tengo una vaca lechera...

It has been a fun couple of days (despite mysterious bug bites, which now seem to have subsided). I went to visit a Hacienda where Santa Ana once lived, went to the mall, and drank some mojitos. I´ve also watched a lot of soccer. Today we are getting together with our friends to celebrate the 4th of July. Heather and I thought it would be a great idea and organized it without asking our friends if they could host the event. We´re trying to make it as american as possible, which is kind of ironic, because I don´t consider nationalistic and patriotic as qualities that I have. So, tonight, at the house of Chucho we are having a cookout with hamburgers and hotdogs. When we asked about a grill, the guys told us that we didn´t need one. All we´d need would be bricks and some coals. I love mexico, very creative country. I´m very excited because we went shopping yesterday to get all the supplies we would need. On the top of the list was: yerbabuena, ron, limon (for mojitos...because every 4th of july should be celebrated with drinks from cuba) and soya (we have a lot of vegetarians, so we are going to make veggie burgers...and real burgers). There were 7 of us who went shopping last night. It was a crazy disorganized fun mess. First during the day we went to the market of San Jose to buy the fruit, veggies, and herbs. All of this we need to disinfect before we eat with cloro water (sounds good...). Later we took the bus to costco, and realized that everything was huge and in big portions, so we just bought the meat and some other necessities. Next we went to Chedraui which is like the mexican walmart. Chedraui was easier to shop in because half the group stayed outside to watch our bags and the costco stuff, while the responsible lot (ie me, roberto y chucho) shopped with more ease inside. Who knows why I was included in the responsible group, perhaps age, or perhaps because I had the list, but I´m a horrible grocery shopper, they should have known better. I got distracted by all the different brands and neat stuff they had. In the international food section, they had shelves with stuff from the US. This included Slim fast, croutons, planters nuts and some random salad dressing brand that is super expensive in the US but that I always want to buy because it looks good. Quite a combination. Anyway, for about 50 pesos per person (roughly 5 dollars) we will have our cookout. We tried quite hard to make it american, but much of our food has become mexicanized. Here are a few examples.

me: Let´s have some carrots at the cookout
heather: mmmm, with ranch, that would be great
roberto: Ok, i´ll make the carrot salad with jicama, limon and chiles.

or,
me: we definetly need baked beans
rogers: what are baked beans
me: kind of like beans in brown sugar or maple with bacon
rogers: disgusting, they don´t sell that here, we´d better buy refried beans and jalapeños instead.

these conversations were roughly translated to from spanish to english, so they may sound a bit awkward, but you understand my point. It´s a good thing I really like spicy food. On that note, I need to go start washing and cutting vegetables, and preparing for the game/ cookout. Happy fourth. To end, a new toast that heather and I created:

¨me encanta la comida, la bebida y disfrutarme en la vida. ¡salud!¨