Yesterday I decided to head for a "nearby" park, getting some lunch on the way since our kitchen was empty. We found a café where we could get our first empanadas. After I made my request I looked up in my pocket dictionary and learned that I ordered Creole Empanadas, which I was worried the kids wouldn´t like. But they were hungry enough so the food disappeared quickly. When the server realized I was visiting and didn´t speak or understand Spanish, he grabbed a magazine booklet with tango dancers on the front and tried telling me something over and over. Asking me to a tango dance? Trying to sign me up for lessons? I never did figure it out and he gave up and went back behind his counter.
We stopped at a fancy mall that was supposed to have a big kids play area (according to the internet). After wandering around a bit and feeling quite out of place, we found the play area, only to learn it was closed on Mondays. A McDonalds ice cream cone was a nice substitute.
After taking a few wrong turns we found the "park", only to learn it was a closed in soccer field practice area. So in the end it was just a very long walk. Today Bryan tells me that his co-workers showed him on a map the one area that is probably not great to walk around. Yup, it was the exact area the kids and I were wandering through yesterday.
On Saturday we were invited by a stranger at a park to her home on Monday for her daughter's 15th birthday. She called again Sunday night to confirm the invitation, so we accepted. The friendliness of this family is unbelievable. We spent the evening with this family of six and many of their relatives, eating snacks, chatting, and letting the kids play. Thankfully, most of them spoke English. Some of the teenagers sounded American, their English was so good. Colby found more friends to play soccer with, and the girls created with clay. They loaned us their double stroller, which will help with some of the long walks we go on.
One of my anxieties has been how to feed my family while we're here. I'm a make-a-menu, follow-the-recipe kind of cook. Heading to the grocery store with a VERY limited understanding of the language, not finding ingredients I'm used to and not knowing what to do with ingredients I see, not being able to read the labels to figure out what I'm buying, not knowing why the security guard is taking my backpack, or what the cashier is asking me... it is all QUITE overwhelming.
I don't like taking all five kids with me to the grocery store at home, and avoid it as much as I can. But today, with no food in the apartment, off we all went. So add 5 hungry kids to the above paragraph. Picture it: two helpful daughters pushing a grocery cart and a double stroller, trying not to run into people. The older son is bored and tormenting the middle son. The middle son, in turn, taunts the youngest son with his monkey tail. The youngest son is hungry and desperately wants the monkey tail that middle son keeps taking away, so he shrieks continuously. All while the frantic mother is staring at the aisle of spices, reading through her pocket Spanish dictionary, trying to figure out if she can get chicken bouillon, or interrupting a worker and saying, "Donde está..." and pointing to the word for butter. That was enough adventure on my own for today.
We headed to a closer park (that really was a park) when Bryan got home and shared a big tub of ice cream on a bench at twilight, with all the other city dwellers out and about. And after dessert, we headed home for dinner. :)
(Bread and pastries are plentiful, cheap, and delicious. That definitely helps with the whole feeding-the-family dilemma.)
1 comment:
You are far braver than me, dear sister!
Post a Comment