Just a Day

Wasn't planning on blogging this because nothing overly interesting happened, but I figured I was due for a post and that the sum total of everything is worth talking about.

Woke up sick today. Professor told me to come in the afternoon and only if I was feeling better. I got over it pretty quickly, so decided to bike to Mercado Central and pick up some food.

Biking has been a bit of a problem here. Every helmet I've found as been either too small for me or broken, so I've been going without one for now. I can't begin to describe how scary this is for me. Actually I can: it's pretty scary. Apparently I'm the only one in the city who thinks so, that or everybody else has the same problems with finding a helmet. It's definitely changed my biking habits. Most people who've biked with me know that I'm not exactly an aggressive biker but a proactive one. Biking isn't just about getting from point A to point B; it's about experiencing the act of biking. Bad roads, horrible weather, pedestrians... they aren't obstacles, they're challenges. Not so much here. If I get within thirty feet of another person I slam the brakes and walk the bike past them. I'm not taking any risks. Paradoxically, I think the lack of a helmet makes me safer. The few times I do try tricks I quickly regret it. Then again, the bike has two speeds: slow and jammed. I can't expect miracles from it.

A friend suggested that I only lock my bike when absolutely necessary. If I can I should walk it with me. This changes how I can shop. Instead of going on weekends, I need to hit up Mercado Central off peak times to avoid crowds. I can only get as much food as can fit in a backpack (not that I need much more). I avoid the inside shops, which has impacted my shopping experience by approximately nothing. My main worry about walking my bike was that I looked like a rude American. Then I saw three other people do it. I am no longer worried.

This is the first time I've shopped without Peter, and it's been pretty liberating. For one, I have a lot more agility. We don't have to mutually agree to purchase something, which saves a lot of time and energy. It also means I can impulse buy, which I've found helps my cooking a bunch. More importantly, I've been using Peter as a crutch. His Spanish is much better than mine. Shopping without him means I have to work much harder at it. Anything that improves my Spanish is A Good Thing.

I went to a vegetable stand that we shopped at before. The people recognized me and showed it. Before they spoke fast, getting frustrated when we didn't understand, the transaction just barely squeaking through. This time they spoke slower and were much more tolerant of my fumblings. It went well and I bought a thousand pesos worth of vegetables from them. Before now Peter and I would jump from store to store, always trying to find the best deal. After twenty minutes of looking we saved 4 cents on a pound of bananas. Now I'm thinking that's the wrong way to do things. Instead we should pick a few stores we like and stick with them. Always buy fruits from the same guys. Always buy veggies from teh same girls. Establish rapport with the shopkeepers. This might be the best way to learn Santiago "from the ground up" and seriously improve my Spanish. That's worth the four cents.

Mercado Central has a thriving fish market. Everything is caught the day of, if not sooner. I picked out a primary store and bought a kilo of salmon for just under three dollars. Stuff here is about as expensive as chicken. I imagine that by the end of the summer I'll be pretty good with seafood!

I biked into work at one o'clock. It was pretty nondescript; not gonna bore anybody with the details. After I got home I started work on dinner. This is the first time I had enough food to make two dishes, so I made salmon with onions and paprika-roasted potatoes. Neither is gonna win any awards, but this is only my first time making fish and second time making potatoes. I think they turned out well for novice attempts. Fish might have been a little undercooked, though; I'll let you guys know if I get Hep A.

Whenever I move into an apartment I try to get the food engine running. If you make three meals of food then you have dinner, lunch, and another dinner. During that second dinner you cook more food, and you have lunch dinner lunch. Then you make more food... rather quickly you're making more food than you can possibly eat and you can afford to relax and/or experiment. This time it hasn't been easy. I've tried to kickstart it on a couple different occasions but it putters out way too quickly. I think it's because I'm feeding two people right now; three meals is only dinner dinner lunch. Then we're back to square one. What I might do is get a kilo of lentils and make the biggest damn pot of lentil stew anybody's ever seen, creating enough food to keep us fed for a week. Soon we're going to have four people in the apartment, hopefully one of them will cook. That'll make things a bunch easier. If not I'm going to try to wrangle grocery stipends from everybody. I cook, you pay.

My labmates told me about a protest tomorrow, possibly the largest of the year. We're going to be heading out as a group. Will hopefully have pics up of that tomorrow night. I now know what I'm getting into and will be much more cautious.