Guanabana and English Lessons

I forgot to charge my camera last night, so I don’t have any new pictures today. Sorry in advance!

Today I woke up and took a shower and ate breakfast. The shower here doesn’t have multiple small streams of water, but rather one large stream, like a hose. The left hand is supposed to provide warm water, but I’ve only had the luck to have one hot shower yet. It’s so humid and often warm here, though, that it’s almost a relief to have a cool shower.

Breakfast is always a bowl of freshly-cut fruit (fruta). Always pineapple (pina), and otherwise a variety of cantaloupe (cantalupo), pear (pera), mango (mango), and others. With the fruit is coffee with milk (cafe con leche) and some fresh-squeezed juice (jugo) (today it was orange, or naranja), but for the past few days it’s been something unrecognizable but absolutely delicious. With all of this comes bread (pan)- either a soft, white kind with cheese baked in, or a drier, brown wheat kind with raisins, and a slice of cheese. The cheese is delicious and unlike anything here (think of the texture of a drier mozzarella with much less of an edge than cheddar but much more of a taste than mozzarella). I asked this morning what it was in English (como se dice en Ingles?), but Javier just responded, “blanco queso.” So the mystery still remains.

For lunch we had a typical Colombian soup that is delicious (think chicken broth with cilantro, parsley, boiled potatoes, carrots, and a few other things) called sancocho sopa. With it we had chicken (pollo); avocado, a salad of parsley (perejil), lemon (limon), lime (lima), onions (cebollas), and cilantro; corn (maiz); and the most delicious juice ever, jugo de guanabana con leche.

This is guanabana:

They don’t have this in America, I’ve looked everywhere already. It is the most delicious. I even tried guanabana ice cream today (helado de guanabana), and though it’s cloyingly sweet, the juice is so refreshing (refrescante). The juice has foam at the top from blending it with the milk (I’ve found that almost all of the juices are blended with milk), and the pulp (unlike orange juice pulp) is great to fish out and chew. I resolve strongly to smuggle a few back to the USA for you all to try!

Then we watched futbol until Javier’s friends arrived and we went to the pool (piscina). We swam in the pool (“I swim in the pool” is jo nado en las piscina) while I helped them improve their English. They ask questions that give me such a large respect for language teachers.

“What is the difference in gain and earn?” 

“What is the difference in lack and to have left?”

“What is the difference in win and lose and pass and fail?”

“What is the difference in lift and raise?

and so on. I even helped one with his online English mid-term. (There were a ton of mistakes on the mid-term, and I don’t know who even wrote it, but Kristina and the Red Pen hid nicely).

Tomorrow I start work and meet my team, and the USA plays in the World Cup, a game for which my host family is preparing for so they can root for my country. 🙂 They even said that if we won we could go around the city honking the horn of the car, but I can’t tell if they were joking or not. I guess I’ll find out.

Until tomorrow!

-Kris