Food is where the home is

3-9-2011

My life has been so busy and that is why I haven’t blogged, sorry! I also felt bad that my last blog post was so long that everyone deserved a break! I have today to study, then Wildlife Ecology final tomorrow, then on Friday I have Wildlife Management and Environmental Policy finals. Saturday is our day off then we pack on the 13^th for Serengeti. And we are going to one of Erica’s friend’s high school graduation at Shalom Orphanage where he is throwing a fundraiser for the orphans. His name is Innocent and he is so cool. He is an artist that designs shirts and cool shoes. He has been volunteering at the orphanage for the past year and loves working with kids. On the 14^th we leave for Serengeti and return the 19^th. I will have no internet or means of communication during those five days, so no one worry if you don’t hear from me!!

For lunch we are going to this Art Gallery that has these beautiful paintings and statues for tourists (really expensive but actually unique). It also has amazing food and real ice cream! I’m splitting a pizza with Christina and strawberry ice cream. What I’m homesick the most for is real food. I want sushi and seafood a LOT for some reason, considering I really don’t eat that all the time at home. I want to go to an Italian restaurant and eat pasta and breadsticks. What I want the MOST is to go to a movie theatre, see a movie with large buttery popcorn, a huge soda and candy!! I don’t actually miss soda because our duka sells bottled sodas that are cold. So I’ve had coke and fanta, hehe. I miss chocolate a LOT, but they sell Bounty (European version of Mounds) that has chocolate and coconut so I’m happy.  I am so hungry all the time for real food. I’m well fed and I should stop complaining but I WANT to be able to eat whatever I want whenever I want. I miss that freedom. 

If I see ugali one more time I’m going to start a food fight. Ugali is this ground maize that’s white and thick and has NO flavor. Locals LOVE it! When I was at my homestay we had ugali and no silverware so we had to eat like the locals. Basically you use the ugali to pick up other food and eat it with your fingers. It is good every once in a while, but every day!!?????!!!! I’m going to hurl it at Arthur the head cook next time I see him. For Joshie’s birthday a bunch of the girls cooked a traditional southern meal with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, potato salad and sweet iced tea. It was as close to the real thing as we will get here, but it still tasted different, and it was delicious. The staff refused to eat most of it and pretty much only ate the ugali and fried chicken which they thought was good. We teased them for not trying American food when we eat their food all the time. When they saw the cake with frosting they ran away LOL I’m excited for Courtney’s birthday on the 25th, we are going to make Italian food and it’ll be our first real day in Kenya. Hehe or at least we’ll try, we don’t know how the kitchen stuff works there and it will never taste authentic.

Erica taught the staff how to make mac and cheese so that is awesome!! They don’t have cheese here. The staff thinks it’s the weirdest texture ever! We have to go to Arusha, a long drive away, to buy it and then by the time it gets here it’s pretty much all melted. But it’s delicious! They also put onions in EVERYTHING! I love their solutions to leftovers. When there are leftover pancakes from breakfast they cut it up into small pieces and put it in the spaghetti. It’s hilarious and doesn’t taste half bad either.

We all make breakfast every morning and alternate cook crews, who also have to do the dishes from the entire day at night. I’m cook crew tomorrow. We are called Iraqw after the local tribe. My cook crew is legit, we always finish breakfast ten to 20 minutes earlier than other crews and we finish dishes super fast too. Breakfast is the same thing EVERY DAY! We have toast, pancakes, scrambled eggs, oatmeal, sausage, potatoes and fruit every morning. Except NOTHING tastes the same as when we are in American. We make the toast by heavily buttering both sides of a slice of bread and then putting it on this pan to toast, most people burn it so it looks and tastes charred. The butter here I’m pretty sure is just lard and fat so it is really thick and heavy. The oatmeal is from a large packet and tastes really bland so my cook crew usually puts cinnamon and brown sugar in it to add some good flavor. The fruit is fresh every day and is always delicious, although I found a bug in the Mango the other day, icky!! To make scrambled eggs we have to crack three dozen eggs so there is enough for all the students and staff. It could be more than that, it’s a LOT of eggs regardless and takes forever. Then we put in pepper, onions, maybe even tomato and mix it all together. Then we put it on this large metal bowl on the stove and stir it until it is hard enough to eat. The pancakes are so thin they are more like crepes, and on our day off we are going to make crepes with chocolate syrup and fruit! The potatoes we peel, but the staff cooks fry those in oil. And the cooks also do the sausage. We get to chop the fruit which is fun. I now know how to cut a mango, pineapple, water melon and bananas.

As you can see I am obsessed with food. Right now I can honestly say that is what I miss the most. Sorry Patrick and family, just kidding! LOL I have not studied at all, I need to do that now before I go to lunch!

Oh, apparently I slept walk last night. I sat up in bed and was mumbling about Timbuktwo and being tired while I poked my toes. A little while later I was walking around the banda talking to myself. Erica, my banda mate, officially thinks I’m an alien; aliens are her worst fear. Courtney and her both were asking me what I was doing and why I was walking around until they realized I was sleep walking. I’m a little worried I’m going to sleep walk in Serengeti and get eaten by a lion. I told Erica, the SAM, and she said they’ll tie a bell on me LOL. I think she was kidding, I hope she was.

I am actually going to nap because my sleep walking adventures have made me exhausted. I can't wait for FOOD!!! I have two new blog posts, one posted before this, so read both!!

I probably won't blog again until after Serengeti! Miss everyone tons and tons!

-Julie