raine_days' Understudy

Hello! This is Pick-up Artist here doing a guest posting. I arrived this afternoon in San Salvador. I was met by the ever popular Chepe who led me through immigrations and customs. I tried to use what little Spanish I can remember. I was able to let Chepe know that I wanted to stop at the bathroom before proceeding to immigration. "Un momento. Los banos." Then I got to cut in line - ha ha! The woman working behind the counter said something to me in English and I answered "si". She then asked me in a kind of snooty tone if I spoke Spanish or not. After immgration Chepe, random airport employee leading us, and I were all waiting for my bag. This was my second moment of communication in espanol. The airport guy wanted the claim ticket so as the bags started rolling out he could match it up to mine. Well, I took this bright yellow duffel bag of mine so I can always easily identify my bags. So when the guy started to look at a black suitcase, I stopped him and motioned to the bags and said "amarillo." Then Chepe said "yellow." Oh, international relations at its best! A funny side note, as the three of us were waiting for the bag, there was an American man standing near us who was listening inon Chepe and airport dude talk in Spanish. The American then asks me if I speak Spanish. Did he think I was being detained or something and that these guys were going to mistreat me??? The highlight of the ride to the embassy was the billboard for "BIMBO." No, it was not an ad for an escort service but rather an ad for bread!! Since getting to the embassy I have just been hanging out with my pal raine_days. :-) I think tonight we will just relax as tomorrow is our big tour!! We have to make miracles happen outside the city limits of San Salvador.

All I Need is A Miracle

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days but it's been fairly uneventful. Work has been going well and I've been staying busy but unfortunately I can't go into the details. I have made some miracles happen...nothing big but still miracle worthy.

Tomorrow Pick-Up Artist is making her way down here to see me. She'll get to meet the infamous Chepe. Chepe has been the one that picks me up and takes me home everyday. Between Chepe and I we're just a bunch of chatty Kathys in the car....not really. Between his lack of English and my lack of Spanish there isn't a whole bunch being said but somehow we've managed to make it work. Anyway, Pick-Up Artist will be staying through Monday and right now we have a tour planned for Saturday. It's supposed to take us to some Mayan ruins, a big lake here and a tour of a coffee plantation. It's kind of funny that there aren't any Starbucks down here but I guess they purchase their coffee beans from some of the farms in this country. Otherwise that's about all from around here. I'll be sure to post pictures of our weekend fun.

La Marcha De Los Pinguinos

For those of you that don't get the translation (which I highly doubt) the title is The March of the Penguins. Since there's not much to do around here I figured I would check out the movie theaters near by. The March of the Penguins isn't exactly my first choice but I had no idea what movies were playing nor the times of them so I struck out blindly and this was my only choice. Now I know that the movie has won awards and is supposed to be great but a lot of this got lost in translation since the film was in Spanish. To me it looked like someone discovered a new trafficking market for ecstasy as the whole film was pretty much a bunch of penguins in cuddle puddles who get it on all the time. Apparently that's pretty much the gist of the film as I later looked up the description of the movie online.
Overall the movie was okay but it got me thinking about the TV shows I've been watching with the things that are lost in translation and other things I've noticed. The Simpsons is big down here and is completely dubbed in Spanish but everything seems to fall flat for me. I never realized how the voices of the characters alone can make or break a show. The voices for the Simpsons are horrible thus not seeming as funny.
They have the boomerang channel down here but again everything is dubbed in Spanish. Since it's in Spanish I've realized that I started looking at the details of the cartoon more. For instance Popeye has been on a lot and I've come to the conclusion that he's a manwhore. Why you ask? He has four children out of wedlock as he seems to be the only one to claim them in the show. Even weirder are their names: Pipeye, Peepeye, Poopeye and Pupeye. Another example can be found within the Flinstones. First off apparently it's considered funny to print fake bills and launder them since that's what Barney was running out of his home. Secondly, since they are in the stone age all of their clothes have nice, jagged seams.... the not quite finished look. But they wear hats that are nice and tailored, no jagged seams there. These aren't the only instances just the ones that come to mind. What's up with all of this?