laugh... for life's not a paragraph

Sunday, August 2, 2009

El Mercado

I absolutely love the Farmer's Market in Madison, WI--the biggest and best in the nation. I just wish you fellow market lovers could see this one.

This is maybe 1/20th of the whole market. What can you buy there? Ridiculously amazing smelling vanilla, cinnamon sticks, all the fruit and vegetables you want, flowers, pottery, clothes, CD's, pig fat and other random pig parts, big loaves of bread, seeds, beans, chiles, herbs, tacos, donuts, fruit drinks, earrings, remote controls...the list goes on and on.

I think these bags of seeds, grains, and such are so beautiful. I really just want to dig my hands in there and play around in them, actually.

What are my market essentials? Pan de Burro, Camotes (sweet potatoes, all cooked and ready to eat), and delicious, peelable mangoes.

Friday, July 31, 2009

A Beautiful Mixture

Recipe to make Jocelyn and I happier than little school children:

1. One-half a banana, cut up
2. One quart of strawberries, also cut up
3. A little bit of granola
4. A little bit more All-Bran Flakes
5. A wee bit of vanilla flavored milk
6. A wee bit more normal flavored milk

Heaven in a bowl.

Sushi

2 for 1 sushi roll Thursday at a restaurant in town. Good thing we didn't figure this out until earlier, or we would've spent a lot more money.

It was Jacque's first time ever trying sushi. It took a lot of convincing, and she was pretty suspicious, but she ended up really liking it. The first bite was priceless.

I was slightly stressed out for a little bit. They brought me my sushi, but we had no wasabi, and no bowls for soy sauce for at least 5 minutes. Everyone else started eating, but I had to wait it out. It was really hard to just sit in front of sushi and not eat it.

Joce was experimenting with her chopsticks.

Fried Ice Cream. Mmmm. Is that a Japanese dessert?

The most beautiful part of the whole outing? The price. One water bottle, two sushi rolls with ten pieces each, and half a fried ice cream (we shared): 100 pesos. Exact United States dollar exchange? $8.33. Yeah.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Since we've been back...

After the awesomeness of our trip to the Chiapas, we were left with three weeks more of teaching until our next vacation before coming home. Having such little time between vacations has made it hard for me to keep my mind here in Mexico, and not just count down the days until our vacation, or our trip back to the States. It doesn't help much that we haven't really done much since being back.

Taking Jacque's hair out of her braids was fun because she looked pretty ridiculous for a day.

We had a French Toast party last Sunday, also. French Toast is such an easy, American thing to make. You can't go wrong.

A director from the ILP office in Provo came to visit us this week. Besides asking us about our host families and if we are getting fed, he brought us Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and bought us cemitas and tacos. It was a great night.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas

The city of Tuxtla wasn't that exciting to me. There was, however, an awesome ice cream place. We've been surviving off Burger King cones for a while, but we saw a long line of people waiting outside a window, getting ice cream from a fast food chicken place. 9 pesos for a double cone. Strawberry was the number one flavor, then caramel. Pina Colada and Gum were the next best. We went a little overboard.