That's life!

I had another cooking attempt. This time, it was mac and cheese - homemade and baked! Although my tutor (boss) at the university showed me this store where they sell imported USA products (it was so weird to see those brands here in Colombia after 2 months without them!) and suggested that I buy the $15.00 pack of 4 Kraft mac n' cheese boxes, I wanted it to be the real (Colombian-ized) deal! It was for an international student dinner, put on the by the director of the International Office at the University. So I looked up the easiest recipe I could find online:

Easy Cheesy

and went to work. I used Monterrey Jack cheese - yum! I was excited, but got a little worried when I saw this come out of the oven:

Uh oh.

 I tasted it, and Sara tasted it, and Celeste tasted it, and Aidaluz, the maid, tasted it, and it didn't taste like anything. NOOOOOO! Luckily I had the idea of chocolate chip cookies in my back pocket, just in case (WHICH by the way I made last week successfully! The secret is a high-altitude recipe and making them into cookie bars). Sara said, "Did you put salt in it?" And Mom and Dad, who I was skyping, said, "Did you put salt in it?" I had put salt in it. But, things being dire as we were, I stirred it up and added lots of salt and pepper. 

It's supposed to look like this!

It looked not very appetizing, but it turns out that that did the trick! It was actually a hit, and everyone ate it all! Whew. Salt and pepper saved the day! I also got to eat chocolate mousse made by a Belgian guy, dessert pizza that is typical in Brazil, microwaved apple pie meant to represent Slovenia and Germany (it's hard to cook apple pie without an oven), spicy Mexican chicken, and rice and chicken, meat and jello from Colombia! It was chevere.

That was all it needed! And maybe a little TLC.

This was an exciting week - I learned a lot while doing a lot! On Thursday I played in my first concert with the sinfónica - the youth orchestra. We went to the Museo Quimbaya, which is about 10 minutes from my house. It's a gold museum with artifacts from the pre-Columbian era (ha).

The entrance to the museum - watch out for the river!

The open-air plaza where we played.

We went at 7PM, so it was dark out. After waiting an hour and a half at the fine arts building for the bus, we finally arrived at the museum, set up chairs and stands, and started tuning. We were sitting there for about an hour, wondering why we weren't playing, when they invited us to eat a sandwich! What? I thought we were gonna play! Anyways, we ate our snack, and then got to go in the museum for free, which was cool, and finally at 9PM we sat down and re-tuned. We played our first piece, Georges Bizet's Suite L`Arlesienne, and toward the end I felt a rain drop. After the cut off, it started raining, and within 7 second it had turned into a downpour! We all ran for cover, and didn't play anymore! It just goes to show you that two hours is too long to wait to play for a concert! :)

Tooting my own horn.

So Friday night one of the teachers I work with, Alejandra, and her boyfriend Christian took me to try agua de panela con queso!

It looks like tofu, but it is mozzarella-like cheese.

 Agua de panela is sugar cane water, and it came in a big soup bowl with a huge hunk of cheese on the side. You cut up pieces of the cheese and put them in the agua de panela, and then you eat it like soup. It was very sweet, and good, even though they gave me a little too much! Christian got a tamal:

A mass of corn, eggs, carrots, meat, chicken, and peas, cooked in plantain leaves. Yum!

 Of course, the meal was accompanied by and arepa as an appetizer. In back of the restaurant are a bunch of typical Colombian farm animals that visitors can go see, which happen to be the same as typical U.S.A. farm animals! There were two peacocks, and this humongous cow that was about 6 feet tall! I have never seen a cow so big!

Alejandra and Christian took me on a tour of Montenegro and Tapao, two nearby pueblos. While we were driving through Montenegro we passed this place called Disney Pizza  - it had the logo in Disney letter and Mickey and everything! Muy chistoso :) I have this hand sanitizer here:

Creamy pumpkin - reminiscent of a fall I will not experience this year!

Every time people smell it, they say it smalls like ron con pasas - an ice cream flavor here. So in Tapao we bought 3 ron con pasas to eat. They were pre-packaged, and it really smelled like my hand san! Unfortunately, I felt like I was eating my hand sanitizer, so needless to say I prefer other ice cream flavors.

Creamy pumpkin hand san flavor.

  Sara's cousin and two friends from Barranquilla, a coastal city, stayed with us a few days this week to attend a conference about Architecture (which they study) here in Armenia. They were awesome - so friendly, and open, and loud - they said that the volume of their normal speaking voices is way louder than people from other parts of the country! :)

¡Oh, gloria inmarcesible!

So I got back from my trip with Alejandra and Christian, and got ready to go out with the costeños, Sara, Celeste, and our friend Laura. Just as were were en el punto de salir, the skies opened up with a HUGE thunderstorm! The power went out, and we were sitting around the table with a candle during this long and rather scary thunderdome. I have never heard thunder cracks so loud in my life! After an hour, the rain let up, so we went to a bar up the road. About 30 costeños, all who attended the conference with our friends, were there! They were so fun and friendly, and genuinely interested in me, and not only because I am a foreigner! They're just nice people! They were also talking to me in English, which was fun! Lots of people do that here. The music was fun, and I was hoping for a song I knew... and then the Macarena came on! It turns out you dance it the same here! It was funny - they all kept cheering, "Barranquilla! Barranquilla!" It will be a night to remember!

Something that's a thing here - for Halloween, people rent costumes!

I went back to Unicentro with my dear friend Connie today! While we were drinking jugo de guanabana en leche, the staffs of these two restaurants were yelling across the food court to each other - it was rather humorous!

And we went to my favorite empanada place, Pongale Aji. There you can get an empanada filled with chicken, beef, or both, and then they have an array of aji sauces you can put on your empanada! They are so good, but cuidado -  some of them pica mucho!!!

Aji!

Me and aji.

 Gloria told me a funny joke! "¿Cómo se rie la empanada?"  "¡Aji, aji, aji!" Spanish puns - I loved it!

Thanks for being here with me! Have a Disney day!

muy chistoso = very humorous

ron con pasas = rum with raisins

costeños = people from the coast

en el punto de salir = just about to leave
jugo de guanabana en leche = guanabana juice in milk - pretty much a milkshake!
cuidado = careful!
pica mucho = are very spicy!
"¿Cómo se rie la empanada?" = How does an empanada laugh?

timbrar = to ring (a phone)

arvejas = peas

Pagale pieza = get a room!