¡Feliz Navidad!

Over the holiday weekend, I took a mini holiday (as the Australians would call it) to El Salvador to a small surf town called El Zonte. I went with a bunch of other volunteers through a group tour, so we had our own guide, driver, and transportation. The place we stayed at has its own kitchen, pool, and awesome view of the beach. And as I wrote this blog entry, I was sitting in a hammock.

For our first full day here, we learned how to surf (don't worry, Mom, we each had our own surf instructor watching out for us). They took us out to the waves where we learned to stand up and ride the wave in. I actually did pretty well, standing up fully most of the time. At one point (when I was thinking about all the crazy sea life out there), I felt something like a snap bracelet hit my wrist, and then it started stinging... It was most definitely a jellyfish! But it was pretty small, so there was no first-aid needed (and for those of you who have watched that episode of FRIENDS where Monica gets stung, it definitely wasn't THAT extreme). I just kept surfing after that.

Christmas Eve started with a hike up down to a waterfall. The guide who led us to the waterfalls said that there were stairs and that we would be fine in flip-flops... wrong. The "stairs" were big patches of dirt being held up by sticks and rocks. And flip flops? I would have much rather worn my hiking boots, but once again, Old Navy's $2.50 flip flops prevailed. After a 30 minute hike, we finally reached the waterfalls which are in the middle of nowhere. The guide then said, "Okay, this is where we jump in," and he just jumped off of this cliff that had to be about 20 feet high. I was a little nervous to jump at first, but the water was so deep that there was nothing to worry about. It was at least a two to three second freefall... A nice precursor to eventually going skydiving. The pictures don't do the jump justice, and it was actually way more daunting than it looks.

...And after.

Before jumping...

Since Christmas Eve is the bigger day in Central America, we prepared for a huge potluck feast. We went to the grocery store to do some shopping and also stopped on the pier to get some fresh fish and shrimp. And no holiday or celebration is complete in Central America without fireworks. (You can hear them go off at all hours of the day in the streets... kids in the States get excited about those snakes you light on fire while people here will actually hold an ignited bottle rocket in their hand).

It took about two and a half hours for all the food to be prepared... there was so much delicious food (even some French quiche!). Then after dinner, we cleaned up, hung out, and then went to the beach to set off fireworks around midnight.

It was pretty awesome going swimming at the beach and walking around in shorts on Christmas. But the Christmas tree seemed so out of place, since I'm used to it being freezing cold outside. I won't complain though.