Things I Want to Eat While On Vacation in the States

It's not that Dominican food isn't good, it's just that there's about 5 dishes you can make and then repeat. You can have locrio, which is like arroz con pollo, you can have la bandera which is rice, beans, and a piece of meat, you can have viveres, of which yucca is the only one I can stand. You can have moro, which is a mix of rice and beans. And you can have spaghetti. Those are the staples of the Dominican diet and you can generally find one of the five in every house that you walk in to, and they're all pretty much seasoned the same. Needless to say, you get a little tired of eating the same things day after day. So I'm excited to come home and eat good food. So here's my list of the things I hope to eat while I'm there.

Good cheese, i.e. sharp cheddar, mozzarella, brie, bleu, and any other yummy kind anyone can think of.
Sara's bloody Marys
'Leners lasagna
'Leners gumbo
Papi's granola
Papi's chili and cornbread
A big medium-rare Bean Haven steak with a baked potato with butter and sour cream.
Juanita's tortilla chips and Veronica's salsa
'Leners biscuits
A meal cooked by Aubrey
A meal cooked by Stan
Some good wine
Haagen Daz coffee ice cream
Bean Haven burgers
Good dill pickles
Salads

I know there's more...

Rogue Hazelnut Brown beer
Walking Man Raspberry Wheat beer
Some sort of beer from Double Mountain
Onion dip with potato chips

There's still more, I just can't think of it yet...

I'll add it later! I'm just excited to get home for a little while and see everyone. And play ping pong, disc golf, have a bonfire at the stones, and lots of other fun stuff.

Café

Café is my favorite little boy in the campo. He's the mayor's son (the mayor is only 29). And his grandma, Miladi, is one of my favorite doñas. He's just about as cute as they come. He's super precocious and talks up a storm. His grandma and aunt told me a story about him somehow coming up with the idea that he was the father of the neighbor's unborn baby. So he asked his dad for money so that he could go buy clothes for the baby because dads have to buy things for their babies. I asked him about it after that and sure enough he said he was the dad. He actually stopped by to visit the other day by himself. He had come over with his uncle and got bored watching him work so he came to my house and hung out for about an hour playing with the neighbor boys. He's usually running around in his underwear which is actually pretty much the norm for small children around here. Café is 2 years old. I made the mistake of showing him how to take pictures with my camera and now he's hooked, although he has a hard time holding it so he can take pictures of anything other than himself. Every time he sees me he asks if I have my camera and if he can take pictures. Sometimes I lie and say I don't have it, otherwise I have to spend an hour deleting all the photos he's taken of himself.


Here's a photo Café took of himself.


And here's one that I took of him.


Carlo, Café, y Niño

Malia and Ruth Visit

Ruth and Malia came to visit during Semana Santa for a day. We made locrio, and headed down to the river for the afternoon. Then we went out dancing that night. It was fun and Malia had never been to our part of the country so it was a new experience for her to come to the dry southern region of the country because she lives in Constanza, which is way up in the mountains of the Cordillera Central. That's about as opposite as you can get. Up where she lives you have to put on long sleeves and long pants at night for the cold, not for the mosquitos. It evens snows up in Constanza every now and again. Where I live it's so hot and dry. We have thorn trees everywhere. We have cactuses. We have euphorbia that gets used as live fencing because it never gets cold enough for it to be in any danger of dying. It's so hot during the day that being inside the house with a zinc roof between about 10 and 4 is pretty much like sitting in a sauna. I love my community, but I still sometimes wish that I lived in the north, although when I go there and it rains super hard every day and is actually pretty cold, then I appreciate my desert more!


Thony, Goné, Malia, Ruth, and Dari hanging out at the Rio.