May 4, 2011
Last night I took my first shot at cooking. Filomena, Regino’s 12-year-old daughter, stays with me at night, so she and Erlin (an outgoing 7 year old boy) watched me struggle with the frijoles. I asked Gloria how she made her beans – they are delicious – and she told me they are just beans. She can’t fool me, there’s more than beans in there. I pressed further and she said onions and salt. She also said I needed to soak them for an indeterminate amount of time. It was just like asking my grandmother how she makes pierogi – apparently you just do it, and it’s easy.
I chose to soak the beans for 5 hours… and then Erlin told me I needed to cook them for 2 days. I assume I missunderstood, but maybe he was right. Eventually I gave up (they were pretty much cooked) and doused them with salt… not too bad. I also made beets, but I never learned how to make my grandmother’s beet soup either so that was a little disappointing as well. In the end Filomena and I snuck the left over beans out to Kimbo, the dog.
(this is kimbo - super cute, but Ella, my dog, has no competition. Worms and flees)
This morning I finished The man who was Thursday, which is now my favorite book. It affirmed my suspicion that G. K. Chesterton might be my favorite author. I realize that for at least half of the book Thursday is fleeing for his life, but Chesterton’s style just makes me feel peaceful.
Around noon we went out to play soccer. Their soccer field is on top of a hill with a beautiful view. From our vantage point in the clouds you can seebeautiful valleys, forests, and fields for miles. This adds and extra element of difficulty to the game as the ball can roll 100 yards down the mountain and into a dry river bed. Their other exciting addition to the game is that a cow lives in the middle of the field. This has two consequences. First, if the ball goes too near the cow some one brave has to go get it. The cow does not play soccer, and, as far as I can tell, doesn’t really approve of the sport. The second consequence is that kids run unabashedly straight though the cow patties to keep the game going.
The third team
In the clouds
When the little girls became bored they made monster noises at me and pretended to claw at me. So I made monster noises back and tried to tickle them. This progressed to me swinging them in circles. When I rejoined the soccer game there were two older boys playing. I am fairly certain that the most useful thing I’ve ever done to prepare myself for travel to Latin America was learn to play soccer. It’s even more useful that speaking Spanish in some ways. There are so many types of Spanish accent that it’s pretty much impossible for me to sound legit in a new place… ok, let’s be honest - I never sound legit. But I can play soccer well enough to fit in. Particularly when my legs are twice as long as the average local adult male’s. Even with my 12 minute mile pace I can out run those kids and maybe even teach them a few tricks J.
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