sancocho and goodtimes
So, apparently about five years ago, back when he and Cristina got married, my hostdad promised to make sancocho, a Colombian type of soup/stew, for Cristina´s family.
This past Saturday he finally got around to it, and by "he", I mean "Cristina got the recipe from his mom and made it". I was nervous before trying it in that I heard it involved lots of meat, and meat here generally makes me an unhappy girl. Well, meat in general. But you get the point. In actuality, the soupthing was AMAAAAZING tasting, probably because it starts out as just an awesome broth that you add cilantro and lime juice to, then you add precooked things in as you want to soak up the liquid... so there was chicken and pork and blah blah, but also yuca and potatoes and plantains and avocado and corn. So life was veggietastical and delicious.
The event was filmed for posterity.
I was also amused because Fernando, aka Crazy Atheist Grandpa, was over, and he always kind of destroys me with the funny. Like the weekend before last when our generator´s batteries fizzled out so there was no hot water, so he came over to replace them. After ten minutes, calling mom, and then fiddling with batteries, there was hot water running again, and he pronounced himself Macgayver (I have no idea how to spell that, but I catch the reference). Better was last Wednesday night, when he and Grandma came over and his pinky was swollen and purple and probably broken. He insisted that Emily and I did not reveal this to Grandma, stating that he did not like doctors. He then added "...But I like nurses." My absolute favorite, though, was Sunday post-sancocho when the famdamly was ragging on him for watching four different TV shows at the same time, on different televisions. They were insisting he couldn´t follow all four plots, to which he replied:
"What you don´t know is I´m bionic."
He then turned to me and asked if I knew what he was saying, I said yes, and he said "well that makes two of us," gesturing to the table.
Crazy Atheist Grandpa is the funniest man in Ecuador. He does, however, always try to lean in at the last moment during the greeting and farewell cheek-kisses to steal a kiss on the lips. He does NOT do that with Religious Katie or any of the other K kids. I know because I finally became puzzled and asked if he was just devious in general or liked me. Though now that Emily is back, she says he does it to her, too. Must be the dark haired biology girls. I am now fast enough to dodge smooches, though.
Annnnnnyways today was a most excellent day schoolwise -- I got my story back in lit class -- 20 out of 20. The prof, like a few of my readers, thinks the first paragraph isn´t cohesive with the action of the rest of the story, so as much I love it, I think I may have to axe it. He also said, though, that he was really surprised it was my first story (in honesty it isn´t my first, but it is one of all of two that I really like, and definitely within the first five stories I´ve written as a pseudoadult), and said that I should keep writing because I have a knack for it. That made me quite retardedly happy. Then of course there´s the fact that my art professors say my future is in art, not biology, and it seems like I should pursue most any future but the one I actually am on track for... heh.
Got the presentation done for Human Ecology, and six of the ten pages are written for the paper due Friday. Not worried in the slightest. Then I had my Tropical Rainforest Ecology project presentation, and I´m the only person in the entire class who didn´t need to tweak their project... David didn´t give me any negative commentary, actually. He just smiled, said he loved the idea, and that he thinks the results should be interesting. I´m excited to get out the rainforest and actually sort out some bugs. (FYI, my project involves comparing arthropod diversity and richness between areas of recent treefall and nearby, nondisturbed areas by means of phenotypic classification of samples gathered from pitfall traps. If you actually want that explained in a non-bio major way, do let me know.)
Emily might come with Al and I to Otavalo this weekend, if she doesn´t end up going to Tiputini with David.
Life is good.
Life is damn good.
This past Saturday he finally got around to it, and by "he", I mean "Cristina got the recipe from his mom and made it". I was nervous before trying it in that I heard it involved lots of meat, and meat here generally makes me an unhappy girl. Well, meat in general. But you get the point. In actuality, the soupthing was AMAAAAZING tasting, probably because it starts out as just an awesome broth that you add cilantro and lime juice to, then you add precooked things in as you want to soak up the liquid... so there was chicken and pork and blah blah, but also yuca and potatoes and plantains and avocado and corn. So life was veggietastical and delicious.
The event was filmed for posterity.
I was also amused because Fernando, aka Crazy Atheist Grandpa, was over, and he always kind of destroys me with the funny. Like the weekend before last when our generator´s batteries fizzled out so there was no hot water, so he came over to replace them. After ten minutes, calling mom, and then fiddling with batteries, there was hot water running again, and he pronounced himself Macgayver (I have no idea how to spell that, but I catch the reference). Better was last Wednesday night, when he and Grandma came over and his pinky was swollen and purple and probably broken. He insisted that Emily and I did not reveal this to Grandma, stating that he did not like doctors. He then added "...But I like nurses." My absolute favorite, though, was Sunday post-sancocho when the famdamly was ragging on him for watching four different TV shows at the same time, on different televisions. They were insisting he couldn´t follow all four plots, to which he replied:
"What you don´t know is I´m bionic."
He then turned to me and asked if I knew what he was saying, I said yes, and he said "well that makes two of us," gesturing to the table.
Crazy Atheist Grandpa is the funniest man in Ecuador. He does, however, always try to lean in at the last moment during the greeting and farewell cheek-kisses to steal a kiss on the lips. He does NOT do that with Religious Katie or any of the other K kids. I know because I finally became puzzled and asked if he was just devious in general or liked me. Though now that Emily is back, she says he does it to her, too. Must be the dark haired biology girls. I am now fast enough to dodge smooches, though.
Annnnnnyways today was a most excellent day schoolwise -- I got my story back in lit class -- 20 out of 20. The prof, like a few of my readers, thinks the first paragraph isn´t cohesive with the action of the rest of the story, so as much I love it, I think I may have to axe it. He also said, though, that he was really surprised it was my first story (in honesty it isn´t my first, but it is one of all of two that I really like, and definitely within the first five stories I´ve written as a pseudoadult), and said that I should keep writing because I have a knack for it. That made me quite retardedly happy. Then of course there´s the fact that my art professors say my future is in art, not biology, and it seems like I should pursue most any future but the one I actually am on track for... heh.
Got the presentation done for Human Ecology, and six of the ten pages are written for the paper due Friday. Not worried in the slightest. Then I had my Tropical Rainforest Ecology project presentation, and I´m the only person in the entire class who didn´t need to tweak their project... David didn´t give me any negative commentary, actually. He just smiled, said he loved the idea, and that he thinks the results should be interesting. I´m excited to get out the rainforest and actually sort out some bugs. (FYI, my project involves comparing arthropod diversity and richness between areas of recent treefall and nearby, nondisturbed areas by means of phenotypic classification of samples gathered from pitfall traps. If you actually want that explained in a non-bio major way, do let me know.)
Emily might come with Al and I to Otavalo this weekend, if she doesn´t end up going to Tiputini with David.
Life is good.
Life is damn good.