I woke up to a phone call; Jorge with a few messages for different people at the church. I've never tried to catch a bus on a Sunday morning and we were a few minutes late as a result. All of the younger guys that helped in the service did a great job, and while brother Tomas was preaching a baby bird fell from its nest in the ceiling striking the floor in the aisle. I have to say that at first I was pretty angry with God for allowing a baby bird to fall 20 meters and hit a tile floor, then I saw something miraculous. One of the sisters quietly got up from her seat, scooped up the small, featherless form and took it outside. There was no hit of disgust on her face for the life form she carried, no sense of distaste, but with a calm and steadfast compassion she bore the young chick outside. Thinking later I can appreciate the autonomy that animals have; God's creations being made and given their own free will as the sense and interact with this world in their own way.
I decided to combine the adolescent and jovenes class since there wasn't a teacher for either group, and we did a communication exercise and discussed context and how best we can communicate with other people. It is so hard to give directions for an exercise in Spanish, no matter how simple the objective, but once everyone understood they joined in well and contributed to the discussion.
After class their was a luncheon with chicken (though not fried), tortillas (of course), tuna salad (there had to be some somewhere) and salsa. Cold Coca-Cola and hot rice pudding rounded out the very tasty meal. We sat outside at tables eating and talking; even though we thought to have tortas at the caseta (because we didn't know about the luncheon even though it was announced several times), but we certainly didn't mind the good food and fellowship.
We hoped to go to the grocery store that afternoon and Lulu said she needed some things as well, so she and Pedro took us to the store and then home. We met Miguel, Jose and Isidro at home where the afternoon festivities began.
Burgers were on the menu and some charcoal was on the grill, after a few rounds of Guitar Hero, we lit the fire and seasoned the hamburgers. Kimberly made brownies for dessert.
Cooking here is a slightly different art. I had made sure to buy the things I needed for the brownie recipe I had, and had been taught how to light the gas oven. What I didn't expect was that the gauge on the dial would be completely inaccurate for the temperature inside, and that things would heat up, especially on the bottom, and fast. Once I got everything mixed I lit the oven to let it pre-heat. After one song on guitar hero I checked the thermometer that hangs from the top rack, and the oven was at 425! Way too hot! I turned the dial down and opened the door to let some heat out. The temperature dropped to 300. Too cold. I closed the door and went ahead and put them in. I watched them, and the thermometer closely. Within 2 minutes we were back up to 400. Too hot again. I turned the dial down some more and again opened the door. Back to 300. I closed the door. Up to 380. Turned down the knob, opened the door. Down to 325. Closed the door. Up to 375. And it went on and on. At one point the brownies looked like a huge brown cappuccino foam. I poked it down. As the 30 minutes neared and the knife came out clean I took the pan out. Things looked a little strange (probably from the foam mutulation stage) but didn't smell too bad. I let them cool for a good 20 minutes and then set into cutting them. The bottom centimeter was charred black. But it came off really easily, almost like a black sugar layer. I sliced up a few and handed them out. Despite my concern and apprehension the guys seemed to love them. Pedro had 3 before dinner, Jose told me I had created a new flavor, and Isidro told me they were delicious. Zach was very pleased as well (im not sure if it was because they were edible and he was just glad I wasn't sad, or if he has just been starving for something sweet and chocolate-ey since we have been here) They weren't all that bad. They tasted a little grainy but since everyone was happy I was happy. And like Zach says, things just turn out different here.
It was a nice afternoon, even though it started to sprinkle on us while we ate on the back porch complete with tiki torches. Some more guitar hero was played. La Grange in Conner's honor, and Magic Black Woman in Emy's. During the lapse of time between stardom, we began a brief discussion about tongue twisters. We told them about Peter Piper, they told us some thing that Pedro said so fast I couldn't have understood if I tried. And then Zach introduced the Toy Boat. This brought many smiles and laughter as we all tripped over the different sounds in the two words. Go ahead, try it. We made plans to meet Jose at the church building at 10:30 to go play fronton with Jorge's brother Alberto. I had seen it played once before and didn't know anything about it, but that's the name of the game in Mexico.
No comments:
Post a Comment