Tag Archives: New foods

A Word Problem

I have a quick word problem for you. You invite a group of Panamanian, Venezuelan, Colombian, and Gringo capoeiristas to your house for the weekend of Jan. 27-29 via text around January 5th. All say they are coming and excited. On Jan. 26th, you haven’t heard anything from anyone, so you text asking who is definitely coming and start trying to organize who’s bringing what food and drinks. You hear that Person A is coming on Friday night, Persons B and C are coming on Saturday, and Persons D and E may come pending a health issue. You announce that you will provide breakfasts and dinner on Saturday, and ask they they supply lunch on Saturday.

Question 1: How many people show up on Friday? Who are they?

Question 2: How many people show up on Saturday? Who are they?

Question 3: What time do they show up?

Question 4: How many meals do you have to cook?

 

If you’re keeping score at home, the answers are:

1) zero, no one;

2) 5, Person A, Person B, Person C, and – tricky one here – Persons F and Child Person G!

3) Another tricky one, so here’s a hint. You get a text from Person A at 1:12 pm saying she is waiting for Persons B and C to pick her up to go to the grocery store.  You then get a text from Person B at 1:30 pm saying he is leaving class in the city (an hour and a half away) and going to pick up – not Person A – but Child Person G. At 4:45 pm, you get a text from Person A asking what to buy at the grocery store. There. That’s your hint. The answer? Persons A, B, C, and Child Person G arrive at 6:45 pm. Person F arrives at 9 pm. Obviously.

Oh and also, Persons H and I, plus H’s mom, Person J, stop by for a bit around 2:30 pm. But you probably already knew that.

4) One. If you look at the aforementioned discussion notes about who is bringing what, it would appear that you would be cooking breakfast on Saturday, dinner on Saturday night, and breakfast on Sunday. You’ve asked them to bring lunch on Saturday. Again, these are so obvious…they aren’t going to arrive until after their assigned lunch meal, but being crazy generous, they bring enough meat to feed nearly half of Punta Chame. They also bring every condiment you can imagine, bread, veggies, soda, and a huge cooler full of – wait for it – Balboa Dark beer. I’ll address the dark beer news in a moment. That is huge and deserves its own paragraph.

So yeah. We had a typical weekend with my capoeira friends, which means the following: we had very little idea of who was coming and when, or for how long they were staying, we didn’t know what they were bringing, we didn’t know if kids were coming or not. What we did know is that we would eat and drink a lot and stay up to some ungodly hour of the morning even though everyone is falling asleep in their chairs while music blasts from a bluetooth speaker. And was going to be a lot of fun.

I was so excited to see these people. I hadn’t seen any of them since April after hanging out with them 5x a week for a year, so there may have been some running and jumping and yelling and kisses and hugs when they arrived. You may remember some of them: Árabe (Antonio), Lucero (who is now dating Árabe!), Árabe’s 4 year old son Alejandro, Mahalia, and Moisés.

We cooked about 3 animals worth of meat on the grill on Friday night, then stayed up until 1:30 or 2 eating, dancing, and drinking. Eric even ended up dancing because Lucero (Traquina, if you know her by her Capoeira name) always takes the time to teach and reteach him.

Check out Eric’s face!

These three are so sweet together. Ale, Árabe y Lucero

Lucero is a phenomenal dancer – absolutely amazing to watch. Moisés is also quite good. They’re both characters, so we love watching them dance when they get together. We also enjoyed “un baile típico panameño” from Mahalia and Árabe. It was just awesome. We had seen some folks do this kind of folk dancing before, but never our friends! So cool.

Here’s a video of Lucero and Moisés. I’ve never tried to insert a video before, so y’all will have to let me know if it works for you.

Here’s the Panamanian dance by Mahalia and Árabe, hopefully.

Sunday was pool party time. I’ll just share a few pics here, as this is getting to be a long post. Oh, and we found out what choripan is – basically a chorizo in a hoagie bun with onions, tomatoes, ranch or ketchup, kinda whatever. A latin hot dog. What’s not to like?

 

I also mentioned that we had other visitors on Saturday afternoon. Stella and Elliott, our upstairs neighbors from last year, came by with Stella’s mom after a morning at the beach! It was excellent to reconnect with them. You’ll remember Stella as the model (for a day) that I snuck in to see during Fashion Week in 2015 and Elliott as the neighbor we adopted every time Stella was out of town. They also watched Addie for us a few times.

Speaking of Addie, she’s doing some sightseeing these days. She’s on holiday in Asheville, living it up at the Biltmore House with my parents. Not a bad life. Her birthday is in two days – February 2nd. She’ll be 11 and is still jumping the fence in the backyard. Silly girl.

Spain/Morocco Trip Part III – Salamanca

So I realize that my posts from Spain are more like a journal detailing what we did than actually being my usual brilliant and captivating posts, so feel free to skip to the photos on this one if you like.  You have my blessing.

Day One in Salamanca:

Convent of San Esteban.  Old and new cathedrals – old means 1200s, new means plans began in the mid-1500s.  Amazing.  Took audiotour, also did tour of bell tower, etc.  Great views of Salamanca, saw the river and Roman bridge from the top, etc.  Found out the Casa de Lis was closed.  Then stumbled upon the Cuerva de Salamanca which ended up being a tower that you climb…not sure where the cave part comes in.  Amazing lunch at Vino Diario – tuna on bread, meat selection, potatoes in garlic sauce and some kind of shoulder steak that was just incredible, especially with the potatoes.  Eric also ran into what may have been the first IPA he ever liked, called Black and made in Salamanca.  I had a two dollar glass of the house red wine and loved it.
Walked up to train station to see if we could change our tickets to a later train on the 26th b/c everything is closed from now until about when we leave, but no luck.  Luckily we got in the main things we wanted to do today between 10-2 when everything closed for Nochebuena (Christmas Eve).  Apparently tonight is the main night when everyone is home with their families, so no restaurants or anything are open tonight.  The hotel doesn’t have a restaurant, so they are kindly having a very nice dinner catered for us.  Eric has ordered lamb.  I’m sticking with chicken.
Walked through the Plaza Mayor on the way home and it’s gorgeous, just like everyone says.  Instead of a Christmas tree they have a giant red ball ornament, which is pretty cool.  Came back to the hotel for a siesta and working on deciding whether we’ll brave the cold for midnight mass (from midnight to 2 am in a huge drafty 13th century cathedral or whether we’ll wait until noon tomorrow.  I’m hoping we can get up the motivation to go tonight because really, when else would we have this chance?
Looking forward to our peaceful little Christmas celebration.  Just the two of us and a city filled with amazing architecture from the literal Dark Ages.  Plus a comfortable hotel with a cushy bed, beers chilling on the window sill, and netflix at our disposal.
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Christmas Eve was lovely.  The hotel we were in in Salamanca did not have a restaurant, but they were kind enough to email us the week before we arrived to ask if we would like for them to order dinner for us from a nice restaurant and have it for us that night.  All the restaurants and tourist attractions closed around 2 pm that day (Thursday), so the hotel manager knew we wouldn’t have any other options.  Very sweet.  So Eric ordered lamb and I ordered chicken.

We wandered downstairs to the dining room around 8:30 and found that we were the only people who had taken the hotel up on their offer!  It was sweet though.  They had set up one table in the corner with a candle on it and insisted we have some wine.  The meal was fine…nothing amazing and not so much worth the price, but we were grateful to have a big warm(ish) meal on Christmas Eve.  We started with bread and jamón serrano (shocker!), then had some kind of crab soup with another kind of bread.  Because I had been sick in Tangier and my stomach was still not quite right, I didn’t want to risk any gluten or dairy, so I’m sure that’s most of my feeling that the dinner wasn’t fabulous.  The crab soup was really good, but creamy, so Eric did me a favor and ate mine too.

My chicken was good, but not as interesting as Eric’s lamb.  They brought out the entire leg, including the hoof.  I couldn’t even stand to look at it, but Eric seemed to enjoy it, particularly when he decided it was appropriate to take it down like a turkey leg at the State Fair.  Hilarious.  Dessert was nice, but again, lots of dairy, so I left most of mine on the plate.

After dinner, we had the pleasure of Facetiming with Eric’s brother and sister-in-law’s family, his extended family up in Maryland and with my parents, sister, brother-in-law, and niece (just one of them, the other had already gone to bed).  And actually the Facetiming started because when we came back upstairs after dinner, we saw that Eric’s sister-in-law Jennifer had posted this year’s Christmas video of our niece, Rylee, and our nephew, Tyler.  Each year, Jennifer takes pictures and videos of the kids making Christmas cookies, then does a gorgeous job of setting it all to beautiful tear-jerking music.  This year, they made cinnamon ornaments instead, but the effect was just the same.  Stronger, perhaps, than in years past because of the awesome interaction between Rylee and Tyler.  Big smiles, hugs, teamwork…it was beautiful.  Between the touching video and the feeling of being so far away from family at Christmas time, Eric teared up and we immediately called Ray and Jennifer and the kids.

I had imagined that we would be too sleepy or just plain exhausted for midnight mass, but after the uplifting visits with our families, we decided to go for it.  The service was from midnight to 1:30 am in a cathedral that was built in the 1200’s on a 35 degree night.  And it was beautiful.  The cathedral itself inspires a certain degree of awe, as you might imagine, with its 53 painted panels of scenes from the Bible behind the altar, gothic arches, and lofty dome.  But add that to the families that gathered in their winter attire – many with shiny gold, sparkly, or fur coats – the incredible voices of the choir, and the fact that the bishop was there (hat and all!!!), and it was almost overwhelming at points.  Poor Eric I know was sleepy and bored since the service was lengthy and all in Spanish, but I was so grateful that he was there with me.  It’s a shame; I really wish he could have understood the sermon.  The bishop had a sore throat and had lost his voice, so back-up priest gave it.  It was beautiful.  I wish I could remember enough of it to do it justice in a summary, but suffice it to say that a hopeful Christmas sermon in a beautiful Spanish accent by a sweet sounding old man fit the setting perfectly.  The service ended with the choir singing Noche de Paz (Silent Night), which always gets me.

Christmas (Friday, 12/25) in Salamanca:

Christmas was, in a word, peaceful.  We went downstairs for a late breakfast, then decided to exchange presents after returning to the room.  Well, actually, I was prepared to just give presents (aside from the ones that my parents had sent – thanks Mom and Dad!), as Eric had already given me an awesome bluetooth speaker as an early gift when a party we were having required its use.  We had only packed a few sheets of tissue paper, so I folded his gifts inside it (sans tape).  He insisted on giving me a tissue paper hat after each of his four presents.  After he had unwrapped three shirts and a new PS4 game from me, he gave me a new UNC shirt from my parents.  He then brought me another package, which I thought was going to be the scarf that we had bought in Tangier and kept wrapped as a Christmas present for me.  But he surprised me!  He had custom designed (on cafepress.com) a shirt with several silhouetted figures playing capoeira.  Evidently, he had found the images online and then spent several hours photoshopping each one to his satisfaction and positioning them on the shirt so that it looked like they were interacting with one another.  I was really surprised and touched.  A very sweet gift.

After gifts, we watched movies and napped for most of the day!  It was lovely.  Poor Eric was starting to feel sick, so it was good timing for a down day.  We Facetimed with my family for a while around 4:30 our time (10:30 am their time) and got to see Laine, the 5 year old, open her Star Wars movie from us.  She’s hilarious….she was so excited.  The girl is all Ninja Turtles and Star Wars.  Not surprisingly, she also loved my capoeira shirt!

We also got to see baby Summer eating some brunch and watch the rest of the family open a special surprise gift from us.   When Laine was probably four months old, I took pictures of her while I was babysitting, then surprised Jennifer (my sister) and Mom with collages on Mother’s Day.  Eric thinks it’s creepy the way I did it, but I saw the idea at a friend’s house and loved it.  I cropped nine pictures down into squares and each is a close-up of a particular feature – an eye, a nose, a foot, etc.  I love it.

So this year when we were in NC in October, I found the same dress that Laine was wearing in her pictures and dressed Summer in it while Jennifer and Drew were out.  Eric and Laine helped me take pictures, and luckily Laine didn’t mention the photo shoot to her parents.  I made a matching collage of Summer’s photos and gave a copy to Jennifer and Drew and a copy to my parents for Christmas.

So back to Christmas Day activities.  We finally got showered and headed out in search of food around 5:30 pm.  A lot more people were out than had been out on Christmas Eve.  Apparently it’s custom to have Christmas Eve dinner at home and then to go out to eat on Christmas Day…at least for a lot of families in Salamanca.  We made a quick stop at the University of Salamanca, founded in 1218 and still open to students today, on the way.  The façade of the main building on campus is extremely intricate.  There is a tiny frog sculpture hidden in it, and legend has it that if students could find it, they would pass their exams.  Other stories say that the frog represents sexuality and its location atop a skull stands as a reminder that distractions of a sexual nature can lead to death.  So there’s that.  Anyway, I knew where it was because I looked it up ahead of time.  And it’s a good thing because Eric couldn’t find it.

Plaza Mayor, Salamanca
Found the frog on the façade at Universidad de Salamanca
Christmas dinner!

We had tapas for dinner…again, shocking…then headed back to the hotel for a few episodes of Aziz Ansari’s new show and an episode of Homeland (our current favorite) to close out the day.  Poor Eric was feeling pretty puny by this time.

Fútbol in the Rain and Living the Family Circus Cartoon

On Tuesday (11/17 – I’m a little behind in writing) we had big plans to go to the Panamá v. Costa Rica fútbol game.  Now, I don’t understand how any of this works, but apparently this was a World Cup 2018 qualifying game.  Seems kinda silly to me given that we’re a few years out still, but what do I know.  If you can explain it to me, I’m all ears.  Samba?  Little David?  Eh, they’re not reading this, but I’ll give them a call.

So Mono was all excited and ready to start pre-gaming at 3 pm, but we had to wait until everyone got off work at 5.  Unfortunately, by that time, traffic was horrendous.  The worst I’ve ever seen it.  We manage to avoid traffic most of the time because we don’t have to drive to work.  Additionally, it had been pouring rain, so it was worse than usual.  Oh, and Mono’s car broke down earlier that day, so we had to pick him and Lourdes up on the way.  Terrible timing for them because they were trying to prepare both for our batizado (hosting international guests, putting on a show, logistics for everyone for two weeks) and their wedding!  We set out at 5:20 pm and the game started at 8:30 pm.  Here’s a map of where we had to go.

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It took us about an hour to go from our house (the southern-most stop on the map) to the next point up which is just about a km away.  Awful.  Poor Eric drove for a total of 3 hours before we got to the game.  We got there maybe 10 minutes before halftime.  Crazy!

I was planning on making this a more detailed story, but so much has happened since then, I’m feeling a little too overwhelmed to remember all the details!  The talking points of the night are as follows:

  • It continued to rain all night, but we had a blast anyway
  • TONS of Ticos (Costa Ricans) were there, and they were perfectly positioned in the upper deck so they could throw beer at us.  Fútbol fans make sense to me.  They love their teams with a fiery passion, and they aren’t quite sure how to act when things don’t go their way.  Does this remind anyone else of Carolina Basketball?  I think that’s why I felt such a strong urge to cheer hard for Panamá and why I took it a little personally when…
  • We lost.  2-1.  I have to say though, it was an incredible moment when we scored!  There’s nothing like it.  Sheer joy bursting out of 14,000 of your (at the moment) closest allies, everyone chanting, jumping up and down, throwing things, beer raining down from the Ticos above…it was awesome.
Soaking wet but having a great time!
Great friends.
I felt badly that this guy didn’t get to watch the game! But he and his buddies were necessary at the end of the game. Pretty rowdy.
Notice the super-Panamanian Spanish here. “Tas ready?” instead of “Estas listo?” “Pa’l” instead of “Para la.” And this is an ad for what is basically the President of Panama’s passion fruit Zima.

The next day, I lived out the quintessential Family Circus cartoon.

family circus

I had offered the night before to help Mono run some errands for the batizado and the wedding since he didn’t have his car.  I was a little surprised though, when Lourdes texted me several times at 8:30 am.  As it turns out, Mono locked out of the house.  Across town.  And Lourdes had the keys at work.  So, I jumped up and, without showering or anything, left the house…not to return again until 4 pm.  Of course, I didn’t know that at the time.  Here’s what my/our route looked like throughout the day:

Screen Shot 2015-11-19 at 12.11.45 PM

I got to Lourdes’s work and found out the plans had changed.  She asked me to go further across town to a place called El Dorado so I could pick up their birth certificates and certificado de solteria (certificate of singleness – a required document to get married in Panamá apparently).  I was prepared for this to take approximately…forever.  Luckily, God decided to smile down on me in the little oficina del Tribunal Electoral that morning.  I was in and out in about 4 minutes…and I was absolutely sure that meant that something was wrong.  But I headed to Mono’s house (across a different part of town again – maybe a 20 min drive) at that point to pick him up, and he assured me that everything was in order.

From there, Mono drove.  Thank goodness.  We went from way up at the red pin on the map above (near Panamá Viejo) down to Avenida Central, right next to Casco Viejo for those of you who have visited…the furthest point south on the map.  We searched for t-shirts for the batizado in a few stores, found nothing, and decided to head back up to El Dorado (NWish part of the map – where I had picked up the birth certificates) for lunch and another tshirt shop.  We managed to get 40 tshirts, hopefully in the right sizes for everyone, and poor Mono insisted on carrying them to the car even though his back was still not in good shape.  Chivalrous to a fault, that one.

Once we got back to the car, our car alarm let me know that it had been a whole month or so since I had put fresh batteries in the clicker by proceeding to go off for a good 7 minutes.  Somehow Mono beat it into submission and we got the engine started.  We headed back to Lourdes’s work after that, I think, and that’s where I left him.

Long day with lots of driving and erranding, but I was grateful for the one-on-one time with my teacher and friend.

The next night, I had the privilege of seeing Los Monólogos de la Vagina with my energetic and adorable 19 year old friend Lucero.  It was a real treat to go with her for a million reasons:  she’s been a great friend to me and had the patience of a saint when I couldn’t understand her accent back when she moved here 6 months ago, she was really interested in seeing the show whereas Eric has NO desire to go with me…go figure, we hadn’t spent much one-on-one time together, and we’ve had some great conversations about sensitive topics in the past.

I wish I had written a whole post on the show that night.  It was incredible.  I wasn’t expecting for so much to have been changed to specifically speak to a Panamanian audience.  It’s not just that the names of Panamanian cities were thrown in, but rather that entire portions of the show were rewritten to take into consideration the importance of language.  One monologue, for example, essentially talks about reclaiming vulgar words for the female genitalia.  Of course, this whole portion of the show is dependent upon the audience’s use and understanding of particular words, and it was beautifully rewritten.  A variety of Panamanian accents were also used throughout the show for different characters – street slang, yeye (uppity rich people accent), and folks from the Interior, the Panamanian version of rednecks.

Overall, the show was very good, very funny, and very poignant.  Loved it.

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