Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Guatemala City

Mi maestra y yo fuimos a la ciudad de Guatemala hoy! (My teacher and I went to Guatemala City today!) It was a good time!

We hopped on a chicken bus at el mercado en Antigua and we were in Guatemala City about an hour later. The bus dropped us off right at Miraflores, a huge, fancy mall. I felt like I was back in the States - it was just like any one of the nice malls we have back home!

We saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie in the theater! It was in 3D and Spanish. It was the first time mi maestra had seen a 3D movie, and it was fun to watch her jump from time to time. Although to be honest, I think Pirates 4 is another 3D movie in the long list of 3D movies that you don't really need to see in 3D - doesn't add much. It was in Spanish, but what I wasn't able to understand I figured out from what was going on - the fact that there was decent amount of action made that easy.

The theater also shows movies in English with Spanish subtitles, but only for certain (seemingly random) showtimes. But I wanted to see a movie in Spanish anyway.

For lunch, we had ... wait for it ... Taco Bell! Here's the crazy thing. We're in this huge mall - it's really nice and has a nice food court. Most of the restaurants in the food court were American chains - Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Burger King, Subway ... The only one that had a line (and a long line at that) was Taco Bell - and I was the only gringo in the entire mall! Turns out Guatemaltecos love Taco Bell! Who'd have thought?!

And here in Guatemala, Taco Bell serves french fries! You can get the plain or supreme. Supreme fires are topped with tomatoes, cheese, sour cream - the works. The crazy thing was the fiesta fries were good!

So having ridden on five camionetas (chicken buses) now, I've realized that it takes two people to run a chicken bus. There's the driver, of course, and then there's the hype man. The hype man hangs out of the doorway and shouts the bus' destination to all passersby. He also collects bus fares once the bus is underway. And when the bus comes to a tight corner or blind intersection, the hype man gets out and directs the driver. Quite the system.

Yesterday, I made curry for dinner! I tried to replicate the recipe Simon taught me on the Mississippi. Can't remember if we used curry powder or curry paste ... All I could find here was curry powder, so I went for it. There were no instructions on the packets, so I just kept adding curry powder till the color looked about right. It was a yellow curry with chicken, mushrooms, potatoes, carrots, snow peas, onions, basil, and coconut milk. It turned out pretty well, I think, but I under-salted it. Also, the chicken to vegetables ratio was off - needed more chicken for that many veggies!

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