The Reverse Bucket List: El Salvador
*There are pictures of most of these things on my facebook page, so feel free to friend me if you want to see them….it takes super long to upload a single photo on this blog!*
I have a really obnoxiously long, detailed, ever-growing, and largely unrealistic bucket list at home that I began about two years ago. Pardon the unoriginal idea, but if you have never made one, you definitely should; even if you never accomplish most of it, it still gets you inspired and excited abou life. Take the pressure off of yourself to add items that you feel like “should” be on it….if you have never had a desire to see the Great Wall of China, go skydiving, eat escargot, or paint a picture, then don’t include them. My bucket list has everything from places I want to see, recipes I want to try/create, books I want to read, events I want to attend….and about 100 other random personal desires.
I had originally thought about making a bucket list for this trip, but given the unpredictability of the whole year, I feared it would become impossible to actually do anything on it.
And so here is the first of 11 installments of my “Reverse Bucket List”: crazy, random things I experienced in any given country that I never could have known or predicted.
I want to go to El Salvador and….
-eat at a roadside Pupusa stand. The grilled, hand-patted corn tortillas filled with any combination of meats, beans, and queso are something I will definitely make at home!
-preach for the first time in a tiny, dirt-floor plant church.
-drink warm banana milk out of a ziploc bag.
-scrub, clean, and paint a public school to allow over-worked teachers to prepare academics for the new term.
-be given a huge, whole coconut, cut off the tree with a machete, with a straw stuck in the top to drink its salty-sweet, bubbly water…and then wack it in half and eat the meat!
-attend the 2 year anniversary celebration of a tiny plant church in someone’s garage, complete with streamers, balloons, joyful singing, and homemade cake with fruit!
-attend “clown school”: have a bona fide clown take my group and I to the park to teach us how to entertain children, and to remind us of our calling to serve and love.
-eat a plate of french fries with mayonaise and queso for dinner, made specially by the church ladies. (hello weight gain…)
-ride everywhere in the back of a pick-up truck, especially ones with waist-high bars so that you can ride around standing up. (The pastor’s son, Josue, would drive like a maniac just to terrify us and hear us scream.)
-spend 3 amazing Saturday mornings playing games and busting a pinata with impoverished children.
-eat a lime juice and hot sauce snow cone.
-watch the Spanish equivalent of the Buttercream gang with the church youth.
-chase an iguana out of the dashboard of a car, then wait in trepidation as she lives under the couch for a couple of days, before eating her AND her eggs.
-climb a mountain called Puerto de Diablo (devil’s door, yikes) and do handstands at the top.
-be invited into a woman’s tiny home to be served coffee and cookies and sing/beatbox the song Mighty to Save at her request.
-play soccer in the moonlight on a dirt road with a random collection of adults and children.
-trek through a beautiful, flower-jungle as a local woman uses her machete to cut off enormous, brilliantly-colored flowers…then trek between a corn and bean field to swim in a large, sketchy, terrifying hole of black water with local children.
-eat bananas grabbed right off the tree, and fire-cooked corn on the cob with salt and lime juice.
-sing karaoke at a street fair that, come to find out, was not intended to be karaoke, but a performing local band. Thank God for language barriers.
-learn the Lifehouse skit.
-eat Christmas cookies for dinner in February.
-surf in the Pacific ocean on a volcanic-sand beach.
-paint a mural on a church wall.
-eat a Dona Wafle….an El Salvadorian treat made of a waffle-cone with a scoop of ice cream and a hot donut on top. This thing will give the Dixie Classic Fair a run for its money.
-be on the radio in El Salvador.
-watch the Superbowl at a Chili’s in El Salvador.
-flush a toilet by dumping a huge bucket of water in it.
-give the lovely housekeeper, Rosa, a pedicure and the afternoon off.
-hike to a beautiful waterfall (accompanied by the police, which evidently was necessary?) and swim in it with my team.
-pick and eat fresh coffee beans.
-touch (but chicken out on holding) an enormous yellow snake at a seriously creepy $0.50 reptile exhibit.
-lead a congregation (including my squad) in worship…singing into a microphone on stage at church? there’s a new one…
-be hugged and cried over by numerous people in the church as they say goodbye.
TO ALL OF THE ABOVE BUCKET LIST ITEMS….CHECK!
This month has been, as you can see, incredibly hilarious, fun, random, and awesome! I never thought I would get the chance to do just about ANY of that, and I loved every minute of it! Thank you all for the chance to see and experience El Salvador in this way, and even more so for the chance to serve and love those in need that I had the pleasure to meet!
