Sunday, December 10, 2006
Dinner with Carmen, Sandra and Jorge
One of the students at school, Sandra, invited me to dinner at her family´s home: Carmen is the school secretary and Jorge is her husband, a teacher at a different school. They live on the edge of town in the middle of a line of cinderblock homes that all share a facade, but are built up differently in back. You can look over the roof into the living room or patio of the folks next door. Their home is about one room wide but it´s on many different levels, with bedrooms and a roof top patio added on, and a small courtyard with caged birds. They have a little dog, Delila, which wears an FBI sweater and thinks she is human. She waits to be fed from the table.
Jorge is really creative, made almost all the furniture and many of the paintings in the home. And Carmen is an awesome cook. She usually teaches cooking classes once a week at the school, but it was too cold this semester. In her class last Spring, I learned to make mole. We had cold jicama slices with chili and lime, sopa azteca, which you might know as tortilla soup, though I´ve never tasted such good stuff in the States. Also breaded chicken cutlet, rice, mole, tortillas and lots of avocado. Ice cream and cookies and coffee. I think she would have kept going if we´d let her. It´s good we ate at 4, so we had the rest of the night to recover.
Sandy is a med student. She´s been here five months and she´s really bright, picked up Spanish super fast. Part of that is because she really avoids talking to english speakers. She volunteered at the Red Cross, which is a bit different here than in the US: it´s the town´s ambulance service. And no one speaks English in her neighborhood.
Carmen tells me I just need to spend more time practicing and talking to Mexicans. Which is true.
Jorge is really creative, made almost all the furniture and many of the paintings in the home. And Carmen is an awesome cook. She usually teaches cooking classes once a week at the school, but it was too cold this semester. In her class last Spring, I learned to make mole. We had cold jicama slices with chili and lime, sopa azteca, which you might know as tortilla soup, though I´ve never tasted such good stuff in the States. Also breaded chicken cutlet, rice, mole, tortillas and lots of avocado. Ice cream and cookies and coffee. I think she would have kept going if we´d let her. It´s good we ate at 4, so we had the rest of the night to recover.
Sandy is a med student. She´s been here five months and she´s really bright, picked up Spanish super fast. Part of that is because she really avoids talking to english speakers. She volunteered at the Red Cross, which is a bit different here than in the US: it´s the town´s ambulance service. And no one speaks English in her neighborhood.
Carmen tells me I just need to spend more time practicing and talking to Mexicans. Which is true.
# posted by Anne @ 10:10 AM 
