Comida

The food here is interesting, to say the least. The typical Guatemalan meal is eggs, beans, corn tortillas, and bread. Lunch is the biggest meal, followed by breakfast, and dinner is the smallest. 

Breakfast: Our host moms cook us everything from eggs to mush (cream of wheat/oatmeal/milk/vitamins/ I actually have no idea what is actually in this but the. Name is not encouraging) to toast with peanut butter to panqueques (pancakes, which are way better than any I have had at home) to Corn Flakes with hot milk. They have to warm up the milk to get rid of bacteria, and let me just say that cereal with hot milk is VERY weird. And mushy. But not quite as mushy as mush. 

Lunch: For lunch, our host moms pack us a meal to bring with us every day, very elementary- (Abby and I have both forgotten our lunch boxes many, many times). We usually have either chicken, beef, fish with rice, potatoes, or noodles, etc. We also usually have some type of fruit like papayas or piñas (pineapple). Finally, we have bread. Lots and lots of bread. Matt’s family usually gives him an entire loaf, just for lunch. Also, to add a little fun, There is an unspoken rule in Guatemala that says that if you don’t like something you get for lunch, just send it back home and they will realize that you didn’t eat it and thus don’t like it. At lunch, a hilarious discussion usually occurs about what to send back. If I kind of liked it, should I throw some more away before I send it back? Will I hurt her feelings if I don’t even touch it? Even if I do like it, should I send it back so as not to waste food? Sending food back is kind of nerve-wracking, because you never know if your mom is going to call you out on it, or just let it be unspoken. 

Dinner: My family eats dinner around 7:30, and it usually consists of chicken or eggs and beans, and always tortillas and bread. I helped my host mom make tortillas last week, and it is really, really hard. Mine looked like deformed amoebas, while hers were perfect circles. Oh well. 

Overall, it's important to be really careful about what you eat here, a bunch of the kids on the trip have gotten sick (bad water, unclean fruit, too many frijoles). Luckily I have not yet been a victim. The food here is a little weird, but I’m getting used to it. Last night, me and three other girls cooked pizza and apple pie for our families (20 people total, all related although we're still not totally sure how...) It was really, really hard to find all the ingredients in the grocery store, figure out how to light the oven, find measuring cups in the kitchen, etc. We had to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, roll out the pizza dough using glasses covered in flour, and measure up to 5 cups of flour with a 1/4 cup measurement. Needless to say, it took forever. But, when we finally pulled it off, our families loved it. It has been really fun sharing our culture with them and learning about theirs.