For someone who's spent the last several 4th's of July in the back of one restaurant or another, spending this year's in Peru could in no way be anticlimactic.
I slept in, watched a football match between France and Germany, ate guacamole, talked about love in Spanish class for 2 hours, sang songs about "My grand night" (in my other Spanish class), and concluded the day with around 8 hours in a kitchen.
With a Frenchman and his divergent assistants attempting to cook pizza and pasta in a Peruvian kitchen, what could possibly have gone wrong?!
-- Sophie tripping over and breaking the water pipe in the yard resulting in a complete lack of water in all our bedrooms and a repeatedly flooded kitchen floor.
-- Boiling hot sauce going everywhere due to a careless Nicolas and, well, the second time was the same cause. Since when can you set jars of sauce in boiling water for an hour and NOT expect them to explode? His assurance that "Es bien" were rightly disregarded and Ursula finally just turned the stove off. What they are going to do with 2 gallons of sauce is beyond me.
-- Salty pizza crust, anyone? In reality, it wasn't too salty, in reality it was the best pizza crust I've ever made without a recipe. In further reality, it's the only pizza crust I've ever made without a recipe... It's actually the only pizza crust I've ever made at all. And it was amazing!
-- Now that I've made pasty by hand once, I feel confident saying that it's not worth it. Machines are wonderful.
-- 9 people in a kitchen smaller then most US bedrooms.
-- A lot of Pisco Sour (the native drink). I'm not saying that was a bad thing, it's just, well, I was the only one in the crowd who could really cook sanely after that much Pisco. On a side note, I'm pretty sure it's illegal for professors to drink with their students in the US. Not here! And I'm not really sure if they even have a "legal drinking age" or not. This group included Raúl and Ursula and their daughter Gimena; they live in the compound and take care of each group that goes to stay in the Sacred Valley campus. Of course Nicolas and Hugo, Nina, Sophie, and I. And one of our teachers, Dorian. Every kind of personality, talents, shapes, sizes, nationalities, and languages represented...
-- "Do you have hot water for your shower." "Uh, no. We don't have water at all..."
-- "Beth, you have a beautiful voice, right?? SING!" Uhh. Suuuuure.
-- I don't speak Spanish after 10pm and 4 drinks. Or at least I shouldn't try.
-- French drinking songs. Believe me, there are many, many ways to go wrong on this topic. Some things I just wish I could block out of my memory, tipsy or not.
-- After hours of whispered confidences, the macarena, spinning, star gazing, and "Por queso!" Nine, Sophie, and I were worn out. Gimena was not.
-- 11pm: anyone hungry? The (first) pizza's ready...
-- Laughing unbelievably hard because everything about that night was almost as random and bizarre as a dream.
So that was my 4th of July. At some point we toasted the US/me, which was quite enough for all of us. But I haven't laughed that hard for that long in years. It wasn't just the alcohol either. It was the sheer absurdity of so much of the situation. It was the small mistakes of cross-lingual, cross-cultural cooking. It was a group of people, as varying as you could imagine, thrown into a situation, attempting to make it the best it could be just for the sake of the moment and the memories. And as strange, error-fraught, and comical as the night was, I couldn't have asked for a more memorable and rich evening in my current home with my current family.
I slept in, watched a football match between France and Germany, ate guacamole, talked about love in Spanish class for 2 hours, sang songs about "My grand night" (in my other Spanish class), and concluded the day with around 8 hours in a kitchen.
With a Frenchman and his divergent assistants attempting to cook pizza and pasta in a Peruvian kitchen, what could possibly have gone wrong?!
-- Sophie tripping over and breaking the water pipe in the yard resulting in a complete lack of water in all our bedrooms and a repeatedly flooded kitchen floor.
-- Boiling hot sauce going everywhere due to a careless Nicolas and, well, the second time was the same cause. Since when can you set jars of sauce in boiling water for an hour and NOT expect them to explode? His assurance that "Es bien" were rightly disregarded and Ursula finally just turned the stove off. What they are going to do with 2 gallons of sauce is beyond me.
-- Salty pizza crust, anyone? In reality, it wasn't too salty, in reality it was the best pizza crust I've ever made without a recipe. In further reality, it's the only pizza crust I've ever made without a recipe... It's actually the only pizza crust I've ever made at all. And it was amazing!
-- Now that I've made pasty by hand once, I feel confident saying that it's not worth it. Machines are wonderful.
-- 9 people in a kitchen smaller then most US bedrooms.
-- A lot of Pisco Sour (the native drink). I'm not saying that was a bad thing, it's just, well, I was the only one in the crowd who could really cook sanely after that much Pisco. On a side note, I'm pretty sure it's illegal for professors to drink with their students in the US. Not here! And I'm not really sure if they even have a "legal drinking age" or not. This group included Raúl and Ursula and their daughter Gimena; they live in the compound and take care of each group that goes to stay in the Sacred Valley campus. Of course Nicolas and Hugo, Nina, Sophie, and I. And one of our teachers, Dorian. Every kind of personality, talents, shapes, sizes, nationalities, and languages represented...
-- "Do you have hot water for your shower." "Uh, no. We don't have water at all..."
-- "Beth, you have a beautiful voice, right?? SING!" Uhh. Suuuuure.
-- I don't speak Spanish after 10pm and 4 drinks. Or at least I shouldn't try.
-- French drinking songs. Believe me, there are many, many ways to go wrong on this topic. Some things I just wish I could block out of my memory, tipsy or not.
-- After hours of whispered confidences, the macarena, spinning, star gazing, and "Por queso!" Nine, Sophie, and I were worn out. Gimena was not.
-- 11pm: anyone hungry? The (first) pizza's ready...
-- Laughing unbelievably hard because everything about that night was almost as random and bizarre as a dream.
So that was my 4th of July. At some point we toasted the US/me, which was quite enough for all of us. But I haven't laughed that hard for that long in years. It wasn't just the alcohol either. It was the sheer absurdity of so much of the situation. It was the small mistakes of cross-lingual, cross-cultural cooking. It was a group of people, as varying as you could imagine, thrown into a situation, attempting to make it the best it could be just for the sake of the moment and the memories. And as strange, error-fraught, and comical as the night was, I couldn't have asked for a more memorable and rich evening in my current home with my current family.
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