I had my first solo excursion with Salvadoreans tonight. My friend Christian, who graduated with a law degree from Gavidia, has been wanting to play soccer with us Gringos for a while, and I finally had the opportunity to go and do that with him today. Him and I and 2 other students from Gavidia went to this "soccer field" (aka basketball court) in a part of town I'd never been in and had no idea I was going to to play for a while. We played 4 on 4 against some other random guys that were there, and of course, I got schooled, but they were very encouraging to me.

After the game I had a typical Salvadorean experience with Christian and Marvin as Christian drove to like 10 different places, and really taking his time at each one. Picking up stuff for his dad, picking up his mom and taking her somewhere, showing me the nice indoor field where he really wants to take me and my amigos to play fútbol (which definitely would be a step up from our ghetto street court), picking up some ice cream for dinner, etc. Stuff just is more laid back here, as there was really no rush to get back to my house for dinner.

It was our first time as guys having Salvadoreans over to our house here for dinner, and it was so fun. Marvin is probably the funnest student I know here and he is always joking around, albeit in Spanish, but he's so energetic it doesn't matter. As we rode together in the car tonight, I was helping him understand what some English phrases he'd picked up meant, including "What's the matter with you?" and another one, which I did not approve of but had to laugh at, cause he didn't know it was bad: "What the h*ll man?!" Joe and I actually heard him say this the first time together in the van and we died laughing, but lovingly corrected him.