I have been invited to sit in on several sessions of an ongoing workshop to design a set of indicators to measure the impact of mediation on justice and the justice system in El Salvador. Although the meetings were in Spanish, I was able to follow the majority of the flow of the conversation. Hearing these representatives of the institutions associated with the mediation centers talk about the role and importance of mediation in their society was both interesting and inspiring because of their passion.
I was also invited to attend a recent meeting with representatives from USAID at the USAID offices in the US Embassy compound. That meant for a couple of hours on Thursday I was within US legal jurisdiction, so it was almost like going home for a little while. That meeting was quite the educational experience. The leaders of the two other Democracy and Governance/Rule of Law programs were also present, which gave me the great opportunity to learn more about the other types of efforts being made and the challenges they are facing. The good news is that the meetings was not all political fluff and nonsense, which I admit I was expecting to a certain degree. Instead, the meeting was a very frank discussion of the progress and remaining challenges in El Salvador. I was a really positive experience on a lot of levels for me.
As you may have noticed, I also like to talk about my social/cultural experiences and I had an interesting one last night. Eva has finally returned from her conferences, so we decided to go out for dinner last night. Originally the plan was to go to a Mexican restaurant Eva is fond of but we found it UNBELIEVABLY busy so off we went in search of a place where we did not need to wait in a line simply to get into the parking lot. We actually decided on going to a place called Buffalo Wings. For those of you who may not know/remember, I grew up in Buffalo, NY the home of the original Buffalo wings and I can be quite picky about my wings. To my astonishment, not only is this place very popular, they make some pretty impressive wings! Who'd have thought I would find such a great comfort food in El Salvador?!? If you consider how hard it is to find decent wings in the States outside of Buffalo, it is incredibly ironic that I can find them here. I love it! Globalization obviously isn't all bad.
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