Silly Monkeys

Comida/Food

This is my most favorite food ever.

I don’t have a refrigerator, and it’s been challenging to keep fresh veggies in the house. I crave cold salads, but alas… I have, however, found a great way to get my veggies and enjoy some comfort food all at the same time. You see, when you buy tacos at a taco stand here, you get several bags of condiments. One of those bags is full of cabbage and radishes and maybe even cucumber slices. Well, I found a taco place by my house that not only has some of the best carne asada in town, but they’re also very generous with the condiment bags. This means that I can actually make myself a side salad of veggies to go with my tacos! How’s that for ingenious? I love this food!!

Cultural confusion

I’m so culturally confused sometimes.

It’s because I’ve lived in at three world regions with wildly different cultural practices and sometimes they sort of meld together in my head. It’s more than a language thing, which is its own challenge (I have a hard time with intelligent conversation in English after I’ve been speaking another language for a while). Sometimes it has to do with how to greet someone (I kept bowing to people in Mexico when I first came back after being in Asia), how to eat food properly, what are appropriate topics of conversation, or even how to cross the street. When I returned to the US after being in southeast Asia for a year, my stepstepmom picked me up at LAX. As we were walking to the car, I started across a crosswalk against a red light, intending to weave between oncoming cars like you would do in Asia. My stepstepmom threw out her arm to stop me- oh yeah, we don’t do that in the US, we wait for the light! Ha!

In southeast Asia, it’s customary to leave the last bite or two on your plate, which signifies that your host has fed you enough and not left you hungry, thereby fulfilling the social expectations of being a good host. In other parts of the world, like the US and Mexico, it’s customary to clear your plate, like the food was so delicious that you had to eat it all, thereby fulfilling the social expectations of being a gracious guest. So one of my first nights here in La Paz, my hostess Alba served up this delicious meal. I still had a couple of bites of food left on my plate when she stood up and began to clear the table. When she asked if I was finished, I started to hand her the plate. But as I went to lift it off the table, I had this moment of total panic- Eat it or leave it? Eat it or leave it?! – and I set the plate back down on the table, lifted it off the table, set it back down… Alba and I both laughed, and in the end I handed her the plate. That may not have been the thing to do, but I really couldn’t have eaten any more, since it seems that another of the customs here is to serve a gut-busting amount of food to guests!

I was just thinking about my cultural confusion because I just made some ramen noodle soup. I threw in an egg for some protein and flavor. And when it was all done, I thought, hmmm, I know what’ll make this just perfect—salsa picante!!! A little hot sauce with my ramen – what a combo!

More fieldwork

In lieu of three boring paragraphs of me bitching about car repairs, I'll give you some pictures of my most recent field day!

Lucia and I did some more surveys in the San Dionisio area. It took like 8 hours to do 4 surveys. We got hung up at one house where we were treated to some really long stories and advice on how I should make time to get married and have children instead of going to school so much. Sigh... I hear that a lot here!

There was plenty of livestock sitting around in the shade...

...and afterwards we drove through Santiago to see what the zoo looked like (haven't gone in yet). The trees are just fantastic in this area. They're ginormous! And this is what happens when you don't make room in your sidewalk for tree growth...