July 20
Over the past 2 months,
I have had a couple chances to do cooking. I made soup once which was
not too difficult, except that I was chopping the vegetables
“incorrectly.” I also made a dish that is comparable to pasta
with meat and vegetables. I made it mostly by myself and messed up
one of the steps, but it was edible. I am going to try getting some
practice making dough. I'm pretty sure they use the same recipe for
noodles, dumplings, hushur, and maybe regular bread too. If I can
figure out the formula, I will be very proud of myself.
I was trying to figure out a idea for
making an American meal. At first, I was thinking tacos, chili, or
possibly pizza. I realized that it would be a little to ambitious for
me at the moment. I don't quite know which items are available or
where to go to find them. Fresh tomatoes are around, but I did not
come across them yet. Avocados don't exist as far as I know. I have
not tasted any meat that resembles peperoni yet, and shredded cheese
is rare. I decided upon making grilled cheese sandwiches because all
of the ingredients were available. I have only seen people cook with
oil, so I was curious if cooking with butter would be problematic. No
worries though, it went well. I think they were pretty happy with it.
I sliced some meat on the side (because every meal here has had meat
so far) and also served pickles to go with it. In retrospect, I
should have taken a picture – my bad :(
Today's adventures were not over yet. I
really wanted to go to one of the mountains here because it is where
people are buried. I checked with my sister to make sure that it was
okay for us to go. She doesn't like going because she doesn't like
being near ghosts, but we were allowed to go if we wanted. (Cultural
note – traditionally, a person visits a family member that has
passed away only once. Three years after someone dies, a family
member will come and place milk or some type of food at the grave
site and then they never come back to visit them again.) It was one
of my favorite hikes so far - we got to see a spectacular sunset, and
the gravestones were very interesting to look at. We were running out
of time, so we didn't actually climb the mountain. Everything worked
out fine, but it was kind of hard to see on the way back. Even though
the sky was not black, it was a little disorienting to figure out how
far away we actually were. We did have a road to follow, but the
terrain was uneven and we had to walk pretty slowly. I took some of
my friends home at the other side of town so it got pretty late by
then. (I had my flashlight, so everything was completely fine.) I can
understand why people think of the sky as a god. The moon was not
out, but I could see clouds and stars at the same time. I wanted to
take a picture, but it would be impossible to capture it into a good
photo.
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