Friday, November 25, 2005
Esperando en el parque
The other day I was waiting to meet Rocio in the plaza in front of the cathedral. She was about half an hour late, but it was OK, because there were hundreds of sparrows flying around in undulating groups, and I watched their formations in the sky overhead, and the way their swarms wound around the walls of the cathedral. The sun was setting behind the cathedral, and there was a thin layer of pink cloud on the blue sky. A cocker spaniel puppy tethered to the next bench watched the birds and barked at them. The puppy and I seemed to be the only ones enthralled; everyone else was probably used to it. I wanted to say, “But you see, this doesn’t happen everywhere.” It was easily one of the most beautiful things I have seen in Arandas so far.
By the time Fátima and Rocio arrived, the sky was darker and most of the birds were roosting noisily in the squarely trimmed trees. The students at the escuela urbana across the street were let out and immediately began playing in the plaza, kicking soccer balls or hitting a volleyball back and forth or else just racing from the stage at the opposite end to the fountain in front of the cathedral. A man walked around with a bag of chicharrones (sheets of pork rind) in one hand and salsa in the other, and another man stood at a lit cart selling garbanzos (not chick peas but a green bean in a shell – mmm, delish). I wanted to have some, of course, but couldn’t because I’m being careful about what I’m eating. Qué lástima!
Other beautiful things I have encountered in Arandas: the sound of horses’ feet clopping on the street outside my apartment. (I know I talk about this a lot but I continue to be amazed that horses do not seem to be an uncommon form of transportation here. I do not, however, see horses tied up outside saloons like in the westerns, indicating that the riders may not actually be using them as I use the bus, but just going out for a ride.) What else? The cathedral, of course, even though it’s back isn’t finished, and the fountain. The fact that down my street there are often guys (and today a girl) practicing lasso tricks in front of shops. The red dirt, even though it gets all over the cuffs of my pants and I have to scrub a lot when I’m washing my clothes on the roof. The way most people want to help me once they meet me. The way the second-graders scramble to sit on the floor when it’s time to read the story “Cherry Pies and Lullabies.” (I would scramble too for a story about cherry pies….) The flowers my students occasionally bring me, or the pictures they draw for me. One student drew me a picture that said, not well spelled, “Eres mi mejor miss” (meaning “You are my best teacher”)….
But it’s probably because of all the problems with my teaching that these offerings seem exquisite. I proudly put this picture up on my refrigerator, because I need the motivation and encouragement it provides, but at the same time I said, half-jokingly, to Rocio, “It’s because he doesn’t know me well.” She said, “He knows you well enough; it’s just that he doesn’t know you when you’re angry.”
And there it is – the dark cloud over my beautiful blue Arandas sky. I have a bad temper, and it’s shown itself a few times at school.
Could there be anything I hate more than getting angry at people who don’t deserve it? I want to crawl into a hole afterwards. Sometimes I crawl into my bed for a much-needed nap, which recharges me with energy to try to solve the discipline problems I face in my classrooms. I made a student questionnaire and bravely asked what they think of the class, whether they feel respected by me, what suggestions they might have for me. Maybe I am too concerned with what they think, though what they think is important for the development of my teaching. The results were encouraging – they have interest in learning the language, and most of the suggestions were to play more games (of course). But one suggestion really struck me, and it said something like, “Not to be annoyed when we don’t understand.”
Oh, pobrecitos!
I read in a Jon Kabat-Zinn book that parenting is like an 18-year-long retreat, meaning it tries your patience and takes a great deal of effort to remain calm and at peace with yourself and with others. Well, teaching kids must be similar. I feel so challenged and often discouraged in dealing with them, but I know that I have a lot to learn, and beating myself up over it isn’t going to help them very much anyway.
If I keep things in perspective, I know that the discipline problems come from disinterest in the activities I’m providing, and that I have to make adjustments or change to another activity altogether. What’s causing the disinterest? At the beginning, there was some resistance to the way I was doing things – trying to get them to communicate and talk to each other in English, to which they were clearly not accustomed. I think normally in English class they would just read and do exercises in their books. So I went to their books, familiar terrain I hoped would soothe them. But in my primary classes, the materials are not at their level. For example, in my fourth and fifth-grade class, one kid is bilingual and gets bored easily, while others don’t understand anything I say (even after three weeks) and also get bored easily. They won’t read the selection because they can’t. They won’t do the worksheet because they can’t understand it. This is mainly the same story for all my classes. I am grateful for my last class of second-graders, though, because most of them have had English classes for a while now so the materials are not completely above them, and they show a joy of reading and an enthusiasm for learning that I often miss dearly in other classes.
Thankfully I take up solutions offered in my rescue. I am fortunate enough to have a caring and devoted principal to supervise and help me. I broke down in her office the other day, because I had been severe with a couple of my classes (“No Spanish!” “Sit down!” “Is something funny? Do you want another demerit?”) and totally incompetent in another (a kindergarten class in which one boy said as soon as I walked in, “Oh no, I hate English class; it’s so boring,” and three boys made running escapes out of the classroom while I was trying to teach them to say which fruits they liked).
At last we are going to lower the level of the materials (something we tried to avoid because of the exorbitant cost of the materials to the parents), and we are going to separate students by English level rather than by grade. I will also have my own classroom to which the students come for class, rather than me being the traveling English teacher visiting all the classrooms. In a teachers’ meeting yesterday, the principal made sure that all the teachers were aware of glaring discipline problems (for me but also for the other traveling teachers, of music and P.E.), and the students got a talking to that really had them behaving much better today.
Should I have pushed for these changes earlier, rather than trying in vain to work with materials that were frustrating and discouraging for the students? There’s no point in asking this; next time I’ll know what to do.
So the saga of Jeanne the Struggling EFL Teacher continues…. Will the discipline problems subside with the change of material? Probably not as much as I’d like, but how exciting it is to imagine some of my students understanding a story on their own and wanting to continue reading it….
By the time Fátima and Rocio arrived, the sky was darker and most of the birds were roosting noisily in the squarely trimmed trees. The students at the escuela urbana across the street were let out and immediately began playing in the plaza, kicking soccer balls or hitting a volleyball back and forth or else just racing from the stage at the opposite end to the fountain in front of the cathedral. A man walked around with a bag of chicharrones (sheets of pork rind) in one hand and salsa in the other, and another man stood at a lit cart selling garbanzos (not chick peas but a green bean in a shell – mmm, delish). I wanted to have some, of course, but couldn’t because I’m being careful about what I’m eating. Qué lástima!
Other beautiful things I have encountered in Arandas: the sound of horses’ feet clopping on the street outside my apartment. (I know I talk about this a lot but I continue to be amazed that horses do not seem to be an uncommon form of transportation here. I do not, however, see horses tied up outside saloons like in the westerns, indicating that the riders may not actually be using them as I use the bus, but just going out for a ride.) What else? The cathedral, of course, even though it’s back isn’t finished, and the fountain. The fact that down my street there are often guys (and today a girl) practicing lasso tricks in front of shops. The red dirt, even though it gets all over the cuffs of my pants and I have to scrub a lot when I’m washing my clothes on the roof. The way most people want to help me once they meet me. The way the second-graders scramble to sit on the floor when it’s time to read the story “Cherry Pies and Lullabies.” (I would scramble too for a story about cherry pies….) The flowers my students occasionally bring me, or the pictures they draw for me. One student drew me a picture that said, not well spelled, “Eres mi mejor miss” (meaning “You are my best teacher”)….
But it’s probably because of all the problems with my teaching that these offerings seem exquisite. I proudly put this picture up on my refrigerator, because I need the motivation and encouragement it provides, but at the same time I said, half-jokingly, to Rocio, “It’s because he doesn’t know me well.” She said, “He knows you well enough; it’s just that he doesn’t know you when you’re angry.”
And there it is – the dark cloud over my beautiful blue Arandas sky. I have a bad temper, and it’s shown itself a few times at school.
Could there be anything I hate more than getting angry at people who don’t deserve it? I want to crawl into a hole afterwards. Sometimes I crawl into my bed for a much-needed nap, which recharges me with energy to try to solve the discipline problems I face in my classrooms. I made a student questionnaire and bravely asked what they think of the class, whether they feel respected by me, what suggestions they might have for me. Maybe I am too concerned with what they think, though what they think is important for the development of my teaching. The results were encouraging – they have interest in learning the language, and most of the suggestions were to play more games (of course). But one suggestion really struck me, and it said something like, “Not to be annoyed when we don’t understand.”
Oh, pobrecitos!
I read in a Jon Kabat-Zinn book that parenting is like an 18-year-long retreat, meaning it tries your patience and takes a great deal of effort to remain calm and at peace with yourself and with others. Well, teaching kids must be similar. I feel so challenged and often discouraged in dealing with them, but I know that I have a lot to learn, and beating myself up over it isn’t going to help them very much anyway.
If I keep things in perspective, I know that the discipline problems come from disinterest in the activities I’m providing, and that I have to make adjustments or change to another activity altogether. What’s causing the disinterest? At the beginning, there was some resistance to the way I was doing things – trying to get them to communicate and talk to each other in English, to which they were clearly not accustomed. I think normally in English class they would just read and do exercises in their books. So I went to their books, familiar terrain I hoped would soothe them. But in my primary classes, the materials are not at their level. For example, in my fourth and fifth-grade class, one kid is bilingual and gets bored easily, while others don’t understand anything I say (even after three weeks) and also get bored easily. They won’t read the selection because they can’t. They won’t do the worksheet because they can’t understand it. This is mainly the same story for all my classes. I am grateful for my last class of second-graders, though, because most of them have had English classes for a while now so the materials are not completely above them, and they show a joy of reading and an enthusiasm for learning that I often miss dearly in other classes.
Thankfully I take up solutions offered in my rescue. I am fortunate enough to have a caring and devoted principal to supervise and help me. I broke down in her office the other day, because I had been severe with a couple of my classes (“No Spanish!” “Sit down!” “Is something funny? Do you want another demerit?”) and totally incompetent in another (a kindergarten class in which one boy said as soon as I walked in, “Oh no, I hate English class; it’s so boring,” and three boys made running escapes out of the classroom while I was trying to teach them to say which fruits they liked).
At last we are going to lower the level of the materials (something we tried to avoid because of the exorbitant cost of the materials to the parents), and we are going to separate students by English level rather than by grade. I will also have my own classroom to which the students come for class, rather than me being the traveling English teacher visiting all the classrooms. In a teachers’ meeting yesterday, the principal made sure that all the teachers were aware of glaring discipline problems (for me but also for the other traveling teachers, of music and P.E.), and the students got a talking to that really had them behaving much better today.
Should I have pushed for these changes earlier, rather than trying in vain to work with materials that were frustrating and discouraging for the students? There’s no point in asking this; next time I’ll know what to do.
So the saga of Jeanne the Struggling EFL Teacher continues…. Will the discipline problems subside with the change of material? Probably not as much as I’d like, but how exciting it is to imagine some of my students understanding a story on their own and wanting to continue reading it….
Monday, November 21, 2005
Red dirt and AGAVE for tequila.
The fountain, cathedral, and the HUGE bell in el parque in Arandas.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Attack of the Amoebas
I always associated amoebae with high school biology textbooks—mitosis and nuclei and cell membranes and all that (or maybe I’m remembering wrong). In any case, what they don’t teach you about amoebae in biology class is that if you consume them, they consume you.
Of course the Julias who lived in Senegal know this already. I first heard of amoebae as a gastrointestinal threat from Julia Oliver, fresh from her two years on the Peace Corps and a month of traveling in India, when she visited me in Taiwan. She was highly knowledgeable about the dangers of food and not ironing your clothes in wet climates. She told me stories of little parasites that come off moist, un-ironed clothing and burrow under the skin, creating pimple-like bumps and eventually popping open to reveal a little worm. Amoebas, not quite so scary-sounding, came up in conversation because we had probably eaten something not very sanitary in Hong Kong, probably at that dirty place on Temple Street. (Sorry, Julia!) We had (excuse me for being too graphic) the runs in a very watery way. It didn’t seem too serious, until a few weeks later when I came down with hepatitis A—the punishment for thinking that a vaccination treatment that takes over a month is really not worth the trouble and for feeling invincible in the face of street cuisine.
It’s such a cliché to write about gastrointestinal problems on a blog about living in Mexico, and I apologize for making my first entry all about amoeba, but my ailment happens to coincide with the arrival of living-room furniture in my apartment in Arandas, Jalisco. Finally I have a feeling of as if I’ve settled into my life here, and I’m ready to start this blog that John Bauschatz suggested I write before I got to Mexico. Perhaps I feel like I’ve been initiated or something, now that I have eaten the food here for two months already and have finally gotten sick. So much for thinking that I have such a natural affinity with Mexico that I don’t become ill from the food. I’ve also gotten tired of writing several individual emails telling the same stories and never remembering what I told to whom. Of course I’ll still write to my friends and family individually, especially now that I have internet access in my apartment and don’t have to go to internet cafes, but I thought I’d try the blog thing to disseminate my news. Let’s see how long it lasts.
Don’t get alarmed, but I just spent a day and a half in the hospital. Wednesday night I was walking home and felt feverish. My heavy Dansko© clogs felt heavier and heavier, reminding me of fevers in Hong Kong, walking down the narrow sidewalks in a dizzy haze. As soon as I got home to my apartment, I went to sleep. It was about 8:30 or 9, very early for me. At 2:00 in the morning I awoke again, and that was when the worst started. I couldn’t sleep well because of the aching from the fever and the constant trips to the bathroom. When I did sleep, I had anxiety dreams about details with some frustrating paper work. Everyone I know here in Arandas has chastised me for not calling someone earlier about my illness, but I thought it would pass and was only able to bring myself to call my boss at about 6:30 a.m. She took me to the hospital.
I needed the bathroom again, but there wasn’t any toilet paper. Someone directed me to a bathroom in an empty hospital room. When I came out of the bathroom, my boss and I waited in the room for the doctor. I thought the doctor would examine me, give me some medicine, and I could go home to sleep it off. When I had hepatitis A in Taiwan, I just had some tests done and went home to sleep and force myself to eat despite my lack of appetite. But now a nurse came in and told me to put on one of those lovely little hospital gowns and lie down on the bed. A plasma drip came in. I realized that I would be staying in the hospital longer than I had expected.
It was not all that bad, though I say this now that the worst is over. At first I was overwhelmed by, I don’t know what, and I started crying when my boss kept reassuring me that I would be OK. Maybe I was crying because I didn’t think I would be OK. Or maybe I was crying because somebody was reassuring me. In any case, I was lying there on the hospital bed severely dehydrated and feverish, crying whenever my boss spoke to me and stopping when the nurses came in. Eventually I got some painkiller and was able to sleep. Everyone was extremely nice to me. The boss stayed with me most of the morning, until the cook from the school took over. My fever returned and I felt cold. The doctor said I had a little hypothermia, and I could only use the sheets with no blankets, in order to lower the fever. I felt extremely cold and my back and legs were killing me. When I finally go more medication for the pain and the fever, I fell back asleep.
I was touched by the care with which the cook, Doña Paty, placed wet towels on my forehead for hours standing by my bed. She would brush aside my hair carefully, so as not to wake me should I fall asleep.
Some of the teachers came to visit me, some with flowers. A preschool student brought me candy (which I couldn’t eat), a little foam shark, and a tiny tiger made of pipe cleaners. Everyone joked all day about tortas de lomo, what I had had for lunch the previous day, and scolded me for eating so much on the street. Doña Paty and I talked about things I could start to cook once I got home, because I have to start cooking more and eating less outside.
My friend Rocio (stress on the “i”), the secretary from the school, took over at 7 p.m. and stayed overnight on the uncomfortable couch in my room. I was happy to have her there because we could chat and tell jokes. She and another teacher and I have been calling each other “La Loca” for days. We watched TV and talked. I was feeling much better by the evening. The fever and the aching went away, but I still had to finish the drip I was on and have two more doses of antibiotics, so I ended up staying the night. The only thing I’d had to eat all day was jell-o and hot lemon tea, the only variety being that I had had grape flavor for breakfast and lunch and now I was getting pineapple. In my desperate hunger I craved a chicken sandwich with French fries so badly—because I knew a restaurant just around the corner that had hamburguesas de pollo con queso y papas, but I would settle for digestive cookies if they were permissible. They weren’t.
I forgot my hunger once we started watching documentaries on Animal Planet and National Geographic. There was a show about camels in South America and Saudi Arabia. I told Rocio about the traumatizing documentary Sandy and I saw once, where a zoo was going to breed koalas by bringing in a male, and the female koalas were in heat and going crazy humping the eucalyptus trees. I fell asleep sometime around 1 a.m., after the antibiotics started and despite the coldness in my arm that they caused.
In the morning, I got pineapple jell-o again. Rocio and I watched music videos and part of an old Mexican film called El Silencio (not because any of them were good). We waited and waited for my drip to finish. I was finally able to leave at about 1 or 2.
Ah, my fabulous appetite! My wonderful metabolism! My strong stomach! My joys and my flaws, apparently. What I love most about traveling—about living, I guess—is eating the food and drinking the beverages.
Taiwan: fresh papaya milk, bubble tea, biandang (lunchboxes), spicy beef jerky, shaved ice desserts, the fried cod near sifu’s place, syabu-syabu (hotpot), gongwan (meatballs), dumpling soup, cold sesame noodles, steamed buns, sweet, hot soy milk for breakfast.
Hong Kong: dim sum, Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, tapioca with coconut milk, coconut pudding at the race track.
Malaysia & Singapore: curry rice-noodle soup, satay.
England: scones with clotted cream, cheese and potato pasties, mince pies, fish and chips, beans and toast, Pakistani curries, mini-milk popsicles.
Ireland: Guinness, Kilkenny, stew.
France: cheese, cheese, cheese, pain au chocolat, bread, bread, bread, kebabs.
Italy: tortelloni burro e oro, grating cheese, chianti, prosciutto, latte macchiato, bombolone filled with cream or nutella, gelati.
Providence: falafel, Ratty vegan bar, mashed turnips, sweet Portuguese bread, the wonderful food that the Ratty cooks made for presidential functions, grilled cheese sandwiches, tiramisu, muffins at Ocean Café, bagel melts with tomato and muenster at the Cable Car, ting, squash soup Rue de l’espere (sp?), Big Alice’s ice cream.
Tucson: breakfast burritos, vegetarian sandwiches at the old U of A union, NY pizza, smoothies, dollar burritos downtown, cheap frozen yogurt at the hospital, sopapillas with honey, huge cups of jamaica.
Columbus: French fries, Scottish eggs at Mac’s, homemade Thanksgiving dinners, Kaori’s salmon pockets, Lea’s spinach, biscuits and gravy, dosas, that spicy fish at the Chinese restaurant whose name I can never remember, Rohit’s chana, Andy’s tunky tuna, Veronica’s balls, cucumber with lime and chili, Luis’ famous hot dogs, cheap tortas at El Mariachi, Tricia’s cooking which was improving at lightning speed when I left, that place Dr. Denton took us to before I left.
Mexico: sopes, tacos al pastor, tortas, lonches, enchiladas, horchata, jamaica, quesadillas, pozole, tamales with cream, chicken sandwiches, milaneza, corn in a cup with cream, chili, and cheese, popsicles, shrimp a la diabla, papaya with lime, lime, lime.
Of course the Julias who lived in Senegal know this already. I first heard of amoebae as a gastrointestinal threat from Julia Oliver, fresh from her two years on the Peace Corps and a month of traveling in India, when she visited me in Taiwan. She was highly knowledgeable about the dangers of food and not ironing your clothes in wet climates. She told me stories of little parasites that come off moist, un-ironed clothing and burrow under the skin, creating pimple-like bumps and eventually popping open to reveal a little worm. Amoebas, not quite so scary-sounding, came up in conversation because we had probably eaten something not very sanitary in Hong Kong, probably at that dirty place on Temple Street. (Sorry, Julia!) We had (excuse me for being too graphic) the runs in a very watery way. It didn’t seem too serious, until a few weeks later when I came down with hepatitis A—the punishment for thinking that a vaccination treatment that takes over a month is really not worth the trouble and for feeling invincible in the face of street cuisine.
It’s such a cliché to write about gastrointestinal problems on a blog about living in Mexico, and I apologize for making my first entry all about amoeba, but my ailment happens to coincide with the arrival of living-room furniture in my apartment in Arandas, Jalisco. Finally I have a feeling of as if I’ve settled into my life here, and I’m ready to start this blog that John Bauschatz suggested I write before I got to Mexico. Perhaps I feel like I’ve been initiated or something, now that I have eaten the food here for two months already and have finally gotten sick. So much for thinking that I have such a natural affinity with Mexico that I don’t become ill from the food. I’ve also gotten tired of writing several individual emails telling the same stories and never remembering what I told to whom. Of course I’ll still write to my friends and family individually, especially now that I have internet access in my apartment and don’t have to go to internet cafes, but I thought I’d try the blog thing to disseminate my news. Let’s see how long it lasts.
Don’t get alarmed, but I just spent a day and a half in the hospital. Wednesday night I was walking home and felt feverish. My heavy Dansko© clogs felt heavier and heavier, reminding me of fevers in Hong Kong, walking down the narrow sidewalks in a dizzy haze. As soon as I got home to my apartment, I went to sleep. It was about 8:30 or 9, very early for me. At 2:00 in the morning I awoke again, and that was when the worst started. I couldn’t sleep well because of the aching from the fever and the constant trips to the bathroom. When I did sleep, I had anxiety dreams about details with some frustrating paper work. Everyone I know here in Arandas has chastised me for not calling someone earlier about my illness, but I thought it would pass and was only able to bring myself to call my boss at about 6:30 a.m. She took me to the hospital.
I needed the bathroom again, but there wasn’t any toilet paper. Someone directed me to a bathroom in an empty hospital room. When I came out of the bathroom, my boss and I waited in the room for the doctor. I thought the doctor would examine me, give me some medicine, and I could go home to sleep it off. When I had hepatitis A in Taiwan, I just had some tests done and went home to sleep and force myself to eat despite my lack of appetite. But now a nurse came in and told me to put on one of those lovely little hospital gowns and lie down on the bed. A plasma drip came in. I realized that I would be staying in the hospital longer than I had expected.
It was not all that bad, though I say this now that the worst is over. At first I was overwhelmed by, I don’t know what, and I started crying when my boss kept reassuring me that I would be OK. Maybe I was crying because I didn’t think I would be OK. Or maybe I was crying because somebody was reassuring me. In any case, I was lying there on the hospital bed severely dehydrated and feverish, crying whenever my boss spoke to me and stopping when the nurses came in. Eventually I got some painkiller and was able to sleep. Everyone was extremely nice to me. The boss stayed with me most of the morning, until the cook from the school took over. My fever returned and I felt cold. The doctor said I had a little hypothermia, and I could only use the sheets with no blankets, in order to lower the fever. I felt extremely cold and my back and legs were killing me. When I finally go more medication for the pain and the fever, I fell back asleep.
I was touched by the care with which the cook, Doña Paty, placed wet towels on my forehead for hours standing by my bed. She would brush aside my hair carefully, so as not to wake me should I fall asleep.
Some of the teachers came to visit me, some with flowers. A preschool student brought me candy (which I couldn’t eat), a little foam shark, and a tiny tiger made of pipe cleaners. Everyone joked all day about tortas de lomo, what I had had for lunch the previous day, and scolded me for eating so much on the street. Doña Paty and I talked about things I could start to cook once I got home, because I have to start cooking more and eating less outside.
My friend Rocio (stress on the “i”), the secretary from the school, took over at 7 p.m. and stayed overnight on the uncomfortable couch in my room. I was happy to have her there because we could chat and tell jokes. She and another teacher and I have been calling each other “La Loca” for days. We watched TV and talked. I was feeling much better by the evening. The fever and the aching went away, but I still had to finish the drip I was on and have two more doses of antibiotics, so I ended up staying the night. The only thing I’d had to eat all day was jell-o and hot lemon tea, the only variety being that I had had grape flavor for breakfast and lunch and now I was getting pineapple. In my desperate hunger I craved a chicken sandwich with French fries so badly—because I knew a restaurant just around the corner that had hamburguesas de pollo con queso y papas, but I would settle for digestive cookies if they were permissible. They weren’t.
I forgot my hunger once we started watching documentaries on Animal Planet and National Geographic. There was a show about camels in South America and Saudi Arabia. I told Rocio about the traumatizing documentary Sandy and I saw once, where a zoo was going to breed koalas by bringing in a male, and the female koalas were in heat and going crazy humping the eucalyptus trees. I fell asleep sometime around 1 a.m., after the antibiotics started and despite the coldness in my arm that they caused.
In the morning, I got pineapple jell-o again. Rocio and I watched music videos and part of an old Mexican film called El Silencio (not because any of them were good). We waited and waited for my drip to finish. I was finally able to leave at about 1 or 2.
Ah, my fabulous appetite! My wonderful metabolism! My strong stomach! My joys and my flaws, apparently. What I love most about traveling—about living, I guess—is eating the food and drinking the beverages.
Taiwan: fresh papaya milk, bubble tea, biandang (lunchboxes), spicy beef jerky, shaved ice desserts, the fried cod near sifu’s place, syabu-syabu (hotpot), gongwan (meatballs), dumpling soup, cold sesame noodles, steamed buns, sweet, hot soy milk for breakfast.
Hong Kong: dim sum, Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, tapioca with coconut milk, coconut pudding at the race track.
Malaysia & Singapore: curry rice-noodle soup, satay.
England: scones with clotted cream, cheese and potato pasties, mince pies, fish and chips, beans and toast, Pakistani curries, mini-milk popsicles.
Ireland: Guinness, Kilkenny, stew.
France: cheese, cheese, cheese, pain au chocolat, bread, bread, bread, kebabs.
Italy: tortelloni burro e oro, grating cheese, chianti, prosciutto, latte macchiato, bombolone filled with cream or nutella, gelati.
Providence: falafel, Ratty vegan bar, mashed turnips, sweet Portuguese bread, the wonderful food that the Ratty cooks made for presidential functions, grilled cheese sandwiches, tiramisu, muffins at Ocean Café, bagel melts with tomato and muenster at the Cable Car, ting, squash soup Rue de l’espere (sp?), Big Alice’s ice cream.
Tucson: breakfast burritos, vegetarian sandwiches at the old U of A union, NY pizza, smoothies, dollar burritos downtown, cheap frozen yogurt at the hospital, sopapillas with honey, huge cups of jamaica.
Columbus: French fries, Scottish eggs at Mac’s, homemade Thanksgiving dinners, Kaori’s salmon pockets, Lea’s spinach, biscuits and gravy, dosas, that spicy fish at the Chinese restaurant whose name I can never remember, Rohit’s chana, Andy’s tunky tuna, Veronica’s balls, cucumber with lime and chili, Luis’ famous hot dogs, cheap tortas at El Mariachi, Tricia’s cooking which was improving at lightning speed when I left, that place Dr. Denton took us to before I left.
Mexico: sopes, tacos al pastor, tortas, lonches, enchiladas, horchata, jamaica, quesadillas, pozole, tamales with cream, chicken sandwiches, milaneza, corn in a cup with cream, chili, and cheese, popsicles, shrimp a la diabla, papaya with lime, lime, lime.
