Category: Post

I’m sitting here enjoying a cup of coffee and eating pupusas for dinner. It’s raining, which is surprising because it’s the dry season. Many who grew up here tell me the weather patterns have changed a lot since they were younger. The rainy season was supposed to end by the end October, but although the frequency and intensity of rain decreased significantly, it still rained into November and here we are in January with a rainy evening. This morning was clear though and my wife and I finally went hiking as we had planned to do for a while.  Our goal is to climb the Santa Ana volcano in the National Park there (Parque Nacional de los Volcanes), but since we have not hiked recently, we are getting back into the practice so we can do this together. Today we started small with a 1-hour hike in a park on a hill within Cojutepeque called Cerro de las Pavas, which is Spanish for Hill of the Turkeys. An interpretive sign at the park said that Cojutepeque is a Nawat place name. Nawat is an endangered language that was the language of the Pipil indigenous people who populated central and western El Salvador at the time of the Spanish conquest. The place names in central El Salvador are either Spanish (like “El Salvador”) or they’re from Nawat. Nawat is closely related to the Aztec language family because the Pipil migrated from what is today central Mexico and the Gulf Coast region 400 years before the Spanish arrived.  The Pipil displaced earlier Mayan inhabitants who remained in the greater region, but not as much in what became El Salvador. The word “Cojutepeque” (the place we visited today to go hiking) means “Hill of the Turkeys” with the ending “-tepeque” meaning hill or mountain. Other Savaldoran place names are based on Nawat words, such as “-tlan” which means “place of” and “-tenango” which means “place of walls or fortifications”. Examples include “Cuscatlán” and “Chalatenago”.  The Cerro de las Pavas park has trails and some various comedors located almost in the park, which are called “Merenderos”. A comedor is a diner of sorts, but is really just a small, often unlicensed business where people cook familiar local foods for sale.  Many are bigger and more like a restaurant as we would know it in the US.  A merendero is comedor in an outdoor setting, so when we were hiking we found people had set up tables and were cooking basically in the forest and that is what merenderos are.  There is also a Catholic shrine in the forest called La Gruta de la Virgen de Fatima.  The shrine is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, but also to a series of events that are recognized by the Catholic Church as having occurred in 1917 in Portugal related to three children being visited by the Virgin.  The site in Cojutepeque was chosen in 1949 and has a statue (i.e. image) of the Virgin Mary that is from Spain.  An original was at the site, carved in Portugal, but was damaged in an earthquake and the one from Spain is a replacement. Pilgrimages take place there in May and October and the site was declared historic by the EL Salvador legislature. If you look at the photo below, you’ll see a photo of a man on the shrine. The man is Monseñor Oscar Romero who was the Archbishop of El Salvador and was assassinated in 1980 at the beginning of the Salvadoran civil war.

We have made it into the new year!   With the holidays a friend of my wife’s brought tamales to our house. There are different kinds of tamales, some are sweet and some are savory. The savory chicken based tamales here are common and are eaten at all meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner). Chicken tamales in El Salvador come wrapped in banana leaves.  They are often made of corn meal, chicken, potatoes, green beans, chick peas, and green olives, but the ingredients other than the corn meal and chicken often vary.  Some warnings for Americans are that sometimes the green olives have pits in them and the chicken has occasional bones.  The chicken can be gallina or pollo. Gallina means a full grown female hen. Many Salvadorans prefer this to the young chicken meat we eat in the US because they consider it more flavorful. It’s slightly tougher and has a stronger flavor. Often you will see “tamales de gallina” meaning the tamales are made with the meat of a full grown hen, not a young chicken.  The ones we received were made special order for me because they had only white breast meat with no bones, they were pollo (not gallina), and the olives had no pits.  They were delicious!  Another type of tamales that I love is tamales de elote. These are sweet corn tamales, which can be boiled and served in a corn husk or can be removed from the husk and fried.  They’re often served with Salvadoran cream, which is similar in consistency to sour cream, but sweet not sour.  Either way, they’re delicious! 

Happy Christmas Eve everyone. This morning I’m sitting on the second floor terrace of my father-in-law’s house looking out over the village and the street below. This past weekend I came down with a cold bad enough to put me in bed for two days, but it was not COVID. I’m feeling mostly better now, but woke up about 3:30 AM and could not fall back to sleep. I tried, but the various early morning noises (like a woman rolling a wheeled trash can down the street while she swept and raked along the curb or the birds starting to sing) kept me awake, so finally I gave up and made some hot tea and moved to the terrace. 

One creature that has joined me this morning is a Tropical Kingbird. It’s a grey and yellow bird that likes to land on the wires above the street near the terrace, so I get a good view from here. A new hobby for me since we moved here has been bird watching, which is something my father enjoyed many years ago. The variety and beauty of the birds here is astounding and I love watching them and identifying them. One of the first birds I saw here was a toucan, which I identified as a juvenile Collared Aracari that was in the tree in the inner courtyard at the house. Other birds I have seen here include the Rufous-browed Peppershrike, which is a small mostly green bird with a grey neck, and the Rufous-backed Wren, another small bird with a checkered pattern on its back. I’ve also seen the Common Squirrel Cuckoo, which has long striped tail feathers and is a blue and brown bird. Another I have seen more often closer to the beach, but once in the village, is the Great-tailed Grackle, which is an all black bird with long tail feathers, though the female is more brown.  The most common birds I see though are doves. They include the White Winged Dove and the Ruddy Ground Dove, both of which live in the tree in the courtyard in high numbers. Some of the them nest in areas of the upper landing of the house and have their babies there. In Maryland, birds having babies happens in the spring, but here, just like flowering plants, this happens all year round. 

My mother recently visited and we had an excellent time. This was her second visit as the two of us came in January, before I knew I would be moving here. When we visited back then we went spent time at Mayan sites, including Joya de Ceren and San Andres. Her favorite was Joya de Ceren, which is El Salvador’s Pompeii because it includes regular people’s houses that were buried, without being destroyed, by an eruption from a volcano. We also visited towns along the Ruta de las Flores or route of the flowers, which is a driving tour of colonial villages with brightly painted churches on town squares with artisan shops and cafés. This time we went to the beach, staying at a resort called Hotel Tesoro Beach, which has very nice beach access areas and a beautiful club house. If you’re looking for a beach resort in El Salvador, I would say this is a great option for a day-time visit, but note the front desk is not open 24 hours and there are limited dining options.  

During her visit we also went to Suchitoto, which is a colonial village that was briefly the capital of El Salvador under Spanish rule.  It has a history related to the production of Añil, which is the Spanish word for indigo, the natural blue die. We attended a fantastic workshop there where we learned about the history and craft of dying fabric to make clothing using Indigo, then we made beautiful tee shirts and a scarf. I want to give a shout out to Irma Guadron, the owner of Arte Añil for hosting the workshop and taking such good care of us. I strongly recommend the workshop to anyone who enjoys crafting and learning about history at the same time. 

I hope you have a perfect holiday season and allow whatever stresses you face to fade at least for a few days. Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and Happy New Year!

A bird, the police, and a bat

Today was supposed to be kind of a quiet day. My daughter in law and grandchildren were here this weekend and we had fun, mostly playing with the kids around the house, but also we walked two blocks into town for ice cream. They left early this morning and I went to lunch by myself to explore a little. I walked a block away to a local restaurant and got the usual friendly and curious (who is this American?), but not impolite, stares. I had a beer with grilled chicken and watched fútbol (soccer) on the big screen with everyone else. At the end of my meal, my server asked me (in English) where I was from. He told me he knew a little English and some French and liked to learn languages. I introduced myself and headed home.

At home I entered the kitchen to place my leftovers in the refrigerator and a dove flew violently around the room startled when I entered. Is that a juxtaposition (a dove doing something violent?). I must have terrified the poor bird, but I think it startled me almost as much, as I definitely jumped.

I spent the rest of the day researching how to establish domicile in a U.S. state and how to obtain a drivers license there. It’s important to have a home state when you are an ex-pat as well as a US address. I decided on Washington State for several reasons.  One advantage Washington State has is that there is no State income tax.  This is a big deal if you are an ex-pat moving to a country that may tax not only your earnings in their country, but your worldwide income as well. In my case, El Salvador, it is likely, though we have not yet met with a Salvadoran tax accountant, that my Federal pension may be taxed if I live here more than a given number of days per year. I will let you know when I figure that one out. 

While I was working on that I heard a siren outside and saw red and blue lights. I went to the upper outdoor balcony and looked down to see a “National Civil Police” vehicle outside and an officer yelling something up to me about the car we had parked on the street. My wife spoke with them and it turned out that we needed to move the car off the street because of a parade coming through tomorrow. 

In any case, later, while working on the computer in the study later that night, a bat flew into the room with me!  Now I need to pause and tell you a story from my childhood. When my brother and I were not yet teenagers, we were playing a board game in a somewhat small room with a closed door. There was a space about an inch between the floor and the bottom of the door itself. All of the sudden, a bat, using its claws, pulled itself in through the narrow crack into the small room and then began flying around our heads. As you know bats fly using sonar and so it must have detected an adequate gap to be able to fly under the door, but then discovered the space was too small, so had to use its claws to pull itself through.  In any case, we ran screaming out of the room and our father had to chase the bat out of the house with a broom and something he held to bounce the bat’s sonar and channel it outside.  I think we forgot whose turn it was in our boardgame!  In any case this bat tonight definitely startled me and after a second of being completely startled I remembered what my father did and thought of using a lightweight chair to “push” it out the door.  It guided itself out the door before I could do much but be startled, but I definitely thought of my brother and father tonight.

Here I am home again after two days in San Salvador. We decided to stay overnight in the capital for a couple doctor’s appointments, and also to look at some properties that we were thinking of purchasing. We have thought about purchasing a place as an investment, but one thing that people from the United States should be aware of about the real estate market, and El Salvador is that if you’re trying to get a loan from a Salvadoran lending institution, the term of the long will be based in part on your age. This was really surprising to me, but it actually makes some sense. From the lending perspective, banks here want to be sure you have paid off the loan by the time you reach retirement age.  This is a very different scenario then what you would see in the United States. In any case we did not find any thing that we were interested in purchasing, but we had a relaxing evening.  

At a doctor’s appointment today, there was someone in the waiting room speaking English, who was clearly an American. Our wait for the doctor was very long, on the order of 90 Minutes, so I went over to say hi, having not spoken with an American in-person in a couple weeks. He said he had been living in El Salvador since 2009 and that it was no longer as affordable as a previously was. However, I would say that it’s still less than in the U.S. for most things. For example, anything related to labor is really cheap in El Salvador when compared to labor costs in the U.S. Also, eating out is less expensive. Not only is the cost of food generally less here, but the tips are much lower here as well, being a standard 10 Percent. In addition, I mentioned that in the rural area that my wife and I live in, tips are set at 5%. Of course you can always give more, but that it’s not expected. Note that the tips are automatically included in your bill, regardless of party size. No one stands over you waiting to see what percent you’re going to give them.  I acknowledge that some things are more expensive now, compared to what they were, such as real estate. Also, some imported items (like a new laptop), can have a lower cost in the U.S.

The medical situation in El Salvador is also interesting comparing it to the United States. El Salvador has a three tier medical system: (1) socialized, free, public medicine for all citizens, (2) a Social Security like system for vested workers, and (3) a boutique cash or credit card only medical system. When a relative visited in here with me once before we moved, she fell in a rural village and required emergency medical treatment. My wife’s nephew, who is a nurse, went into action and both treated her and coordinated her care with the local clinic. After he got her to the clinic in the village, they treated her, and I went to the administrative desk, and attempted to pay. They were confused, and my wife’s nephew came to me and explained that there was no charge. 

They provided excellent care. A relative recently raised the question of what would’ve happened if it had been a stroke? I don’t know what level of care that rural clinic could have provided in that case, but I do know we were a 90 minute drive from the capital on bumpy rural roads. I don’t think any helicopter would have come to bring her to a hospital in such a case, as I have seen on I-95 in Maryland, when they shut down five or six lanes of traffic and airlift someone to a nearby hospital. 

Maybe El Salvador doesn’t have the same resources as the U.S., but what they do have is doctors that take their time with their patients. I’ve seen several doctors here in El Salvador, since we arrived two weeks ago. I realize that these were initial visits, but in each case, the appointments lasted at least 45 minutes with undivided attention. It was only in one case that I had to wait more than 10 minutes for my appointment. And I considered it worthwhile once I got to see the doctor.  The worker medical system here is a tier above the free medical system and my wife tells me it has some additional resources. Both the free system and the Social Security system are supposed to be available to citizens only. I could not avail myself of the free medical system for anything other than an emergency.  

Here I am sitting beside the pool at the NOVO hotel. My mother and I were here in January. I had no idea at that time I’d be living in El Salvador half a year later. So, why am I poolside at a hotel? I remember having a massage here and had saved a business card. Now I brought my wife to enjoy. We had lunch at the hotel restaurant and then she went for her massage while I relax in the shade and wait. I have a couple medical appointments today and that explains our trip to the capital, so here we are. It’s interesting to note the various costs of things. I saw a doctor this morning (a specialist) for an initial consultation. We sat in his office for 15 minutes talking then he examined me for another 5 minutes and we returned to his desk to discuss a plan.  We paid cash on the way out: $30.  That’s not a copay, that’s the total cost.  Not everything is cheap here, though most things are. Housing and beach real estate is cheaper than in the Washington, DC metro area, but not necessarily cheap. Plus, many, though not all, houses are smaller than what Americans are used to. A larger home would probably be 80% of the cost of a similar home in the US, however, this is changing all the time as real estate prices have increased here in the last few years. The country is very safe now since the President of El Salvador stopped the gangs from terrorizing the people here. I was here before (my first trip was in 2014) and never felt like I was in danger perhaps because generally tourists were not targets. However, I always had a local guide (my wife) and she knew where not to go. Regardless, you can see the change. In 2014 there was only limited nightlife. Many shops closed at sunset unless they were in a secure area.  Now there is nightlife. You can see couples strolling together after dark and  people seem more relaxed.  Yesterday I went to get ice cream on the town square with my wife’s nephew. We walked the two blocks along cobblestone streets with a few people passing and greeting us. On the square we got ice creams and sat people watching. I saw a weaver bird nest (nido de oropéndula) hanging from a nearby tree. A truck full of soldiers drove by. An acquaintance of my wife’s nephew chatted with us for a few minutes and fist bumped me goodbye after meeting me. A few other interesting things I have seen recently include a man and woman riding a motorcycle, with the man holding a bunch of sugarcane and the woman on the back on her cell phone. I have also seen many “moto taxis”, which are what I would call a tuk-tuk. They’re very common in the rural areas, but I don’t see them in or near the capital. The other day, one drove by with a mannequin sticking out the side!

Today we had a huge birthday party with a DJ for my two grandchildren.  We made it a joint party for both of them with a combined theme of dinosaurs and princesses.  There were about 50 people there with pupusas and coffee for everyone, games, cake and piñatas for the kids. Many of the games were competitive with adults paired up with kids and the crowd voting for the best pair. I was paired with my grandson (who just turned 5); he was a knight and I was a dragon, though I think he was more of a dragon rider (on my back/shoulders) than conquerer.  

Today I have embarked on a journey that is months or perhaps years in the planning.  I am sitting in an airplane beside my wife heading to Central America, not sure if or when I will return permanently.  The airline is Avianca, a Latin American carrier I became familiar with after marrying my Salvadoran wife 12 years ago.  Ahead of me is a tropical paradise and a lot of uncertainty.  Will I like my new semi-retired life in a different country? 

As I head south, I find that I’m nervous about my future. I know this could be fantastic and the start of a wonderful retirement or a total disaster. I’ve been too busy to think for six months preparing for this moment and suddenly it’s almost like a full stop. I know there will be plenty to do after we move, but this is the first time I’ve had to reflect on my feelings. For months I’ve been deconstructing my life. First the job, then the house, then the cars. Saying goodbye to family and friends: giving up most of my safety net, but trading it in for a new one. Finally we were almost homeless as we headed to the airport. It is terrifying. Still, it’s like the Beatles said “out of college, money spent, see no future, pay no rent, all the money’s gone, no where to go, but oh that magic feeling no where to go.” Maybe I’ve almost got that life. I can teach English in a new country and have a new life. Isn’t that what everyone needs right now: a new beginning?  

For a number of reasons we had thought we would retire to El Salvador when we discussed the far off idea in the past. I was working as a civil and environmental engineer for the federal government for decades and thought that the change to a relaxed life would do me good. I also became interested in teaching English some years ago and imagined a retirement teaching as a good change.  Finally, I knew the cost of living in Central America is lower than it is in the US, especially in the major US cities, and I imagined being able to enjoy a better standard of living. The flight to El Salvador is about 3 1/2 hours from Washington D.C. and so it seemed even closer than the west coast. It seemed like a reasonable long term plan. 

Then in February 2025, the new Department of Government Efficiency offered federal employees a “fork in the road”. This fork in the road included continued pay and benefits through September 30 if desired using “deferred resignation.”  One day a co-worker jokingly said to me “take the fork Ben!”  I thought then about the possibility of accelerating the plan to begin immediately. It seemed to me that it only made sense if I could take deferred resignation and also full retirement.  When I discovered this was allowed, I began to really think about it.  I hadn’t really connected the changes at work and the long term plans with my wife until that day.  Once I made the decision, I told another employee who told me they were leaving too and they said, “it’s time to go.”

I spoke with my wife in February and we realized this was a frightening, but exciting possibility.  For several reasons we knew we could not leave immediately, but we also recognized several issues. Let’s call them macro and micro issues.  

One macro issues was that I expected a changing housing market. We purchased our house in 2019 when interest rates were very low. My wife convinced me that we needed to take the plunge and stop paying rent.  By 2025 the housing market had been a strong sellers’ market for years due to high interest rates.  People with good mortgage rates (like us) were not selling their houses because if they bought a new home they would have a high rate and likely much higher payments.  This meant that inventory was very low and buyers had to make good offers in order to entice the few sellers that were out there,  Home prices had been increasing sharply in recent years and our home had been a good investment in terms of equity.  However, it seemed to me that the changes in the federal workforce meant that the DC area was likely to see an exodus in the next months and maybe years as people moved out of the area for private sector jobs in lower cost of living areas like the midwest.  It occurred to me that if we wanted to capture that equity before our home decreased in value or at least became harder to sell, we would need to sell the house sooner than later and not buy another house at a high interest rate.  Moving to El Salvador right away suddenly seemed like a good financial move. 

To make this happen we needed to get out fast. We met with our realtor right away when we made the decision to take the fork in the road.  She went through our house helping us understand what would need to happen in order to make it sell quickly and for the price we wanted. The first step was when she pointed at things throughout the house and said “that has to go” and “that has to go” and so on.  It was a little painful, but no pain, no gain, right?  My wife and I had been accumulating things (books, furniture, knick-knacks, etc.) for about 6 years since we bought the house. These items we quickly boxed up and moved into storage. 

My wife had also identified an international moving company that (for about $12,000) would pack all your household goods, load them on a ship and move them to your new country.  We worked with an agent so that when the house sold, he would be ready to quickly get everything out.  We moved about 60 boxes of stuff into storage; furniture plus more boxes would follow later.

A micro issue was that I have some chronic health issues. It was nothing that was slowing me down now, but everyone close to retirement age has heard stories of people who work extra years because they love their jobs (or the money) and then finally retire only to pass away soon after, barely getting to enjoy their post-work life. It is true that every year that I would have continued working for the federal government, my retirement would have improved a lot.  Also I knew that many older federal employees who want to move to the private sector may have a hard time being hired and also, perhaps more importantly, a hard time adjusting to the change in work environment.  

There was also the issue that my father-in-law was 84 years old and having some health issues.  My wife wanted to be with him in his final years and when I spoke of moving to El Salvador, she became excited about the ida of living close to her father.  Sadly he passed away a month before we moved, but that was one of the aspects of our planning.

If I was going to live in El Salvador, I was definitely planning to teach English. How did I come to an interest in teaching English?  In 2019 there was a shut down of the federal government lasting almost two months.  During this time I was doing volunteer work for a local not-for-profit and was asked if I was interested in teaching English as a Second Language (ESOL) classes. I tried it and loved it!  I ended up teaching after work a couple times per week for about 5 years.  I have taught mostly grammar classes, but also in the spring of 2025 (after I stopped working for the government in March) I taught two conversation classes.  In the grammar classes the students followed a text book, but in the conversation classes things were less structured and I was to bring engaging exercise ideas to class twice per week. In either case, my classes were focused on helping immigrant students gain the English language skills they needed to survive and hopefully flourish in their new country.  It was partly a way of sharing my love for the United States with students who had different birthplaces, but had left those behind in search of a better life. Helping them has been very meaningful to me.  

Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) is different than Teaching ESOL in the sense that the students are not immigrants.  Their needs are different.  As an example, consider an ESOL conversation class exercise,  I might do a role play where one student is a doctor and the other is a patient and ask them to practice asking and answering different questions about body parts and symptoms.  The purpose is to learn how to interact with English speaking doctors in the US when they are still learning English. Students in El Salvador will not likely need to speak in English with their doctors.  I have never taught English as a Foreign Language, but hopefully I will enjoy it as much.