Los Panuchos

Every day in culture class we learn the history of some aspect of Mexican/Mayan culture and have a hands-on type activity. Today, we learned the history of Panuchos, a traditional Yucatan dish, and also got to make them. Panuchos are corn tortillas that have beans inside, are then fried and topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, avocado, meat (usually chicken or turkey) and a slice of hard boiled egg. Traditionally, they were only the tortilla and beans topped with vegetables, but have now grown to include meat and egg. Me being the trouble maker I am, ate the TRADITIONAL version :-P I also had these about a week ago when we all went out to eat at a restaurant for lunch. So far, I have to say they are one of my favorite dishes here! Next to just about everything my host mother has made, although for the life of me I can't remember the names.

Also today, was our Spanish Grammar midterm. It really is kinda scary that we are already having a midterm, but in a way, cool as well. I can see how far I have come in such little time - I am now pretty confident with the preterite (past) tense and am alot more so with the imperfect and future. I have a very good teacher, Adrian, and although I am the only student in my class (I'm also with the Dawleys, and two other adults), he does a very good job at making sure we all understand and gives us practical ways to apply what we learn. Yesterday we spent a good chunk of class learning idioms/sayings and how they translate over into Spanish. We all had to think up commonly used expressions in English, and then he would help us translate them over into Spanish. It was interesting trying to explain the concept of a Catch-22, "A watched pot never boils" and "Don't count all your chickens before they hatch". It was quite fun the see how a two word idiomatic saying could get translated into an entire sentence. Want to learn how to say those in Spanish??
Catch-22 - "Hagas lo que hagas el problema ya no se resolvio"
A watched pot never boils - "El que espera, desespera"
Don't count your chickens before they hatch - "No te adelantes a los hechos"

And my personal favorite image created, was for one that Ellen thought up - It takes two to tango
"Tanto peca el que mata a la vaca como el que le agarra la pata"
    Translated literally, it says"The one who kills the cow sins as much as the one that holds its leg"
    Meaning: That it takes two people to kill a cow - one to hold it ("it's leg") and another to actually do the killing

Yesterday we went to CICY, the Botanical Gardens and research center in the North of the city. We went around and between getting eaten alive by bugs, identified many of the plant families on our taxonomy that we have to know for a quiz tomorrow. Besides being ravaged by insects, it was really interesting to be able to see many of the species up close, instead of only in a picture. (If all else fails, call it a palm :-P)

It's so weird to think that everyone will be going back to school on Sunday, and that at the end of that week, we'll have our Spanish finals and then it's into Tropical Bio and the Mayan course. Insanity. We were also all talking about scheduling today, and that we will have to do it while we are here, so to start thinking about what we are all going to want to take. Then it finally hit me that after this trip, I will officially be a junior and my college career will be halfway over ....... AAAAAAH. Oh well, still have about 2 and a half more months to worry about that :-p