No food stories
Sorry I haven’t written in a while. I haven’t had any exceptional meals lately.
We have been taking language classes. I know a little of the local dialect now. It makes it much more interesting if people hassle you in the street. The locals here are so used to tourism that westerners for the most part are considered less than human. (To be fair, this is not far off in some cases.) Sometimes locals will be rude, but I don’t blame them at all. If I lived in a place like this that was always inundated with tourists that had no respect for my culture I would be rude too. The great thing now is if somebody says something less than appropriate, I can respond. "Hello, How are you?" "Is the cheese here?" "The cheese is not here." Lots of locals after they get over their initial surprise really get a kick out of it. I only know a couple of phrases. Whenever a “conversation” starts, I always run into the inevitable brick wall of “okay, I have no idea what you just said”. At least by that point I have risen beyond “stupid-less-than-human-tourist-guy” to “confused-confusing-but-at-least-human-guy”. I prefer being the latter.
Part of our schooling here is to complete various work duties around the facilities. We had to clean out an attic above an old structure on campus. The building is anywhere from 100 to 10,000,000,000 years old. Back in those days, they used dirt as insulation. The dirt was about half a meter deep in the attic (or about 37 feet). We had to shovel dirt, rocks, glass, bones, ants, etc. into buckets and then drop them into a wheelbarrow about 4 meters down (or about 894 feet). The dust was magnificent, the temperature was festering, the mucus was flowing. Okay, it was actually kinda fun. Good hard work. The only problem was my choice of attire. I had somehow ignored/forgot/missed the announcement that we should bring work clothes that day. I was wearing my favorite black dress shoes that I bought in Italy. So picture this: Me, in a dress shirt with my jeans rolled up to about mid shin exposing my black dress socks. I am covered head to toe in dust, sweat and other unidentifiable debris. It was great. To pass the time, between snot rockets, I started up a round of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”.
I learned my lesson though. I bought myself some work boots the next week. They are Reeboks, very sturdy and comfortable. I didn’t realize until I got them home that they were “G Unit” boots. If you don’t understand this paragraph, ask your teenager about “50 Cent” then embarrass them out of their mind by saying, “I’m down with G Unit” (pronounced “J-J-J-J-J-J-J-J-J Geeee Uniiiit”). Make sure that some of their young friends are around.
Okay, I lied. One food story. Last night, I cooked baked trout with lemon, garlic, butter and rosemerry. Then a side of breakfast potatoes, fried rice and salad. It was pretty good.
We have been taking language classes. I know a little of the local dialect now. It makes it much more interesting if people hassle you in the street. The locals here are so used to tourism that westerners for the most part are considered less than human. (To be fair, this is not far off in some cases.) Sometimes locals will be rude, but I don’t blame them at all. If I lived in a place like this that was always inundated with tourists that had no respect for my culture I would be rude too. The great thing now is if somebody says something less than appropriate, I can respond. "Hello, How are you?" "Is the cheese here?" "The cheese is not here." Lots of locals after they get over their initial surprise really get a kick out of it. I only know a couple of phrases. Whenever a “conversation” starts, I always run into the inevitable brick wall of “okay, I have no idea what you just said”. At least by that point I have risen beyond “stupid-less-than-human-tourist-guy” to “confused-confusing-but-at-least-human-guy”. I prefer being the latter.
Part of our schooling here is to complete various work duties around the facilities. We had to clean out an attic above an old structure on campus. The building is anywhere from 100 to 10,000,000,000 years old. Back in those days, they used dirt as insulation. The dirt was about half a meter deep in the attic (or about 37 feet). We had to shovel dirt, rocks, glass, bones, ants, etc. into buckets and then drop them into a wheelbarrow about 4 meters down (or about 894 feet). The dust was magnificent, the temperature was festering, the mucus was flowing. Okay, it was actually kinda fun. Good hard work. The only problem was my choice of attire. I had somehow ignored/forgot/missed the announcement that we should bring work clothes that day. I was wearing my favorite black dress shoes that I bought in Italy. So picture this: Me, in a dress shirt with my jeans rolled up to about mid shin exposing my black dress socks. I am covered head to toe in dust, sweat and other unidentifiable debris. It was great. To pass the time, between snot rockets, I started up a round of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”.
I learned my lesson though. I bought myself some work boots the next week. They are Reeboks, very sturdy and comfortable. I didn’t realize until I got them home that they were “G Unit” boots. If you don’t understand this paragraph, ask your teenager about “50 Cent” then embarrass them out of their mind by saying, “I’m down with G Unit” (pronounced “J-J-J-J-J-J-J-J-J Geeee Uniiiit”). Make sure that some of their young friends are around.
Okay, I lied. One food story. Last night, I cooked baked trout with lemon, garlic, butter and rosemerry. Then a side of breakfast potatoes, fried rice and salad. It was pretty good.
posted by Michael at 8:06 AM
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