New Empleada Day! (yes, again)…and Gymnastics

We were doing pretty well for awhile there.  I really thought Elena was working out.  She was a great cook.  She wasn’t the most stellar cleaner, but she did a good enough job without me having to be mean and picky that Eric and I were satisfied.  She didn’t seem like she hated me too much or resented me all that much for asking her to do certain things.  But, fortunately for her and unfortunately for us, she got a full time job at a factory.  She offered to come on Saturdays, but that’s no fun because we would have to stay home all day while she was here.  Boo.

So after a couple of weeks of searching, I found Paola.  Paola is Colombian, which I love because she speaks a beautiful brand of Spanish.  Clear, pure, intelligible….just lovely.  She has also been in Panamá for 16 years which means she is legal.  A rare find.  I’m betting she won’t be around for long, but I’ll enjoy her while she’s here.  Oh, and did I mention that her resumé said she has worked as a supermodel?  Eric’s in Seattle this week for work and yesterday I happened to need to send him 4 emails throughout the course of the morning, including one announcing that Paola was going to come today for the first time.  Guess which email he responded to within ONE MINUTE?!  Yep, the one about the supermodelo housekeeper.  Shocker.

Paola showed up perfectly on time this morning – that in and off itself may have been a first.  However, when I opened the door and she saw Addie, she looked HORRIFIED.  Pure terror on her face.  Apparently she was not the one I warned about the dog.  Oops.  I’m usually pretty good about that.  Not this time.  So poor Addie went out to the porch for a bit.  I know that all Addie wants to do is sniff the woman once and then leave her alone, but Paola is so scared.  Poor thing.  We’ll work through this, but I’ll give her a minute to get used to the idea before I force them into the same room together.

Anyway, Paola is not a woman that I would look at and say “WOW!  Supermodel!”  First of all, I don’t know what distinguishes a model from a supermodel.  Secondly, I’m not trying to knock her at all.  I’m thinking in a “we surveyed 100 people and they said…” kind of way.  She might be a couple of inches taller than I am.  Maybe 5’5″ tops.  She’s 36, so perhaps she’s changed over the years.  But as a veteran America’s Next Top Model aficionado, I can say with authority that she does not have any particularly striking features.  Maybe she’s really good at smizing (or however you spell it…for those of you who don’t watch the best show ever made by Tyra Banks, that’s smiling with your eyes).  Of course I’m being harsh, but come on, when you say “supermodel” on your resumé, you create expectations.  I just want to know more!  Now she’s gonna think I’m weird when I stare at her and try to figure out what the deal is.  Google to the rescue!  I’ll keep you updated…

So last night, I went to my first gymnastics class since I was four years old.  Mono invited me while I was working again on my front walkover type move and explained that the idea is to help us to train in the acrobatics side of capoeira.  So I went.  And Mono didn’t.  Apparently he had some pain in his neck or something.  I went even with my jammed and swollen finger and aching wrist.  (Again, Eric, I’m sorry I can’t get my wedding rings on my finger.  And Mom, yes, I still kinda blame you for the Taylor Swift concert related wrist injury that is flaring back up.  Why are you so freakishly young and athletic?)

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One other capoeirista went, thank goodness.  His name, and I feel I have to explain it, is Kike.  It’s pronounced KEY-KAY.  It’s not a racial slur.  It means robocop in Portuguese…or at least that’s the idea.  Anyway, he’s super in shape b/c he trains like mad and runs a bazillion kilometers every day, plus he’s at least a foot taller than me.  Let’s just say he has a slight advantage when we train together.

So this gym was PACKED with 5-12 year old little people on all the apparati that you think of when you think of gymnastics.  We were upstairs in this warehouse type gym…you know, where the proverbial heat rises.  The warm-up lasted for, as far as I can figure, 7 hours.  I can’t remember the last time my skin felt so hot.  I was seriously worried about my body temperature…and also about the possibility of vomiting on the super cool springy floor.  At several points, I just had to sit down on the floor and put my frozen water bottle (ice bottle, i suppose) under my knees, on my arms, behind my neck, etc.  I thought I was going to quit several times, and I was pretty shameless about it, as I thought I was going to die, but then I would get back to just moderately overheated and Kike would convince me to return to the “warm-up.”  I did get it all done…just not quite as quickly as some of the others.

Some goofuses came in about an hour after us, warmed up, and ended up doing the class just like we did.  That’s the way to do it.  Good thing to know for next time.

I met a nice Canadian girl who must’ve been all of 20 who reassured me that, yes, it’s hard, and yes, it gets easier.  Mostly she was just really nice about saying that it wasn’t weird that I was dying.  I liked her.

So we finally got to the class part and got to play on some super big mats.  We ran and did front rolls, then front handsprings (with help).  Then we jumped and landed backwards on big stacks of mats.  Being the second to shortest and the newby, I had some trouble with this one.  Plus, apparently I jump like a high-jumper (leftover from my two weeks of fame during middle school…not that I like to brag) and arch my back, so I pretty much just ran straight into the side of the mat.  Awesome.

We ended the class doing back flips (back tucks?  What do you kids call them?), which was actually pretty cool.  Again, I had the coach on one side and a guy from the class on the other side, but still, it was cool.

Will I go back?  Hard to say.  I really really really hated the first part.  It was awful.  Really awful.  But the rest of it was fun.  And probably pretty helpful for capoeira.  I’ll probably say that I don’t want to take yet another night away from my husband and leave it at that.  We’ll see.  Or maybe I’ll try to talk him into going with me.  He called last night and told me how awesome he thought the videos of my back flips were….not the one I put on facebook, but the next two when I improved a lot.  That made me feel pretty awesome.

Okay, back to my day of writing to prisoners, icing my finger, tending to my random gymnastics bruises, and hanging out with a supermodel.  You know, the usual.

 

Aside

Apologies

My apologies to my husband for the very very large photo of him in the last post.  I resized it twice, but wordpress did not care.  It wanted everyone to have a screen full of Eric’s forehead, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.  My apologies also for the other large images in my posts.  It seems that my choices are huge and tiny.  Maybe one day I’ll learn how to use the internets.  I appreciate your patience with me…even if Mom is the only one still reading.  Thanks, Mom.

Food! Or so they say…

We continue to try new fruits as we find them.  The latest is a pitahaya, not to be confused with the yellow fruit of similar spelling.  This is also a cactus fruit, and actually I’m quite confused about which one is actually the true dragonfruit.  I thought it was the other one, but now I’m reading that “‘Pitaya'” usually refers to fruit of the genus Stenocereus, while ‘pitahaya’ or ‘dragon fruit’ always refers to fruit of the genus Hylocereus.”  I’m sure you’re super intrigued.  The main point?  This time we tried the pink one; last time we tried the yellow one.

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Before I had any say in the matter, Eric peeled the poor thing naked, leaving it looking like this:

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Sad.  We were excited though, to find out that it looked like the yellow dragonfruit thing, but with more pulp.   Still like a giant kiwi.  Sadly, it was less sweet and just plain not as good as the yellow one.  Womp womp.  Still worth trying though.  Eric also learned a valuable lesson.  You don’t strip these things down because you can use the outside pink skin stuff as a bowl.  Otherwise you just have a giant slippery kiwi sliding all over the plate.  Luckily there were two of us, as eating it became a team effort.

We also tried a zapote.  This was my find.  I picked it up on a solo trip to the grocery store.  So when you get produce, you have to have it weighed and bagged and labeled in the produce section so that the cashiers don’t have to bother with it when they check you out.  Not a bad system actually.  So I was in line to have my zapote weighed and the old man behind me asked me what this thing was that I was buying.  I told him I had no idea and he laughed.  I then got into the checkout line and the bag boy asked me the same thing.  The cashier kinda laughed when I said again that I didn’t know.  She said it was a fruit (whereas I thought it looked kinda like a squash) and that she didn’t like them.

Zapote

 

Turns out a zapote looks and feels like a pumpkin inside – it’s slimy – but it’s sweet.  Not my fave, but worth a try.

Zapote insides

So…here comes the…er…interesting part.  I decided to actually look at the meat section at the grocery store rather than just going immediately to the chicken and hamburger meat and ignoring all the gross.  If you are a vegetarian or in anyway opposed to gross meats, you might not want to see this.  Look at all the weird things they sell in our normal, rather upscale (think Harris Teeter) grocery store!

Pigs’ Feet
Liver
Kidney
Tongue – it’s HUGE!!!
Pig’s Spleen – according to one translation…although that must’ve been a HUGE pig!
Bull testicles. Yep.

 

So yeah.  There’s that.  I’m sticking to the fruit sampling.  There are plenty of challenges there.  Check this out, for example:

Rambutan

Rambutan

I mean, that’s a fruit that’s trying not to get eaten.  I thought it was a sea urchin of some kind.  I’ll keep you updated on that one.  Might wait until our next guests get here to bring them in on the fun.

Another comment on food here.  These dear folks do a lot of things right when it comes to food.  If you want anything fried, they know how to do it.  They know their seafood.  They have weird fruits to try and will cook any part of any animal that you want to try.  However, don’t try to get what you think of as a salad.  If you order a salad, you will end up with a potato or pasta salad…something held together with mayo.  If you ask for a green salad, you will get closer.  However, there’s a good chance it will be this size.  And of this quality.  I can’t wait to visit the US to get a good crunchy bowl full of lettuce.

 

We also finally visited the Kosher market!  We always manage to think about visiting on Friday evening around sunset or on Saturday.  Oops.  That doesn’t work.  The size of the place and the selection were pretty impressive, however some things were obviously not to be found there.  Eric, for example, noted that he supposed they wouldn’t have the ham that he wanted.  I know I’m a horrible joke/story teller, but the way he said it just cracked me up.  Ah, cultural insensitivity!

Here are a few products that we found.  The kosher dino nuggets are by far my fave, although Eric’s attempt to fry some potato cigars did later result in a huge grease explosion in my kitchen.  Luckily he thought to grab Addie as he dove out of the line of fire, so I didn’t have to kill him.  He did, however, have to mop the whole kitchen.  I’ve resorted to hiding the oil and turning off the gas when I leave him alone.  He’s still allow to fry my favorite corn tortillas though.  🙂

Eric noticed at one point that there were amazing looking already prepared shish kabobs in one of the cases in the meat department.  They were not made of pork.  However, he was disheartened when he saw that there was no one nearby to help us get to them.  Luckily, his wife’s keen sense of observation kicked in and recognized that there was no glass standing between us and the kabobs.  I just waited there for a minute until he too figured it out.  He’s a smart man, but gosh this one took awhile to set in…

No glass!