Journal, February 8, 1976 AM

I slept hard and long last night. It’s 8:00 and I’m still not out of bed. I haven’t been able to sleep so many hours at one stretch for some time.

I had a great time in Atiocoyo. Ismael Peña was there - on a Saturday surprisingly enough. I’ve been meaning to visit him & his wife in San Salvador for I don’t know how long. He says he’s going to college in the States next fall no matter what. He plans to borrow the money, but wants to know about work permits & stuff like that. I’ll read over the info. I got from U.W. {University of Wisconsin-Madison} about foreign students and see if it contains any useful stuff. I promised to go see him about March 5 or 6.

We helped Mr. Yu move his broken rice paddy tractor out of a paddy they want to plant and into a dry one. They are putting the majority of the “Granja Agricola” {Agricultural or Crop Farm} into wet rice (12-15 hectares!). Those plots he did last year must have really impressed them!

I had a fine relaxing afternoon with Mr. Yu. We had a fantastic meal, as always when I visit him, and played 3 games of chess. He loves to play so much that, even though I usually have trouble getting into chess, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I even won one game!

He even took me to Aguilares on his moto {motorcycle}, since he said he was going anyway. I got to see how the irrigation works are progressing. Incredibly slow is the impression I got, the main canal is now seemingly complete out to where it crosses the road from Atiocoyo going south, but no irrigation is being done from the dam. The granjas {project experimental farms} are still using that little system the previous owners had. I was thoroughly disappointed.

In Aguilares we waited for the train at a tienda run by two amazingly attractive teenage girls and their mother. Mr. Yu has a knack for charming people, & had them all thoroughly won over. As he says, he just likes to play the clown with folks. Mr. Chwang came by, & it was good to see him too. I hope to get out there again, but as the song goes: … tener amor y amigos cuesta tanto {having love and friends is so difficult}!