It sure feels good to be back!

I used to blog about being an expat living in El Salvador until I was scared shitless (well, not shitless, but I did pee myself a little) when the mara salvatrucha called my home and told me they would kill me and my family if I didn't pay up.  It's possible I wouldn't have been frightened so easily had I not just spawned my first child and had the caller not known my first name was Puta, Puta, Puta.

I (sort of) got over that incident after I was told by locals not to worry.  They reassured me that there were a lot of Putas in the area and that these things happen all the time.  And that usually they don't kill people like me.

Needless to say, from then on I became a little more sensitive to everything around me. Enough so that we decided to leave our paradise and the home it took an entire year to build, and the business we opened, and the friends who became our family, to move our entire family of 5 into my parents' house.  Parents with whom I haven't lived with in almost 20 years or visited with for more than a few days in those two decades.

I miss El Salvador every day.  And we had quite the love affair of almost 6 dreamy years.  But like many steamy relationships, the last was rocky and we are happy to be living in California,  where there are glittering sidewalks and perfectly manicured landscapes at every turn.

I'm back because I no longer fear that I'm endangering the lives of my (three: ages 1! 2! 3!) children by writing about them in a public forum.  I'm back because I want to share my experiences as someone immigrating back into their own country.  I'm back because I want to share what I know and love and fear and miss about El Salvador.  I'm back because the adventure doesn't stop just because you feel threatened, or because you had a bunch of kids, or because you moved to the suburbs...right?

I mean, just look how crazy things get around, here.