A few photos...

When asked what she wanted to be this year Maggie surprised us with her response of "a bird".  So Traci whipped up a bird costume.

Abraham, who loves Pirates of the Caribbean, was Bootstrap Bill Turner.

Vivan made a beautiful Cleopatra

I'm sure many have seen this already because I put it on facebook but I figured it needed to be permanently fixed to this blog. 

One of Traci's friends here is a yoga instructor and she and Traci have begun co-teaching a kid's yoga class at our house.  They originally sent out an email just to see if anyone would come.  I returned home from work that first time to find 19 kids doing yoga in the house.  Strangely, future classes will most certainly coincide with me working late.

Every year the Marines, who act as embassy security, hold a Marine Ball to celebrate the creation of the Marine Corps. It is surprisingly serious business.  Traci looked spectacular.  The day before the party I found a place that would rent me a tux.  The last time I wore a tux was in 1989 at Rick and Lori's wedding.  Traci, who loves to dance and has been neglected by her husband for 13 years, finally got me to dance.  My half of our dancing was not pretty but it turned out to be a fun evening. 

Abe went on his first scout campout last week.  In the spirit of high adventure they camped on the soccer field at the embassy.  Certainly the most secure campout ever.

This one's for Lance.  A couple of weeks ago we had the day off because it was the El Salvador version of Memorial day.  We thought we'd head to the beach.  Soon we found ourselves in the heaviest traffic that we've seen here.  We soon learned how seriously Salvadorans take visiting the cemetery on that day.  Every car on this road, except us, eventually turned into the cemetery or parked on the road to enter by foot.  This traffic was about two miles long.  We were glad to finally get past the cemetery and be the only ones at the beach.

Simon and our new puppy, Blue, are like twin brothers.  They have a special relationship in which they take turns making disasters all over the house.  They fight constantly.  Simon will walk up behind him and pull his hair or approach from the front and kick him the face.  Blue will often walk up to Simon and just bite him as he passes or he'll just knock him over for no apparent reason.  We've taken to calling Simon "brother dog".

Big brothers are responsible for teaching little brothers the finer things in life.

When we first saw the size of this bath tub we were really excited.  It's size, however, makes giving Simon a bath rather difficult.  While trying to rinse Simon's hair Traci leaned a bit too far and ended up like this.  I immediately came running to help, with the camera.

Took this yesterday.  El Salvador has it's problems. Beauty isn't one of them.

De Mujer a Mujer

So if you were to have asked me five years ago where I thought I'd be and what I thought I'd be doing 5 years from then you may have gotten a few different answers.  One answer that you definitely would not have gotten is: "I think I'll be on a national talk show called 'From Woman to Woman'" (De Mujer a Mujer)  When I say "national" talk show remember that El Salvador is roughly the size of Massachusets but it's more fun to say "national".

There are 7 million Salvadorans in the world and 2 million of them are in the United States.  Many went illegally but now have a special status called "TPS" or "Temporary Protected Status".  Those that went during the civil war or were in the states at the time of the big earthquake in 2001 were granted this protection by the U.S. government because they basically didn't have a country to be deported back to.  With TPS they are able to work legally in the U.S.  TPS by it's definition is supposed to be a temporary protection but it keeps getting renewed.  It is currently up for renewal in Congress.  17% of El Salvador's GDP comes from money sent back to family from Salvadorans working in the U.S.  So as you can guess it is in the economic interest of El Salvador to keep that TPS status valid as long as possible.  Earlier this month the Foreign Minister officially asked the U.S. to grant a whole new round of TPS to illegal immigrants in the U.S. due to the devastating flooding that occurred here in October.

With such a large percentage of Salvadorans living in the U.S. everybody, and I mean everybody, has family in the states.  And with so much family in the U.S. everyone wants a tourist visa.  Just under half of all the illegal immigrants in the U.S. (not just from El Salvador) did not cross the border illegally, but instead entered legally on a tourist visa and then never went home.  That fact makes it more difficult to obtain a tourist visa than most visa applicants would like.  During a visa interview applicants must convince the consul that their economic, social, and family ties to their own country are sufficient to guarantee their return following a short trip to the U.S.  That can be difficult to do.  There are many that apply for a visa who see it as their ticket to live permanently in the states.  But there are many others who sincerely want to visit aunts, grandparents, kids, etc and then get home as soon as possible.  Determining the actual intentions can be tough.  With such a high demand, how to obtain a tourist visa is always a hot topic of conversation.

And so occasionally someone from the embassy will appear on a television show to answer visa related questions.  A colleague of mine and I went on this past week. You would think with a show title of "From Woman to Woman" they would have wanted someone else, but apparently my estrogen level was high enough to be invited. We were on for 30 minutes.  Apparently there were enough callers with questions that we could have stayed on for much longer. 30 minutes were plenty for me.  I have already received feedback that I needed to sit up straight (I blame the chair) and Vivian's main feedback was, "Dad, your head was really shiny." 

Unfortunately, I've tried many times to load it onto this blog but it just won't load.  Which is too bad because me on television is hilarious.  Apparently my right hand was shaking for the first couple of minutes.  My desire to avoid public relations was definitely solidified this week. 

    



Hey guys check out what my little bro did! Pretty cool.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=18033467&title=west-high-students-invent-biodiesel-fuel-process

Stake Conference, sort of.

So today was stake conference. It has never been one of my favorite Sundays of the year.  Our stake center, which is also our ward building, shares a parking lot with the newly dedicated temple here.  So what do you do when your stake center is next to the temple and the conference is entirely in Spanish and 5 out of the 6 members of the family don't speak Spanish and it's frankly too long to ask kids to sit there and not understand anything? You skip the meeting, go next door to the temple, and take a bunch of photos.  Here's a few.