Hanging out in the Bedroom

On top of the Plantation

Peeking through the Protective Wall

Barbed Wire Fence

Today was a whole new adventure. Annabella went back to San Salvador so I’m on my own here now. Which means no one speaks any English really and it’s pretty funny/ complicated to communicate but even though we can barley understand each other it’s still so much fun. I am learning so much Spanish and even after one day I can understand so much more then I knew yesterday. I can’t even explain it in words, language is such barricade to a relationship I have with these people yet everyone is still so sweet and wonderful. It’s almost as if since we can’t say everything on our mind or blurt things out, you just enjoy each other’s company more. I teach a little English everyday and learn a lot of Spanish. So, if my translation is correct, I learned a lot about the process of the coffee plant. Planta de café. They mix the fertilizer with water and the workers wear back packs that have these plastic containers, which hold the liquid fertilizer. They stab the ground with a long wand connected to the containers it into the ground so the tree can grow faster. They are constantly watching for grasshoppers that eat the leaves and stop the coffee bean from producing correctly, turns it yellow and brown. We drove to another plantation, maybe twenty mins from the house. There I saw the mountain and a lot of the farm. They measure the acres of the farm by manzanas. Which directly translates to apple but it’s the El Salvadorian way of describing measurements on the coffee farm. One manzana is about 7,000 square feet, an acre is like ten. In one manzana they have eleven smaller squares, there made up of these tall tree’s (couldn’t quiet catch the name) that block the wind in November through January. The wind gets very strong after the rainy season ( November through January), blows the coffee bean off the tree and less coffee is collected. I’m pretty tired today so I’m getting ready for bed. Ready for another chaotic day tomorrow. Adios.