños pureed with red beans, ancho chiles and stock, served with avocado, sour cream (or crema in El Salvador), and chives. This was for my sister friends in Prospect House, a community on Capitol Hill that I used to live in, and they loved it. I even found coconut ice cream for dessert, which has always been the PazSalud specialty.

I haven't found a source of chives in El Salvador, so I'm bringing some seeds back, along with seeds for a cherry tomato suited to the tropics, basil, amaranth and endive. It'll be fun to see how it all does, growing in pots up on our sun deck/clothes drying deck. Got to be a sign of good health, creating and rejoicing in favorite flavors. I'm thankful to be enjoying it all.

Feliz cumpleaño, Alejandrito

Alejandro Emanuel Alvarenga is one year old today! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Alejandrito, and congratulations to Alex and Ani Paula for being such wonderful parents to this happy, healthy little guy. As any readers of this blog know, Alejandrito is also my godson, and I'm sorry not to be able to celebrate this day with him - though we had our fun a week ago.

The cost of being safe

Every time I come back to the U.S. I have a few days of being stunned by the differences - the empty streets with no food stands, impromptu markets, funerals or parades ! the smooth traffic moving along the loops and lanes of elegant highway with no cars ever parked on the side! the shops with no gun-toting guard posted outside! This time I started thinking about the cost of all those miles of carefully maintained roadways and highways, all the required parking lots in front of stores, all the elaborate security kept carefully out of sight to make you feel safer.

You see, in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America, the kind of space and speed and convenience we take for granted in the U.S. is simply too expensive. For example, you consistently enter and exit U.S. highways via exit lanes that end in overpasses, underpasses, clover leaves, each one enormously expensive to build and maintain. They're very safe, because they allow drivers to change direction and exit rapidly (except at rush hours) without colliding with competing traffic. In El Salvador, on most highways you change direction by using a paved U-turn space in the center. You enter the highway by turning right and merging with the traffic flowing in that direction. If you want to go the other direction you wait for 500 meters or so for the next official turning space; you slow down to turn into this, wait for a clear space in traffic going the other direction, turn in that direction and speed up again. As you can imagine, this system means a frequent slowing down and turning from what should be the fast lane, so it's both dangerous and congestive. But it is light-years less expensive to construct than a system of underpasses, overpasses, and one-way exits.

Think about what those choices mean. The U.S. choice is to make speed, flow, and safety hugely important at a huge cost which most U.S. drivers never think about. The Central American choice is to spend a great deal less money for roads that are slower and not as safe, but pretty adequate to move a lot of vehicles and people from one point to another. Which is the saner choice?

Grounded

A long blogging delay... I flew back to the Northwest on Saturday, about to enjoy a month-long combination of vacation, CSJP community time and work in cool rainy weather. Instead the cold that showed up last Thursday and was going strong when I got on the plane ripened into pneumonia, so that on Sunday I clocked a temperature of 102.5 - and felt like I was still in the climate of El Salvador. It's much better now, thanks to medication and rest - the temp is gone and I'm no longer coughing, but I have just about enough energy to get from the bed to the chair and back again.

The worst of this is missing the lovely three-day trip to Portland and the Olympic coast my sister and I had planned. The best of it is being at beautiful St. Mary-on-the-Lake where I look out my window onto beautiful old western red cedars and can take a walk around our meditation garden or down to the lake when the sun is out. It's also grand to see my CSJP sisters and have tasty meals cooked for me. But I'll surely be glad to be through this siege and back to normal!

Independence Day

Today is El Salvador's Indepen- dence Day, and it's cause for a fiesta, naturally, and celebration. Last night belonged to the high school kids, from the Instituto Suchito- tense, or INSU, who have their special celebration with a torchlight parade, a long, slow torchlight parade, from the high school at the edge of town to the parque central. The costumes are something to marvel at, the girls coming in groups dressed alike, some in long gowns, some in short cacheporrista (baton twirler) costumes, some in regional dress. The boys this year mostly dressed as Indians, which mostly meant not wearing much clothing and carrying not-very-efficient-looking bows and arrows. Another, smaller group, had decided on medieval armor, a much hotter choice. My personal favorite was the 10-person long Chinese dragon that appeared amidst the elegant senoritas and the nearly naked Indians. It was good to see the beautiful banner that spoke of the need to live in peace, a need everyone here experiences. And then there was a very loud dance that went on until 2 AM.

Today it was the turn of all the schools, more parades, more bands, more costumes, and happily the rain held off until all the speeches had been made and all the children photographed. Our friends Nena and Rossy came for lunch, and we all enjoyed chicken and pasta and great conversation. Happy Independence Day, El Salvador!