it's 5:58 am. im laying in bed, half awake, thinking about the english class i will be teaching in 63 minutes. and about the fresh coffee i will be drinking in 19 minutes (when we were younger, our father would report to us or answer our questions with a smiliar precision. as if everything were an arrival or take off from the airport).
i get up. i bathe out of a "pila," a tile tub that is filled once or twice a week, and out of which i also use water to wash dishes, clean the casa, and do everything else short of consumption. the water is cold. COLD. but this isn't peace corps serbia, and i'm not suffering. i've come to like bathing like this. i hold the full bucket above me head for ten seconds, enjoying the last sleepy moments of the morning, before dumping over my head the cold life source that one so easily takes for granted. i dump two more full buckets over my head, and this just to get started. you see, this is a true luxury where i live. in what the people here call the summer months of october through april, we will get very little rain and will have much less water. i will be bathing using probably half a bucket. maybe less.
now that i am dressed, i can plan the rest of the english class that starts in 45 minutes, but first, the coffee. i boil water, turn off the burner, and add two big spoon fulls of ground coffee. i let it sit for six and a half minutes (that was for you, dad) and then pour the coffee through a strainer into my favorite mug that came with me here. and there you go. fresh coffee.
i finish my lesson plan by drawing a "family tree," a diagram with my family members names and their relation to me in english and spanish. i will use this diagram to both share some personal family history and teach the names of words like mother, brother, sister in law, etc.
i open my door and greet the day. or it greets me. or both. a little differently each morning. today it is raining and the world is grey, but the sky in the east is brightening, a yoke blistering in the somber dawn.
i have ten minutes. it's a five minute walk to school, and an inevitable collection of one minute conversations with neighbors, shop keepers, even strangers. today is no different. i am stopped by people who bless me, joke with me. people that give me sweets or fruits or grave advice. i accept it all the only way i know how, with a smile.
the rain comes down harder, seemingly fighting the day break. i walk into class. two students are sitting quietly, studying notes from another class. one looks up and smiles. "good morning teechair."
soon, we are joined by the rest of the senior class, a collection of fairly fantastic people, brought up in the relentless life of war, development, and everything in-between. I begin by announcing that i know that they have a test this morning in their next class and that they should study for most of our time together, and that we will learn some english for the last ten minutes of class. it ends up being the last 15 minutes. i talk about my family, my sisters and parents and grandparents, and of ireland and cancer and happiness and struggle. i have their complete attention. i teach them how to say niece, and we talk about brothers in law. the bell rings, and i tell them not to cry but that i will not be here thursday, and then tell them not to cry but that i will be here friday. i say "later" and walk out of the room but am followed close behind by the laughter and then more laughter as those who did not get the double joke are repeated it until otherwise.
i make the same ten minute walk home, this time accompanied by a rain and an advancing daylight that that have compromised with drizzle and sunbeams. a rainbow over the valcano. another morning in el salvador.

Frijol Blanco

It's another perfect evening. The sun is setting. I walk up the street and turn around to see the last, fading image of the ocean(it's an hour away by car, but visible at my altitude on clear days). Indifferent, stray dogs pass by without even a glance. The people are much different. Eduardo, one of my better friends here, greets me with a growing grin that lights up his two year old face like a bonfire. I pick him up and toss him into the air. He screams in delight. I tossle his hair, and speak to him in english. I call him eddie. I tell him the girls will be after him in no time. He watches me walk away, probably wondering why people always come and go at no notice, a novice in our mobile world.
Now it's twilight. The park seems to have been built for this hour of the day. The trees loiter like the unemployed. Their shadows hide the town's aspiring lovers and thoughtful populace. The lights hover like little suns, the bugs their own galaxies.
At one end of the park gather a group of adolescent boys. To the stranger they are the hardest to reach. They are at once somber and suspicious. But i am less a stranger, if not a mystery.
"qué pasa?" one of them says. This is an invitation to sit and talk. I study their faces and realize i recognize most of them. Students, workers, all of them quiet individuals by day, a bustling and raucus collective at night. We chat. Someone asks why i am here. I tell them about the peace corps and about me.
"Y habla Ingleis?" they ask. We continue talking in Spanish.
"Do i speak English? Yes."
"And you have a wife and some girlfriends?"
"no. Neither."
This continues until someone asks my name. Mine is a common one, even here. And boring to the unadoring. So they ask my nickname.
"I don't have one."
They prompt me for one anyway, but i object. "How can someone give themselves a nickname? It has to come from his friends."
We experiment with a few possibilities. It's now very dark, but our laughter fills the void of warmth left by the vacant sun. Someone says something that i don't understand, and someone responds, "no, i know like ten kids named 'bean.' "
Someone adds, "Frijol blanco," white bean. Everyone laughs. I laugh. Not that fitting-in laughter, but that full laughter that is meant for friday nights with friends.

---
Two months pass. This evening, sitting in my house, i celebrate my acceptance into this town, into this life, at each calling of my nickname by the passers by:
"HOLA FRIJOL BLANCO."

Life is good. Where as before, i knew few, and no one was willing to greet the unnamed stranger, i am now greeted by many people i know, and many people i do not. Time passes like it always has- too quickly- but is more enjoyed.
And my work is progressing nicely. Maybe sometime soon i will write about it.