Our Final Sunrise

Wednesday morning, a beautiful sunrise greeted us as we packed our luggage. Pamela gathered her babies: she has three now. Tía Patty gave her a new princess baby, which we named Light Princess in honor of the fairy tale by George MacDonald. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time to buy an indigo T-shirt for David and enjoy a cup of coffee. You never know when something will amuse you on the road. This time the Salvadoran elevator music was the source. One song included in a very short rotation was an instrumental Yanni-like version of Blessed Assurance.

A couple of interesting things happened which illustrate how far Pamela has come. The airport in San Salvador added a little wrinkle to boarding an airplane. At the gate, airport personnel had a station set up to inspect the contents of carry-on luggage and give each passenger a brief pat-down. For a moment, I thought Pamela was going to freak out because of her anxiety over anyone touching her purple backpack. She carried her five favorite DVDs in it and nothing else, not even the balsa wood craft kits that Tío Mario gave Pamela and David.

One thing that is tricky about RDI is knowing when to guide versus when to command. One of the goals is to reverse the guide to command ratio because adults tend to fall into an imperative (command-oriented) style of interaction with children in the autism spectrum. Restoring the ratio to something more typical does not mean you never tell the child what to do. The last thing I wanted to happen was for Pamela to freak out and get tagged as a disruptive passenger. I looked her in the eye and sternly told her, "The security guard will look at your purple bag or you are not getting on the plane. Now, knock it off!" Pamela recognizes my "don't mess with mom" attitude and settled down very quickly.

Then I prepared Pamela for the next wrinkle, which was better suited for an RDI style of guiding. While the female guard patted me down, I smiled and looked at Pamela. "Oh, Pamela, this tickles! She is being very careful." Pamela watched and then imitated my posture so that, by the time the female guard was ready to check Pamela, Pamela had her arms up and extended. During the pat down, I stayed in the same position to guide Pamela nonverbally and calmly talked to her about what the guard was doing. She stayed anxiety free during a situation she had never encountered in her many trips.

The rest of the two-leg trip was uneventful. Pamela, a great traveler, handled customs, where we went through a second inspection because we were carrying frozen pupusas, and a three-hour layover in Houston. She did not feel flustered that Steve took a different flight and switched planes in Atlanta. One thing greases the skids is Pamela's babies. People see the babies and catch on very quickly that Pamela requires a gentle touch. It also cracked up the screeners at the X-ray machine, "Oh, no! We're frying babies!"

At one point, Pamela was singing "My Boy Lollipop" to get me to join in her verbal stim. Rather than mindlessly go with her, I turned it around to make a point about her rude behavior from the night before. Pamela was in a very playful mood and I knew I could make a point if I stayed light and playful. She sang, "You are as sweet as candy." I countered, "You are as sour as a sour ball!" She laughed at my variation. Then, I added, "This morning, you are as sweet as candy. Last night, you were a sour ball!" She giggled and said, "No! Sweet as candy!" I replied, "No, you were a sour ball when you didn't want me to have dessert." She smiled, "Sweet as candy!" I concluded, "Okay, when you changed your mind, then you were sweet as candy!"

A Sweet Good-bye Kiss from the Son

Our Final Day

Here we all are relaxing before breakfast: Pamela at the computer, me waking up, Steve taking pictures, and Julie's husband Mario Emilio reading the paper. Clearly, we know that Coco is boss in this household!

This morning, Pamela, Steve, and I ate un desayuno Salvadoren (a typical Salvadoran breakfast) at San Martin: heuvos, pupusas con cortido, frijoles, y platanos fritos. We always sit inside, rather outside in the middle of the mall, because they bake bread on the premises, an irresistible smell. The place was packed but slowly people left.

Unfortunately, the women at the table next to us did not leave. Even though the restaurant piped music in overhead speakers, one lady decided to entertain us with a music clip from her laptop: "The Little Drummer Boy in Spanish. The singer's high-pitched voice encouraged Pamela to sing "My Boy Lollipop" so that we had three-song party going on over at our table. The laptop defaulted to playing that thirty-second clip over and over and over again. Did they not realize how insipid it sounded once, much less a hundred times? Coming home to a running washing machine and Coco squeezing her squeaky toy while construction workers hammer and drill away in the unfinished apartments in Julie's building was actually pleasant.

We could not help laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. Why? Whenever anything annoying happens while traveling is more fodder for the blog! While driving around today, we saw more unsafe driving and pedestrian antics, including two young men carrying logs across the Pan-American highway. They had to climb over the concrete barrier in the middle with no shoulder nor any margin for error. We decided that the Super Mario Brothers theme music is the perfect accompaniment for Salvadoran traffic.


Today was so special I will postone the really interesting pictures until we return home and take time to narrate it all. We meant to go to Tazumal today but ended up at two archaelogical sites: San Andreas and Joya de Cerren (the jewel of the hills).

We did not get to spend as much time with our hosts, Julie and Mario, as we would have liked. Mario got back from Europe last night. Julie has been helping a very dear friend of the family get acclimated after having spent the rainy season here in her other home in San Francisco. They were not able to join us for our last dinner out, so we dined at a little cafe in the Torre Futura, the very tall green building shown in earlier posts. We hooked up with Patty and Javier.

Patty showed up grumpy because of her bad day. She spent three hours getting her hair done and her car, which I affectionally call the death trap, finally did her a favor and died (it was in sorry shape). Pamela quickly cheered her up! First, they promised Pepsi instead of Coca-Cola and then came back offered Sprite instead. Pamela was only mildly displeased. Then, the waiter told her they had no hamburgers. That was it! Pamela gruffly poked him in the arm and screeched, "You have hamburgers! You get it right now! You're making a big mistake!" We laughed so hard once smoothed things out with the waiter. Since we were sitting outdoors, Patty ran over to another restaurant get Pamela a hamburger.

We finished eating and I really wanted dessert. I had not eaten many sweets since arriving and, after seeing live cocoa trees today, had a hankering for chocolate. Pamela was ready to go and began to pitch a fit. We told her we would go after we paid the bill and then I crossed my arms, turned my back to her, and pouted. I told her I was not happy because I did not have a treat. I ignored Pamela.

Then, she amazed me. She found a way to give in without totally losing control. After fussing for a minute, Pamela poked me and said, "You can have it. Let's explore together." I agreed and asked Patty to order dessert for me. Pamela and I walked around the plaza and browsed through a bookstore before heading back to the table. As we were walking, she said, "You defeated me." Clunk! You bet my jaw dropped when I realized how deliberate she was trying to win this battle of wills.

Javier and Patty both told me how much more typical Pamela seems to them. She is aware of things that she used to ignore. When Patty accidentally dropped her fork, Pamela said, "You pick it up!" She pays attention to strangers like when the waiter has forgotten mustard and mayonnaise and she waves her hand and tells them what she needs. She looks at people when they talk to her and communicates more fully. They congratulated us on her progress.

Iguanas and Morphos and Buses, Oh My!

The day started off with a belly laugh. Steve went to the ATM machine to get $200 in cash. It gave it to him alright . . . in $5 bills! He did not have to go to a special machine with money from the United States. The colón has been the unit and the centavo, the cents since 1892. Salvadorans have been working in the United States and sending money home for so long that the government could not keep exchanging currency. In 2001, the government made our dollar legal tender and everywhere you go you can pay in U.S. currency. It makes travel here quite convenient.

Every once in awhile, Pamela needs down time and today was her day off. Steve and I decided to take advantage of her desire to stay put and went off the beaten path. We drove the Pan-American highway and winded our way through the bumpy roads of Santa Ana, El Salvador's second largest city, which probably has more potholes per capita than any city in the world. Everywhere we saw shops for tires, repairs, and car washes, but we could not find a restaurant anywhere. El Salvador is a place where you don't just go and wing it if you like your meals on time.

Driving in El Salvador is tricky at best. You often see stop signs at traffic lights. Why? My theory is the signs serve as a backup when power is out. Roads are sometimes one-way but poorly marked. Pedestrians in town do the craziest things. While traffic is flowing, albeit slowly because of the congestion and terrible roads, people throw themselves in between cars. At one stoplight, we saw a man push a car across. One woman pushed a stroller in a mad dash with another child at her side. The grassy medians between the highway serves many purposes. We saw a teethered horse eating grass, a live clown, and a food stand with tables and chairs for diners. On the shoulders of highways were school children walking home, unfenced cows grazing, fruit stand, and furniture for sale. The bravest soul was a woman standing in a gap along a single concrete barrier separating traffic going sixty miles an hour. Steve said many years ago an Italian was driving by one of those and the pedestrian tripped and fell into traffic. The driver could do absolutely nothing to stop in time and killed the man. He stopped and waited for the authorities but everyone told him to go because it wasn't his fault. He stayed and the police arrested him. He ended up paying the family for their suffering and loss.


In addition to repainted public school buses, we saw short school buses and cars that looked like bumper cars in El Congo. Some buses had passengers packed like a subway in Tokyo. People sit or stand in the back of pick-up trucks, going full speed down the Salvadoran version of the Interstate. Drivers sometimes overload their trucks, end up crushing the wheels, and block traffic. Occasionally, you see armed guards and soldiers riding all sorts of vehicles. Santa Ana had many soldiers because of the crack-down on gang violence, which is a serious problem. Steve's niece in Guatemala City did not visit as planned because a friend her age and two others were caught in the middle of a crossfire in what is supposed to be a safe part of town. She stayed to attend the funeral.


We also drove an arc around Lake Coatepeque. We were in search of a restaurant on the lake with a spectacular view. We found a dirt road that made us very thankful to be in a four-wheel-drive pickup truck. We were not exaclty in the middle of nowhere because Steve could still check his email and, as long as we saw the back walls of lake estates, we knew we were fine. We stopped at one point to snap a picture of an iguana sunning itself. When the road worsened and the land became more undeveloped, we stopped to enjoy the view and turn around. I chased the most beautiful blue morpho butterflies, gently flitting along at a leisurely flap, but they were too fast for my camera. Then, we saw an enornmous white butterfly, which turned out to be a white morpho with a wingspan of five inches. We drove under it and had no luck in capturing it in megabytes. The rugged roads felt like being jostled in a cheap massage chair, definitely not for anyone with back problems. While we never found the restaurant, the view stunned us.



By the time we made it back to San Salvador, Steve and I were starving and our innards felt like jello. Rather than drive through rush-hour traffic with hunger headaches hammering our brains, we stopped at La Gran Via and ate typical food at Inka Peru. We ordered a huge appetizer with meat on a stick, yucca chips, a fried corn flour ball stuffed with cheese, and lightly fried chicken. I ate slowly because I felt nauseous as soon as food hit my stomach. Then, we ate about a third of a delicious meal: steak, rice topped with Spanish onions, fried plantains, and fried yucca. We turned down the bread because the food looked so delicious. We took home a doggie bag and hit a coffee shop before heading home.

Pamela enjoyed her down time and really needed it. Rosa said she did really well all day. Our girl was quite grumpy when we came home and went to bed early. We learned a long time ago to respect Pamela's requests to stop and rest. Pamela did not even feel like greeting her tio Mario Emilio and cousin Mario Alberto, who returned from a business trip to Austria and the Czech Republic. Although she did not appreciate their stories, Steve and I did, especially when we contrasted the orderly regulated society they experienced versus the untamed chaos we witnessed today.

I will close with what one friend calls a wink from God and another calls a whisper from God. Every time I pass this sign I smile because our church is doing a Bible study every Wednesday night. We just started Colossians and we are studying Chapter 1! The sign says, "'Cristio es la imagen visible de Dios,' que es invisible. Colossians 1:15."

Dining at the Deportiva

This morning we woke up early and took Pamela to San Martin for breakfast. She only ate three bites for dinner last night and made up for it with a full typical meal: pupusas (stuffed tortillas) with cortido (shredded pickled cabbage and carrots), platanos fritos (fried plantains) and frijoles (beans). Steve had the same, but I opted for a fresh tropical fruit plate with honey. Then, we drove to the market near Santa Tecla for a huge batch of pupusas to freeze and take home. Steve missed the entrance to the market and did a typical Salvadoren thing with an dual citizenship twist: he drove through the exit into the parking lot and threw the gringo estupido card. The guard started to chew him out, so Steve looked confused, shrugged his shoulders, and waved his hand as if to say he didn't understand. It worked!

When we returned to Julie's apartment, Steve's sister Susie and her husband Roberto were waiting for us. We spent a little time catching up before heading out to lunch with a big group of friends and family. Unfortunately, Julie could not join us for she had a previous engagement with a friend of the family, whom we plan to visit before we leave for El Salvador. We met up with Susie's daughter Andrea and grandson Pablo, Patty and her son Juan, our friend Javier, and Steve's tennis buddies and two of their children. We ate at the deportivo, which is a sports club and gymnasium founded by some people back in the 1940s, including Steve's grandfather. When Steve was a boy, he and his five siblings spent their days there, playing tennis and swimming. They racked up huge soda pop bills: pages and pages of the same entry "Soda 10 cents" amounting to no more than $25 a month. As this was only my fourth visit to El Salvador, I enjoyed finally meeting some of Steve's friends.

Pamela did very well all things considered. We sat at a long table outdoors and patiently waited for people to arrive a few at a time. Then, we ordered drinks, waited, and talked. Then, we ordered appetizers, waited, and talked. Then, we ordered meals, waited, and waited, and talked. Pamela got a little bored so we walked to the horse swings and Tía Patty told her how she used to play on these when she was a little girl. I pointed out the tennis courts where Steve and his friends practically lived when they weren't in school. She hung in there for almost three hours before getting a bit crabby because she needed her downtime.

An interesting thing happened with her cousin Juan Andrés, who is in eighth grade. Yesterday, someone made an off-hand remark that he liked The Simpsons. Pamela suddenly wanted to be his best friend, whereas before she didn't give him the time of day. She kept asking for Juancho and finally the big moment. He spent ten minutes going around the table, giving everyone the mandatory cheek-to-cheek greeting before sitting down next to Pamela. At first, he was a bit thrown off because Pamla had never had a conversation like this with him in his life. Pamela faced him and shook his hand.

Pamela: "Hi!"
Juan: "Hi!"
Pamela" "How're you?"
Juan: "I'm fine."
Pamela: "Where've you been?"
Juan: "At the apartment!"
Pamela: "What've you been doing?"
Juan: "I've been doing a project."

Pamela was so happy to be talking to him that she began stimming on everything but The Simpsons and that lost poor Juan. He has the Luna charm like his brothers, but he lacks the quality time with Pamela to know how to interact with her. One thing is certain, she has the basics of a simple conversation when she is in the mind to do it. That is something she has never done with Juancho's older brothers, which is another sign of Pamela's progress.

When we got back to Julie's place, Pamela was burnt out, not too burnt out to make Coco go into her basket and shut the door. Later, when it was time for dinner, Rosa, who has such a sweet way of talking to Pamela, asked her for more specifics. She is in the perfect position to be an "equal" partner in conversation because she has to rely heavily on nonverbal communication and single words. They went through the "dos pupusas" routine. She asked Pamela what she wanted to drink. I added, "Rosa is asking about tomar. Do you remember when you read tomar nectar in your butterfly story?" Pamela answered, "Tomar Coca-cola." Then, Rosa did hand motions for big or little. I added, "Pamela, you know these words from the three bears stories." When I did the sign for big, Pamela said grande and, for little, pequeño. Pamela told Rosa, "Pequeño!" and Rosa understood and poured her a small glass of soda. Their interactions beautifully illustrate the power of nothing.

Dinner at the Deportiva with Friends and Family

Señor Steve . . . Arriving!

Pamela and I spent a very quiet morning, reading, using the computer, looking at the beautiful skyline, and waiting for Steve to show up. His flight landed on time with all of his luggage, and he sailed through customs. A miracle when traveling to Latin America. He took a taxi to Julie's apartment, and Pamela could not wipe the smile off her face after seeing her daddy. Julie missed the reunion because she and their other sister Susie had a high school reunion mass and lunch to attend.

We went out to lunch at an artsy restaurant called La Ventana (the window) with his sister Patty and our friend Javier. We sat outside with a delicious breeze blowing gently enough that Patty did not freeze. Steve and Javier ordered bratwurst, potatoes, and sauerkraut, but this time I went French with spinach crepes. Pamela ate a hamburger and fries and bananas for dessert. While we were dining, a tinkling bell coming down the street brought back memories of the ice cream truck when I was a child in Virginia. We watched a little girl in the restaurant skip out to greet the man with the ice cream pushcart. Pamela smiled at the sight of a real-live pushcart peddler because we are reading The Pushcart War in school right now.

You never know what you will see on the streets of San Salvador. During his taxi ride, he saw a bright yellow school bus with "Charleston County Schools" emblazoned on it. Unlike metropolitan systems that have clean and safe public transportation (buses and subways), companies in San Salvador buy old buses from the United States and paint them like parrots, when they can afford it. On our way from the restaurant, we came behind a dusty, pink Mary Kay car. We were not surprised that it was not a Cadillac. Nobody in their right mind would drive a luxury car here.



Here is Steve relaxing with Coco, a French bulldog. Only the French could invent such an ugly dog that snorts and snarls louder than Mr. Panks in Little Dorrit. Julie thinks Pamela should become a dog trainer because, while Coco dances and slobbers all over Steve, Pamela gets rid of her with the wave of a hand and a stern "Go away!" Coco pines for her master Mario Emilio, who is on a business trip in Europe. He and Steve are marshmallows in disciplining dogs, and Coco takes full advantage of their undying adoration.

Steve and I parted ways in the evening. While Steve attended a high school reunion with his childhood friends, Julie and I joined their wives for a small party. Steve met the men when they were all in kindergarten, and they attended the same all-boy Catholic school for most of their school career. Even though he changed to their rival school for his last two years, he is considered one of them and they have kept in touch since graduation. I met six of the couples on a cruise last March and we got along very well, considering I had never met them in my life. Last May, one couple invited us to their son's graduation in Charlotte, NC. As we got to talking, we realized that their son roomed with Patty's son Jose who was in his freshman year. Besides catching up, the highlight of the evening was watching a slideshow of pictures from the cruise.

Where was Pamela? Pamela, an early bird, usually falls asleep before nine, ten the latest. She stayed home with Rosa who thinks Pamela is the sweetest, most content person. She told Julie that she is so easy to be around because she keeps herself busy all day. She writes in her notebook, she listens to her music, she watches television, she plays on the computer. Of course, Rosa would probably change her mind after seeing a meltdown but Pamela has not had any since we have been here. In fact, Julie is just amazed at the progress Pamela has made since she was last here six years ago. Pamela can communicate, understand, function independently, go places with us, let us know when she is tired and ready to go home, solve her own problems, think for herself, etc.