Pollo, carne, jugo, sopa.

Well the last few days have been nothing excited, tomorrow the college has no classes and I will be spending my afternoon writing a 3 page accounting paper, in Spanish. What a joy.

From my past blogs I have realized that I've left out all my experiences with food! How could I forget?

So I think it's safe to say that I've already found the things I love, and unfortunately the things I also hate. My favorite meal so far was some fish I had at home. I'm not sure if I've told you about this already but it's worth re-telling. This fish tasted like it swam in butter and came from heaven. It did not taste like fish at all and the best part was that it had crunchy bacon on top. Every day I hope to see this dish waiting for me on my plate when I get home.

Of course with every meal there is rice, with a side of rice, and rice for desert. Or it sure seems that way to me. Usually I get a big size plate, not one of those medium ones to make it seem like you're eating more because your plate is smaller, a huge plate, more like a platter. Half consists of some sort of meat and the other a mountain of white rice. In the beginning I tried so hard to eat all the rice but slowly I threw more and more away. Since I am not there when my plate gets plated up I can not ask for less and it's just too awkward to say something after the fact. Slowly but surely I am warming up to rice again and more and more is allowed into my belly. About 76% of the time I eat 60% of my rice, more than half, I call it good enough.

Along with rice for every meal, we also get soup. This hasn't been so bad, I never was a big fan of soup because I just never understood why you needed so much broth and so little of the other stuff. The soup is always different and usually good, I have not ran into one that I could not eat... yet.

The meat here is... interesting to say the least. My rule of thumb is, if you're not sure what it is, it's probably chicken. I've gotten a few slabs of meat that I'm still not sure what they were but I ate as much as possible and called it good. As my family, boyfriend, and friends know, I must surgically dissect my food before I eat it, especially meat. Also, I do not like eating meat off the bone; but here it seems that chicken only exists ON the bone. So there I am sitting in the restaurant with a fork and knife eating my chicken. Many times I think I get it pretty clean only to look at the others and notice that I've barely eaten half, by this time I usually give up and eat my rice. Traveling to the Amazons we stopped at a chicken place and much to my horror there was not a fork, knife, spoon, or spatula in sight. This chicken was on the bone and I would have to eat it with my hands... After getting over the fact of what was happening I just closed my eyes and ate it, it was very delicious but would have been better with utensils.

One of my favorite things here is the juice, I get it every day and it's usually freshly made. My favorite is pineapple juice but I have had a few juices that I have to hold my breath for, close my eyes, and gulp it down.

Ice cream is also very popular, being that it is hot year round, and boy do I love my ice cream. Too many flavors to choose from and too many stores and small vendors to try out.

Overall I've been fairly satisfied with the food, although this country still surprises me.