Another plane, another potty

And here we have it, folks. This trip’s diarrhea story. Well, sort of. Close enough.

Mimi woke up on Saturday with the type of loose stools that the CDC warns "adventurous eaters" about. Not the kind of stools that her health-professional parents worry about. Just the kind that make us want to toss a couple of extra pairs of pants in our bag. For all of us. Particularly when we’ll be boarding an international airplane later in the day.

As we sadly packed our bags, Mimi asked if we could come back to El Salvador tomorrow. So young, yet so wise.

Cicely made it just a hair easier to leave San Salvador that morning by telling us that the city would be without running water later in the day. As in the entire city of two million people would not have a basic necessity for survival. And she said it in such a way that made us presume this was a reasonably routine occurrence.

All embassy staffers take extra precautions against the eccentricities of living in one of the more turbulent parts of the world. In addition to the bottled water that Cicely and Donyel keep behind the steel door of their embassy-mandated safety room, they have a CB radio plugged in next to their stereo in case the domestic communication networks go down.

Ok, ok. It’s not all paradise. Fine. I’ll go home. Begrudgingly.

As Donyel was telling me about the extra safety precautions that they have to take living in El Salvador, I was trying to remember if I locked our back door at home. I couldn’t remember, and yet I had absolutely no doubt that everything would be fine. I guess I should stop complaining about our spotty cell service and lack of pizza delivery on the reservation. At least I don’t need to have a steel-lined safety room.

Our conversation wrapped up when we saw Jonathan, our driver for the week, pull up in front of their house. Mimi asked why we had to go, and none of us could come up with a satisfactory answer.

But at least the drive was easy. Both of our kids fell asleep during the one hour trip to the airport. Of course, we knew we would pay for a quiet drive with a wide-awake plane ride. But a nap in the hand is better than two in the airplane.

That’s not true.

But at least Mimi’s belly seemed to be settling down a little bit, and I’ll take tired over stooling any day. Spider-Man can help with an over-tired toddler. But I don’t see him signing up to wash diarrhea off a seat cushion any time soon.

When we pulled up to the airport, our driver helped us unload our bags, and we began our ritual airport hymn.

Aimee: Two kids, two adults, two car seats, two rollers, and one duffel.
Rest of the family: Aaamennn

Speaking of hymns, there was a huge church group at the airport departing from what I presume was a missionary trip, given their matching t-shirts and lack of sun tans.

Since this was certainly not a church trip for the Stone family, lunch that day was in the airport brewery, a satellite location of the Cadejo microbrewery that we had gone to on our night out in San Salvador.

Still fun, even without a babysitter.

As is the norm on international flights returning to the US, there was a second security check at the gate to our plane. We got in line to have our bags reinspected, but didn’t realize that 1) there was no bathroom past security, 2) we couldn’t leave, and 3) Mimi still had her stomach bug.

M: Potty.
Me: Maybe I was just imagining that.
M: Potty, daddy.
Me: Figment of my imagination
M: POTTY, DADDY!!!

Oh boy.

I thought that I might be able to distract her for a little bit by showing her some airplanes taking off. But San Salvador has a relatively quiet airport for a city of this size, and there was only one departure during the entire hour we were in potty purgatory. Where are you now, Spider-Man?

But with a full court press of toddler distractions (and taking full advantage of the traveling-families preboard announcement), we made it onto the airplane just before Mimi’s landing gear came out.

And it apparently wasn’t just Mimi who was holding it in (she was just the most vocal about it). The preflight lavatory line actually delayed our departure. The flight attendants admirably kept their cool during their increasingly frequent overhead announcements, despite everyone else’s collective blood pressure rising as we all thought about the tight connections that this run on the toilet was jeopardizing.

Unlike our flight out, this one didn’t have any empty seats. But it did have the next best thing: elderly El Salvadorans who loved babies.

Si, por favor. Gracias.

The three hour flight was relatively painless, particularly with our surrogate baby holders. But Quinn did have an in-flight blow out just as the plane was landing (thankfully after he was returned to us, avoiding an international incident). So in addition to having to make up time from our late departure, we had to delay our US immigration check for a mega diaper change. And if I remember right, it was more than just a diaper change. I don’t even think his socks were spared from this one.

And entirely predictably...

“Potty.”

For crying out loud, Mimi.

Despite continuously reminding myself that she was a two year old with a stomach bug, I could feel myself getting more and more stressed out about missing our connection. We still hadn’t even picked up our bags yet, let alone cleared immigration.

With bowels emptied (for now), we went to go get our bags for the customs check. Most of them were already waiting for us on the carousel. But I couldn’t find Quinn’s car seat that we gate checked in El Salvador.

And then came that awful anger-denial of the father who is running behind schedule, and realizes that he himself has made it much worse. In my haste to get us off the plane and into the immigration line, I shuffled my family right past the car seat waiting for us on the jet bridge.

Ahh!!! I’m running late! And I’m stressed out! And it’s totally my fault!

The seventh layer of fatherhood hell.

As I was talking to one of the airport employees about our options (buying an entirely new car seat seemed like a reasonable one at the time), Mimi politely informed me that, “I NEED TO GO POTTY, DADDY!!”

I always thought that steam coming out of ears was a rhetorical expression. As it turns out, it is not.

This wasn’t my finest hour.

But Aimee came though, as she always does, and wrangled two small children in a cramped bathroom so I could work out the luggage stuff.

I could hear the staticky radio traffic about our car seat getting sent up the terminal, and I finally started to feel my blood pressure drop below critical levels. Then I looked at the line to recheck our bags and felt it rocket right back up.

I looked at the bathroom door. Still closed. I looked at the bag check line. Still growing.

I made the bet that I could get in line, and still be waiting when they came out, so I would be able to flag Aimee and the kids over when they were done. But no such luck. I cleared the customs line surprisingly quickly, and was asked to proceed through the sliding doors that would cut me off from the main luggage collection area. I tried to talk the agents into letting me break the rules, and believe me, I pulled out all the toddler/potty/sad face stops. But they were clearly used to hearing the exact same story from a dozen stressed out fathers daily. They weren’t having any of it.

So I hoped upon hope that Aimee had taken her phone off of airplane mode. When she didn’t answer, I spent the next four minutes feeling like the worst father on the planet. And when they casually strolled through the sling doors I ran to them like they had just survived an ocean voyage to the New World.

After all that, we still had to go back through airport security in order to access the domestic terminal.

We’re ok, I kept reminding myself. We’re ok. We’re ok. WE’RE NOT OK!!! We’re ok. We’re ok.

But we were ok. Despite my visions of our airplane being halfway over New Mexico by the time we cleared security, it had barely started boarding as we ran up. Aimee gave me the combined look of sympathy, pity, and I-told-you-so that the Pima County Clerk requires all applicants perfect before granting a marriage license.

We made it. And of course I’m referring to both our flight and our marriage. Aimee’s a good sport.

As Mimi watched music videos under Spider-Man’s close supervision, I thumbed through the news that had occurred while we were gone. Russia is building military bases in Venezuela, China is making a play for the Panama Canal, Nicaragua’s on the brink of another civil war. And I’m glad that there are US diplomats in all of those places looking out for us.

It was such a treat to peek behind the Foreign Service curtain. And to be able to do so with wonderful friends (and poolside mojitos) was an experience that we are so grateful for.

We’re also grateful for Spider-Man.

Candy from strangers

On Friday morning, we saw Alicia, Isaias, and their daughters off to the airport.

There were more than a few tears, and plenty of when-is-our-next-reunion planning to soften the blow.

As the grownups were wiping their eyes, Carter took the opportunity for some constructive play. “We’re playing strangers,” Carter told us. Slightly confused, but not even remotely worried (we were already thoroughly charmed by Carter’s nurturing approach towards Mimi), we watched on and learned how to play strangers.

Carter: Mimi, wan’t to get in my van?
Mimi: Yeah
Carter: No! You’re supposed to say no!
Mimi: Ok
Carter: Mimi, wan’t to get in my van?
Mimi: No
Carter: But I have candy.
Mimi: Candy?! Yeah!
Carter: No! You’re supposed to say no!
Mimi: *Sigh* Ok
Carter: Mimi, wan’t to get in my van and have some candy?
Mimi (Clearly struggling over the dilemma): Umm...no. (Sad face.)
Carter: It’s ok, I work with your parents.
Mimi: (Blank stare)
Carter: You’re supposed to ask for their ID!

But this point, Aimee and I were actively taking parenting notes from a seven year old. We were beyond impressed at the degree of street smarts Cicely and Donyel had conveyed to their kids.

After Carter went off to school and Cicely went off to do a bit of work, Donyel took us to visit the San Salvador botanical gardens.

The gardens themselves were phenomenal, and we marveled at yet one more difference in civic life between El Salvador and Nicaragua.

But the real attraction to our two year old was the giant playground in the middle of the park. And I do mean giant. There were at least two football fields’ worth of traditional and repurposed playground equipment, and it was a toddler paradise.

But the marquee attraction was a giant slide in the corner of the park. The second I saw it, I knew where we would be headed. But, ever the optimist, I tried to redirect Mimi towards some attractions in the park that didn’t make me wonder if I was current on my life insurance premium.

Me: Hey look, Mimi! Want to go down that small slide?
Mimi: Nope!
Me: How about the medium one?! That looks sufficiently dangerous.
Mimi: Nope!
Me: Sigh. The giant, rickety, terrifying one?
Mimi: Yep! The big one!

At the top, I gave Mimi one last chance to back out. Or at least allow me to. No such luck.

I’m not going to say that I was completely proud of the degree of fear that I was feeling. So I’m going to frame it as a paternal instinct for the safety of my child. Yeah, let’s go with that.

But we survived. All seven times that Mimi made me go down it. And I’ll admit, the giggling “whheeeee” of your two year old does slightly cancel out some of the terror. Some of it.

The adrenaline wore off by the time we got home, and all four of us collapsed into a mega family nap.

Then it was time for one last swim in the embassy pool. By that point, we were fairly familiar with the section of the embassy surrounding the pool and play area, and I felt a bit more emboldened to walk around. As Cicely had been telling me all week, the Marines weren’t going to throw me in the Brig for chasing my two year old across the parking lot.

We wandered past the Marine barracks, the motor pool, and an emergency first aid rallying point that our two year old (not-unreasonably) presumed was a “Mimi-sized helicopter pad.” This kid has definitely grown up on hospital grounds.

That night was the going away party for an embassy staffer who was off to her next duty station. Most embassy staff serve for two or three years terms, so people are always coming and going.

The house that hosted the party belonged to a family from Hawaii who quite-impressively brought a bit of beach culture with them.

That guy wins dad of the year. Hand-made halfpipe in your backyard? Not even a competition.

The tacos and margaritas being served that night were a fitting last meal before we went back to Arizona. Everyone at the party treated us as if we were staff ourselves. Throughout our entire trip, the entire embassy community welcomed us to their little corner of the world, and they couldn’t have been more inviting.

While the grownups wistfully recalled the previous week, Mimi just sat in the corner and tried to figure out why her parents could accept tacos from strangers, but she had to turn down the candy. Growing up is hard.

Office karaoke and kids growing up

Both Cicely and Donyel had to work on Wednesday. The Embassy was making final preparations to host some visiting US dignitaries, and that was a tough day for staff to take leave. So Alicia, Isaias, Aimee, and I took our kids to a European-style bakery a few blocks away from the embassy, and marveled that not only was the El Salvadoran food better in El Salvador, but we couldn't remember the last time we had such tasty European pastries.

And of course, this being El Salvador, there was a full-enclosed indoor playground for the kids to run around in. Kind of like McDonalds, but nothing like McDonalds.

Not all of the slide runs were quite so successful. Mimi got a little friction burn on one of them, and the first tear hadn't yet hit the floor when our server appeared out of nowhere with a cupcake for Mimi.

This place is magical.

We spent the rest of the morning wandering around the embassy neighborhood (mostly immigration lawyers, fancy restaurants, and auto mechanics). Cicely gave us a ride home on her lunch break, and we stopped at the roadside fruit vendor on the way home. That, in and of itself, would not have been particularly eventful. But a police cruiser and a couple of motorcycles stopped to check our car out. We weren't really sure if the fruit vendor, our overstuffed SUV, or the diplomatic license plates caught the police officers' eyes, but they rolled slowly along before we had the chance to find out.

Alicia and Isaias took their kids to the San Salvador botanical gardens while Aimee and I put all four of us down for a nap.

When everyone was back at the house and/or awake, we went back to the embassy for another dip in the pool. But this wasn't just any old Wednesday at the embassy pool, this was the highly-anticipated Spring team building karaoke event! It just goes to show, that even if your office is in the tropics of Central America, it's still an office.

There was a surprising amount of vocal talent in the Foreign Service community, but none quite so harmonious as the Peace Corps Nicaragua Health Section, class of 2007.

The high school senior daughter of one of Cicely's colleagues was our baby sitter that night, so we could all go out to San Salvador's main craft brewery. It felt a little weird eating Vietnamese spring wraps in the middle of a bustling Central American city, but I wasn't complaining.

But the real event of the evening was coming home to all six of the children asleep! It was a school night for Cicely's kids, so we gave this babysitter a bit more direction than we did over the weekend. We still knew better than to expect that a highschooler could coordinate the bed time routines of thee school-age kids, two toddlers, and an infant.

But she did! We were floored, and made a generous donation to her college scholarship fund, and offered to write gushing college recommendation letters. She wisely declined the letters, but accepted the cash.

Thursday had the distinct feeling of a vacation winding down. Our friends would be flying home the next day, and we were already pre-missing these guys. But Nan found a way to break through the melancholy by losing her front two teeth!

She had been showing off her loose teeth all week, but wanted no part of a forced extradition. But when one fell out without much fuss, she was ok letting her dad coax out the second.

The Nicaraguan tradition for lost teeth is to throw them onto the roof of your house (it makes no less sense than a fairy coming to take them), so of course we had to replicate that here! Although, slightly modified with a ladder to reach to the top of Cicely and Donyel's giant embassy villa.

The younger kids proudly showed off their full sets.

Who could possibly be in a bad mood with all this going on? And it only got better from there. We went to a local artisan market to buy some souvenirs (and dance to the live salsa singer impressively belting away at 9am).

And then to further chase away the end-of-trip doldrums, Cicely made appointments with the in-home salon she uses on a regular basis ("They've watch all of Game of Thrones with me").

Set up took a bit longer than usual, and on a related note, Quinn may not respond to anything but endearing calls of gordo for the next several weeks.

And while all eyes were on my six month old, I wondered if my two year old irrevocably progressed into a teenager that day.

I'm a little kidding, and a little terrified.

Volcano hike, hobbit garden, and a bedtime story for baby coconut.

On Wednesday, we hike a volcano. As you might imagine, we were looking forward to this as a major highlight of the trip. We trained, we packed a child carrier, and we put on our most comfortable shoes. And we mostly spent the day eating mangos on a stick.

I think we over-prepared.

The Boquerón volcano hike on the edge of San Salvador is a well-maintained trail leading from a nice little visitor’s center to an overlook at the top of a caved-in volcano crater. It was delightful, and tourists of all abilities were either scaling or huffing and puffing their way up the 3-4 miles of dirt trails and paved staircases. It was really more of a city park than a Central American adventure, despite my temptation to present it to you all that way.

The highlight for parents of six adorable kids was a memorial garden with a picture of butterfly wings painted at a height just asking to be instagrammed.

If you think that’s cute, you should have seen her practice jumping while watching the bigger kids take their turn.

I think Alicia and Isaias’ daughter Nan probably best captured the spirit of the display.

Whereas I most certainly did not.

Embarrassing. I’m going to blame the backpack, the camera angle, and/or the height of the wall.

We made it to the top of the hill, where the aforementioned mango lady was the real attraction for the under 7 set.

But the rest of us were pretty impressed by the view.

The visitors center had several nice little exhibits about the history of the region that none of us read, because we were melting over our kids digging through the traditional El Salvadoran dress up section.

I know.

The hiking banter between Aimee, Cicely, and Alicia was why El Salvador had such a stunning and well maintained park, while Nicaragua had nothing of the sort, despite having equal if not more impressive natural scenery. Alicia did a bit of Wiki-research on her cellphone, and told us about the five-fold higher remunerations that El Salvador has over Nicaragua. Because of a variety of factors (mostly luck, timing, and politics), El Salvador refugees that fled war and natural disasters were allowed to live and work in the United States, whereas most Nicaraguans doing the same were not. The money that these refugees send back to their family make up a staggering amount of the El Salvador economy, despite being a trivial amount of ours. And far from being a quirk of history, this is being actively debated in Washington DC. Their Temporary Protected Status is currently scheduled to end September 9th of this year.

And if El Salvadorans were coming home to beautiful volcano hikes, guarded neighborhoods, and private beach clubs, I’m sure there wouldn’t be enough flights to handle them all. But the reality is that most are not. Cicely’s housekeeper regularly mentions another person that has disappeared from her definitely not guarded neighborhood in casual conversation. As we drove to lunch from the volcano park, Cicely pointed out downtown, where despite living in the city for over two years, she has never been. “It’s a no-go zone for embassy staff.” And later that day, we would smell the distinct odor of open sewage that Cicely would explain to us is from the river of human excrement that flows through an overcrowded shanty neighborhood illegally set up under the main freeway through San Salvador.

Our vacation is very intentionally selecting from the more attractive elements of this country. But we are most certainly not seeing El Salvador in its entirely. This place is rough. It’s also beautiful. And once again, I’m glad we have the means to skew our agenda towards the latter. Not everyone is so lucky.

On one side of town, you have disappearances and sewage rivers. On the other, you have Hobbits. Seriously. We had lunch at one of the fanciest restaurants I have ever been to. The view was stunning, and there wasn’t a plate for less than $20 (which needless to say is a ton of money out here) Yet it also had several playgrounds, a hobbit garden, and a petting zoo. It is run by an eccentric recluse, and definitely followed its own building code. Aimee told me about the rickety bridge on the end of the cliff she and the kids had to take to get to the petting zoo. I missed out on that, since Isaias and I stuck around at the table for some much needed dad beers. Someone had to watch our stuff, after all.

After lunch, we headed back into town for a little swim at the embassy pool, as was becoming our custom. The drives that day weren't particularly long, so Mimi still hadn't taken her nap. I took one for the team, and taught Mimi how to take a hammock nap. Parenting is all about sacrifice.

As you can tell from Spiderman's reappearance, it took a bit of convincing and distracting to get a two year old to nap at a pool when all of her friends are splashing around twenty feet away. But we pulled it off.

And I know I'll miss the days of all day infant napping, but it's nice to start getting a few photos of Quinn with his eyes open.

Rested and refreshed, we spent the rest of the afternoon splashing in the pool and playing in the embassy park. It was the perfect combination of US-grade playground equipment and tropics-grade mojitos. 

All week, Cicely has been giving us the hard sell to join the Foreign Service. So that afternoon she invited the embassy doctor to join us at the pool and tell us how nice his job is, as if the pool and mojitos weren't already doing the selling. I get it, guys. I get it.

We swam a bit more as the sun started to set, and I somehow didn't drop either of my kids in the pool as I distractedly pondered the third draft of my resignation letter.

Since the embassy is just a couple of miles from Cicely and Donyel's house, it wasn't worth hiring a car and driver, or checking out an embassy van, our usual modes of transport around here. So we all packed into their Honda Pilot and hoped that their diplomatic license plate would keep us from getting pulled over.

Back at the house, Mimi read Baby Coconut a bedtime story, and we all turned in for an early night. 

From the lake house to the Liberation Front

Monday was a lazy day at the lake house.

I've never said that before, but I could get used to it.

Cicely booked us a little cottage on the shore of the breathtaking Lago de Coatepeque. It's her go-to place to bring visiting friends and family, and she's not alone. The lake also forms the backdrop of the El Salvadoran Camp David, and the country's president has a retreat just down the shore from where we were staying.

It's hard to impress this kid.

That's not true. A box of raisins and Sophie the Giraffe is really all it takes to make everyone forget that we will be waking up at least three times tonight to change a diaper, add another roll to the growing stack on Quinn's thighs, or simply babble to Strawberry Shortcake how much fun we're having in El Salvador.

Worth it.

As you may have noticed, Aimee and I have become big fans of the full-body toddler bathing suit. There's really nothing that can sour the start of a beach day, but chasing around a toddler to rub in the zinc-infused warpaint all over her face isn't exactly relaxing. The alternative:

Too much, this kid.

But back to the lake. It formed in the center of a long-since collapsed volcano over 50,000 years ago, and has become a beautiful preserve that I'm sure has unique biological and historical significance. In the years before we had children, I would have looked it up and told you all about it. In the post kid years, I mostly spend my days playing defense against some of the most dangerously irresistible toddler attractions imaginable.

Rickety pier with woefully inadequate guard rails? Where can these kids sign up?

Charming little play house with rotting wood, missing planks, and exposed nails? Just try to hold them back!

The rest of the afternoon was spent just as it should have been, with giggling kids, full bellies, and even a decent toddler nap in one of the back bedrooms. It was as delightful as it sounds.

Our drive back gradually transitioned from serene countryside to bustling city, and before we knew it, we were back in the thick of San Salvador. We passed a few trucks broken down on the side of the road, which brought to mind something I think about a lot while traveling in Latin America: the effect of government stability and regulation on society.

I know, I know.  We were just having a nice afternoon at the beach, and I had to bring up politics. But it's hard to escape out here. Many Central American countries have frequent government turnover and wild political swings. The civil bureaucracy that we love to hate in American civil life doesn't really exist out here. So when a new leader comes in, all of his or her (usually his) friends get placed at the top of government agencies, and any projects that were in development get scrapped and started again. So even through our civil bureaucracy is sometimes maddeningly slow to change, that's mostly for a reason. It allows for momentum to carry big projects forward like city parks, freeways, and (most evident on our drive home) automobile and freight truck safety regulations. So despite the chest pain I develop while waiting in line at the county development office for a $10 sign permit, it does give us one more layer of protection from the chaos often seen while traveling abroad.

El Salvador is a prime example of government turnover. A young, relatively long shot presidential candidate (Nayib Bukele, the mayor of San Salvador) recently had a surprise and decisive win in the national election. He ran as an anti-corruption moderate, defeating a candidate from the currently ruling Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.

Bukele himself used to be a member of the left-leaning party until he was kicked out under murky circumstances. The subtext is that he got chased out after a bit too much muckraking trying to bring some sunlight to El Salvador's political machinations. Bukele is the son of a Muslim father and Christian mother, considers himself a Roman Catholic, and married the descendant of a Sephardic Jew. He is nothing if not interesting, and I am curious about what changes he will bring to El Salvador and Central America.

As is the United States Embassy.

As you can imagine, the transition of power (and the political and diplomatic uncertainty it brings) is a major focus of Cicely and her colleagues at the embassy. In fact, we had to change the date of our trip to avoid visiting during the election. The US Embassy had all hands on deck that week, and there was a decent chance that Cicely would be assigned as a poll watcher to verify free and fair elections. Other staff members were assigned to feeling out Bukele's political leanings, and how they might impact El Salvador-US relations. Bukele is the first president of El Salvador to not come from one of the major two political parties following the civil war of the 1980s and early 1990s, and there is a lot of uncertainty with how he will lead the country.

Enter USAID.

There are many reasons that the United States provides foreign aid, but the largest (and least appreciated domestically) is to protect our interests. International stability, decreased infectious disease transmission, and fewer episodes of civil unrest very directly impact our quality of life back at home. USAID and the other front line agencies that provide foreign aid abroad keep a very keen eye on the political pulse of the countries that they are operating on. Say, for instance, that the banana farmers of a particular country strongly support their country’s moderate president who has close ties to the US. They know that the US is a major importer of bananas, and they want to keep relations stable between the two countries. But the soybean farmers want to use more land for soybeans, form closer political relations with China, and start displacing US soybean sales to China with exports from their own country. Which crop do you think is going to suddenly get agricultural experts and farming equipment provided to them compliments of the US Government?

Cicely and her colleagues at USAID are constantly playing a game of three dimensional chess and looking at the myriad ways foreign development affects international relations and US interests abroad. For better or worse, this is not simply a group of people singing kumbaya and writing blank checks. There is a reason that, despite the political rhetoric, when push comes to shove, both US political parties strongly support focused international aid. Most of the people at the top know that, quite simply, it works. It’s one of the most cost-effective (less than 1% of the federal budget) ways to achieve US policy goals abroad, and has a direct effect on our well-being at home.

Our dinner conversation that night drifted from the goals of foreign aid to the fact that we were eating pretty amazing Indian food delivered straight to our house by Uber Eats. In El Salvador. Despite the political upheaval, drug violence, and long-simmer after effects of civil war, Cicely and Donyel have the world’s food available to them three cell phone taps away. The contrast was both striking and delicious.

I’m (slowly) reading a book about the Cuban missile crisis these days, and the section I’m in right now is talking about how both the US and Soviet observers were shocked with how routinely the Cubans could go about their daily lives in the face of near-certain nuclear annihilation. As we ate our Uber Eats Indian food, I couldn’t help but draw a comparison to ever-turbulent El Salvador. I don’t know if I can generalize this phenomenon to all of humanity, but it does seem that the people in the most immediate danger seem to be the best at enjoying the world right in front of them. The lesson here? Get a second helping of Indian food.