| Hi! Just to let you know, I've moved the blog to LucasGentry.com, so all of my Costa Rica updates can all be in one place. Just click on the link below to see our newest update information! http://www.LucasGentry.com |
Well, we've made it through the weekend, and we're still alive and kicking! This morning started with our CALL (Spanish) class, which was as wonderful as ever.
Oh wait, I guess it started at breakfast, which was an adventure in and of itself.
A couple days ago, we went to Walmart and bought some supplies. At the store, as I mentioned previously, we saw several fruits that we weren't familiar with. One of the fruits that Gaby had mentioned was guineos -- they look like tiny green bananas -- so we bought a bundle of them when we were shopping. Gaby had mentioned that the typical way to prepare them is to add them to beans. We tried to find information about them on the internet, but all we could find is that they are just tiny green bananas, and that they are a special item in some Puerto Rican dishes. Since the internet just said that they were tiny bananas, I thought that maybe they might taste kind of like tiny bananas. It turns out that I was completely wrong.
The Spanish phrase of the day is, "¡Qué Asco!", which means, "How Disgusting!" This is the very phrase that I blurted out after taking a bite of the raw guineo. The only problem is that guineos have a stickiness to them that makes it so your hands get all sticky if you try to peel them, unless you peel them under running water. I was unaware of this until the CALL class, so when I peeled them (using a butter knife, because I didn't know any better), my hands got sticky and I may have made a little bit of a mess. I took a decent-sized bite of the fruit and soon realized the error of my ways. When I tried to spit it out into the trash can, only part of it came out because the same stickiness that was on my hands was covering the inside of my mouth. I ran to the sink and did my best to wash out the reprehensible taste, then proceeded to brush my teeth.
After breakfast, we had our CALL Spanish class, and we informed Gaby of our not-so-delicious start of the day. She burst out laughing at us and told us that, as we had previously discovered, guineos don't have any sweetness of bananas. She says that the proper way to eat them is to peel them while running water over them, in order to make the sticky juices not get on your hands, and then put them into your beans and rice when you cook them. My guess is that the guineos take on some of the flavor of the surrounding foods and become a pretty decent thing to eat. I suppose we'll attempt that one next time.
The best (well, depending on your perspective) part of the whole situation is that as Gaby burst out laughing from our adventure, one of the other people from the campus was walking by and stopped at the door. Gaby told her about the whole deal and everyone got a wonderful laugh at our expense.
Tomorrow starts an even bigger adventure as we start to familiarize ourselves with the city. We'll be riding the bus into town and meeting up with Helen, our wonderful and helpful friend who I have mentioned in a couple earlier posts. She will be taking us on one of the city buses, to show us around and help us understand how to use the bus system, since that will be a primary form of transportation during our stay in this beautiful country.
No comments:
Post a Comment