Food and Culture.

I have been trying really hard to get more in touch with Puerto Rican culture lately. It is easy to hide behind the gates of our school and not ever get a feel for where we are living. I have decided that every trip to the grocery store I am going to buy some food that I have never heard of and try to learn how to cook with it. This week I bought a Chayote. I cooked it and stuffed it with rice, beef, seasoning and cheese (as directed by my Spanish teacher). I really liked it. It is in the squash family, but is located next to the root vegestables at the grocery store. It is almost like a cross between a squash and a potato. I'm sure that some of my foods won't be that exotic to some of you, but to me they are still "mystery food".

The food isn't the only different thing about the grocery store. First off, everything (except alcohol) is way more expensive than home. Seafood is even more expensive. I still haven't figured that one out. The cuts of meat also aren't the same. They aren't unrecognizable, but they aren't like home. They eat a lot of this really thinly cut steak here. (Skirt steak maybe? I'm not really sure.) They also fry everything. It is extremely hard to go out to eat anything authentic and not have it fried in some way. Because it is so humid, most of the fresh produce goes bad really quickly. I think that is why they have so much processed food here. It is hard to eat right here unless you have the ability to go to the grocery store at least once a week (which I do not).

Another interesting fact about Puerto Rican culture is that they are a people who take pride in how they look. Except for the exceedingly poor, everyone is always done up. Women do their hair, dress up, and wear stilettos all the time. I swear 90% of women here don't even know what sensible shoes are. Fat, skinny, young, old...they still are wearing crazy shoes that I would have classified at home as "stripper heels." They dress like this in the grocery store, at work, and when they go out. I could never last 8 hours in the shoes they wear. As a whole, women wear things that are tighter and smaller than at home too. This is true even if you aren't a size two. Our Spanish teacher is a native Puerto Rican and fills us in on things that we may have a hard time picking up on. One of those things is that Puerto Rican men typically do not like skinny women. They don't like really fat women either, but they aren't interested if you don't have curves. The crazy amount of upkeep isn't reserved for women. The younger generation of me wax everything and they pluck their eyebrows. Everyone is incredibly manicured. It is sort of bizarre. Oh and rat-tails are in style on men. Cathleen nicknamed this one popular hair style the mo-rat because it is a cross between a mohawk and a rat-tail. I would take a picture, but I don't know how without being rude. I'll work on that for a future post.

As for school, it is still going well. I had one test that didn't go as well as I would have liked in anatomy, but I will be okay. It was just frustrating because I worked my butt of and panicked a little when I got the exam. She basically had us list every tiny detail she taught us. Ick and some of the nuclei of the brain sound so similar they are really hard to keep straight. Ugh. I'll keep plugging away.

Life outside of school is still great too. I am so lucky to have a great group of friends. We all get along super well and look out for each other. We went for another visit to La Placita for Krista's birthday on Friday. It was a blast. I danced so much that the back of my leg was sore on Saturday. We are also picking up on some Spanish by getting out. La Placita is all locals and a great atmosphere. I am picking up some Latin dance moves too...and no, I won't bust them out at home. We are starting to recognize some of the music too. Reggaeton grows on you pretty quickly. I will put a link to a couple of the songs that we hear all the time. They aren't the best lyrics, but they are catchy.

Danza Kuduro

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