Pausing Here and There

Thanksgiving:

Imagine this: You are living in a house named “yoga house” and you might think, “Hmm. Yoga. Non-violence. Ahimsa. Peaceful hippie vegetarians.” In fact the reality is quite the opposite. I’ve successfully moved into my lovely new home and was pleased to discover that we had quite the lovely mix of people living here…most of whom eat meat. Some of whom are interested in killing the meat they eat. Pete and Pete, if you have not yet read Sarah and Megan’s hilarious blog, are two Minnesotan fellows who remind me a lot of Jake rolled into one. They are best friends and they kill turkeys. In fact, they killed our thanksgiving chompipe and it was definitely transcendent. I felt, simultaneously, repugnance and fascination, to the idea of these two lads martaring this bird for our dinner, so of course I volunteered to photograph the whole adventure! Thanksgiving ended up being lovely, big, boisterous, and wonderful. I spent the day telling my language teacher about this whole chompipe episode and marvelling at the fact that I saw the thing alive and then I ate it. We ended the night by drinking masses of mojitos at El Cuartito, where I apparently work, but don’t have any hours yet. Hmmm?

Y mas:
This weekend we did Fuentas Georginas Part Deux. It was glorious and lovely, again. We brought food and, as I was with two outdoor educators–Cori and Traika–we felt very confident in making a fire to cook it on. The man at the hotel asked if we wanted help in that condescending machismo way, and Cori told him no. But then, they tried to start it, and damn, did it take a long time to start! We gave in, asked the hotel guy who said, “Lo dijo” (I told you so). But, by the time he had arrived, Traika, who had dedicated herself to the fire had managed to get it going. Eventually we were able to precariously balance the veggie shishkabobs I’d prepared earlier on the mini stove and eat warm, but still a little raw potatos, tomatoes, red peppers, and onions. When the guy came we got him to start the fire inside the cabin and we threw our tamales in their to warm up. After sharing a bottle of chilean wine *extravagant!* we didn’t care so much about the semi rawness, and everything turned out delicious.

At night, the fog rolled out so we were able to see the millions of stars. We brought candles down to the pool at night and placed them all around, then turned out the lights because we were the only people swimming. It was delicious and magical…I really felt like I was in some kind of crazy fairyland.

I spent the rest of today relaxing, cleaning, and getting nervous for my first day at my volunteer gig tomorrow. Off to translate Montessori lessons into Spanish, or try to!

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 26th, 2006 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.