Sunday: Dia de dominguear (2006.09.03)

I’ve always liked Sundays. Ever since I was a kid they have been excellent days. When I was really young, my dad would always take me out doing whatever it is he did on Sundays…looking at jobs or moving stuff around or whatever. We usually ended up at the old White Castle in Westwood with a Sunday paper and hot chocolate. As I got older, we spent a lot of Sundays working on the Shack in the mornings and then ride bikes with the family or go for a hike or something. Sundays have always been the day of family gatherings or fiestas. Even in college, Sundays were usually my favorite days. Staying up stupid late Saturday night made it easy to sleep in, some greasy Jack and Benny’s breakfast was all but mandatory and it was everyone’s biggest opportunity to procrastinate. After all, you had the whole day to get your homework done, which usually meant I started it at 11 at night after watching 6 or 7 West Wing episodes, eating pizza and/or ice cream, maybe going to a Sphinx meeting and talking on the phone for a bit. Man college was great.

Equally, Sundays here in Bolivia have proven to be good days. Sleeping in really isn’t an option here (sidenote: anyone who has access to some rooster poison could really help me out), but it’s usually ok because I don’t really stay up very late. I was up until 2am the other night journaling and that was by FAR the latest I’ve stayed up since I’ve been in site. Anyway, I don’t have to worry about getting into the office at all and everyone is usually pretty mellow. This particular Sunday, however, has been pretty awesome so far, and it’s only 1pm. First of all, I woke up and made breakfast, which I had been touting all week. I don’t think they really thought I was going to do it. They also didn’t realize how easy it is to make French Toast. Well, we don’t have sliced bread here (you can only get it in the city and it’s really really stale), so we used the bread we usually eat for breakfast, which I can best describe merely as little round rolls, kind of like tiny hamburger buns. I cut each roll in half and made little French Toast biscuits. Only it was like cooking it with a bunch of heels of bread, which everyone knows isn’t as good. The milk was also a little sketchy, but it worked out. The biggest thing we were falta was syrup. And the worst part was I didn’t know how to explain it to them. The closest thing I could say was that it was kind of like honey, only brown and sweeter. They suggested “dulce de leche” which is essentially caramel, which they had on hand. I’d never tried caramel on French toast, but it was pretty good. I mean, this was no homemade copper kettle caramel, but it did ok. I’m going to get some syrup next time I’m in the city, and start making this every Sunday. My family liked it a lot, or at least they said they did. I told them it was better with different bread and syrup.

After breakfast I helped with all the dishes, which I haven’t done yet and I think really impressed Bilma. Doing dishes here is exactly like we do them when we’re camping, only we don’t heat the water. Hot water for cleaning (dishes or one’s body) is a concept that is extremely foreign here. We basically fill up one tub with soapy water and another tub with not soapy water…Bilma washed and I rinsed and “dried,” which really consisted of me shaking all the water off I could then putting the dishes back on the shelf. There are a couple of rags here, but they don’t really differentiate what they use them for, so I just avoid using them at all. I often see them just lying on the ground or whatever, so I steer clear. What cracks me up is that when they want to wipe something off to use, for example a knife that has butter or something on it, they grab one of these nasty rags and wipe it off and then proceed to use it. This probably makes it dirtier than before, but hey, it’s Bolivia. I’ve come to realize that I think people in the U.S. are in general a little too germ crazy. I mean, the kitchen we cook in and eat in every day is ridiculously filthy by our standards, but it works for them…no one is dying of weird food borne diseases. Although I do have kind of a nasty cold I think I caught from the little girl that lives here. I’m wondering what I will be like when I get home, though. Will I become some crazy germ freak, constantly wiping things off and such? Or will I become a little more Bolivian and not really worry at all about germs? Verémos.

After dishes, I was getting ready to go to Cristian’s soccer game when they told me that they found a nest of “petos” which are bigger than bees but smaller than wasps. One stung Cristian and his hand got pretty swollen. Since there is a little baby running around the house, Bilma determined that we needed to burn it. I was thinking “shouldn’t we wait until winter time?” but then I realized it is winter time here…and that it would probably mean petos flying all over the house stinging everyone like crazy. The nest was in a plant that was growing up the side of one of the wooden rooms in the house, so we were risking burning the whole thing down. To be honest, although the nest had these bugs all over it, it didn’t look that active…there were none flying around and they all looked like they were sleeping (yeah, I could see them emitting little cartoon “zzzz’s”), so maybe this wasn’t too terrible of an idea. So Cristian went and got a notebook to start a fire, but Bilma just kind of tossed a couple sheets sort of near where the nest was and wanted to light it. Being the pyromaniac I am, I suggested we get something to make it burn a little faster so there wasn’t enough time for the petos to kill us all. We dug up some diesel fuel and I got a stick about a meter long and wrapped a ton of paper around one end and soaked it in diesel fuel. I whipped out my handy dandy made-in-America Zippo lighter and lit my torch. As much as I wanted to go down into some tomb or something like Indiana Jones with my torch, I refocused on the task at hand. It was a pretty sweet torch though. Before lighting it, I had strategically placed some paper underneath the nest. So, after telling them how horrible of an idea this could turn out to be, I kind of shoved the torch into the plant, which caught pretty well, even though it was green. It started crackling a bit, and at first site of one of the petos flying around, I dropped the stick and got the hell out of there. I think I must have got the nest pretty good, cause it crackled pretty good for a few minutes, we saw something fall, and the petos never swarmed or anything. We carefully approached and saw that the whole thing was burned up, along with all the bugs I guess. I wanted to let it keep burning for a while just to be safe, but Bilma didn’t want the house to burn down, so she threw a bucket of water on it. And thus ended the Sunday morning fire adventure.

The crappy part was by the time we got to Cristian’s soccer game, his team had just about finished playing, so he didn’t get to play. Which was probably ok because he’s usually goalie and his swollen hand wasn’t up for it. But we sat around and watched a couple other games after his. Here in Bolivia (and probably most of South America), people don’t ask kids what sport they play, they ask them what fútbol team they play for. It’s pretty crazy. Lucky for me there are also a couple of basketball courts in town…and since a) I’m taller than anyone in town and b) they only know how to play soccer, I can dominate in basketball. All of the shoot like they’re throwing in a soccer ball from out of bounds and everyone once in a great while it hits the rim, but usually not. I do need to work on my soccer skills though.

I’ll probably spend the rest of this relaxing Sunday reading, maybe watch some more fútbol, pack up some things for a trip I’m taking tomorrow, eat some bread, you know the usual. Me encantan a los domingos.