My Silly Teenage Stepdaughter 90% of the time, I am rather serious; so serious, in fact, that I tend towards anxiety when things don’t go according to plan or there are too many unknown variables. But every once and awhile, I go to the opposite extreme, and just let loose. Read more
The Salvadoran Gringo versus the Google Maps Car On Fridays, I take my baby Valentina to a babysitter in the neighborhood. She’s a nice Bolivian lady whom we’ll refer to as M.E. on the blog in any future posts. After handing over Valentina (who now has started exhibiting some separation anxiety), I turned around, and froze like a deer in headlights. Read more
The Parts of Food that Gringos Don’t Eat Are Often the Tastiest! Let’s go back in time to 1995. I’m at Pilar’s house, hanging out with her, her brother Roberto (my best friend), her other two siblings, and her mom Conchy. It’s the middle of the day, we’re all hungry, and Conchy decides to start cooking. Read more
They Don’t Speak the Same Language, But They Talk Anyway Mom came to stay with us in June for a month, and she’s back for another month in September. She’s developed a great friendship with one of the people who rents from us, Nora. There’s just one problem. Mom doesn’t speak Spanish. Read more
Scheduling a Birthday Party On Saturday, we celebrated our daughter Valentina’s first birthday. We live in a townhouse, so it can be hard to have a lot of people at one time, but I got excited and invited 70 people anyway. I did the invitation on Facebook only and a week and a half before the event, so by Friday night, only 12 people had replied that they were coming. Read more
Why “Salvadoran Gringo” and Not “Latin” or “Hispanic?” I came up with the title “Salvadoran Gringo” on a whim, after mulling over the options for several days. As usually happens, I get excited about something, share it with a bunch of people for their feedback, get negative feedback, and then ignore what everyone else said and do what I wanted anyway 😛 Well, that is only partially true; I do consider others’ input carefully. Read more