July 12

July 12, 2009

Days Events: Grocery shopping, country dinner party, work, work, work

I woke up only 4 hours after falling asleep and couldn’t get back to sleep. I decided to spend some time reading for our project and that did the trick. After about an hour and a half I was back asleep. I woke up and immediately started to work. Can’t say that it was enjoyable, but necessary. I thought that I would be able to catch up prior to our crazy week but that doesn’t seem to be possible.
We had scheduled to have Joan and Willie over for dinner so the hideous chore of grocery shopping was upon us. No matter what country, country shopping sucks. It is a bit better now that we have a friend that works there, but still. It didn’t take us as long this time as it usually does. We had planned a menu for the closest thing to southern food that we could come up with. We were going to have chicken-fried steak, broccoli and cheese, baked potatoes, sweet tea, and banana bread, with guacamole and pita chips as an appetizer. Everything from scratch made our grocery list a little longer than usual, but doable.
As soon as we got back from shopping I started into cleaning and cooking. I was in charge of the sweet teas, baked potatoes, cheese sauce, banana bread, and guacamole. Ginger had to get the pita chips, chicken fried steak, and broccoli. It was a rather large production in a very small kitchen. Joan and Willie both wanted to see us cook so besides prep we waited to do everything until our guests got here. We had already made the guacamole and pita chips for them to snack on while they watched us cook. After teaching them the word, writing it out, teaching Spanish pronunciation, and giving up the guacamole recipe they dug in and ate very last bit. I was excited at this was hopefully the foreshadowing of their response to the rest of our cooking.
As we cooked Joan and Willie both asked many questions. They were both very impressed with our abilities to cook for ourselves, especially mine. Here med do not cook…period. We have yet to meet a guy that can even put together the most simple recipes. The dependency and mindset is all on a woman to provide them with food. Ridiculous I know. Anyway, they really enjoyed the food. I was so happy because I was really worried that they wouldn’t like it. Both of them even had seconds though. We had some really good conversation about relationships and culture which was very cool. Joan an Will even offered to do the dishes after the meal which was really cool. After dinner and clean up we enjoyed banana bread and coffee while Ginger and I shared pictures of our family and cities in the U.S. They were very interested and seem to really enjoy it. Upon realization that it was 11:00 they both decided to head home. Unfortunately Ginger and I still had a lot of work to do in order to prepare for our meetings on Monday. As I write this it is approaching 2:00 and while the powerpoint is started there is still a lot that needs to be done to it. I don’t see much sleep over the next week, but at least I will feel accomplished. Now back to work.