(I apologize for being MIA the past few weeks. It has been a hectic month. However, I have a feeling that soon enough I will have a set schedule in which I will make sure that I attend to this blog at least once every 2 days. As long as I have something to say. As I continue to reiterate, I miss you all…sometimes a little too much. I hope to hear and see that everyone is doing fabulously, as always.)
Two wonderful things occurred this week. One, something that I have been itching to accomplish my entire life. The second, slightly more materialistic, yet something that will benefit myself and the people that I love back home. Yes, that includes you.
I will begin with the former. All my life I have been fascinated with my grandmother’s ability to make the best jam/marmalade in the entire world. Seriously. When I was a child, obviously I did not truly care about how it was made only about how it tasted and how much more my mother would allow me to have (thank you Mom for not letting me eat as much as I would have liked! *knock on wood* I still do not have a cavity). As I grew up a little, I was captivated by the simplicity of the process—tomatoes and sugar/Chukel. Maybe I did not understand the actual procedure, as I have recently found out it is a lot more complicated than just tomatoes and sugar, but it seemed like something I could do. One of my goals in life, after the age of about 12, was to make my grandmother’s tomato jam all by myself.
I turn to my grandmother yesterday, as I was drinking some yerba mate, and I ask her if tomatoes were inexpensive right at that moment (it changes every day here). We are definitely related as she replies with, “You know, I was thinking we should make dulce de tomate today!” Perfect. After purchasing 6 kg of tomatoes, I begin with the course of action—place the tomatoes in hot water, peel the tomatoes, take out the juice and the seeds, cut the tomatoes up, take out more juice, place the tomatoes into another pot, add sugar, let sit. The whole procedure consumed a good portion of the day—about 3 hours. But, I did it all by myself! Now, as I am typing this up, I am cooking the mix of yumminess in order for it to become pure “dulce de tomate” (tomato jam).
The latter is something that is materialistic, I admit. But, is something that for the reasons I care for are slightly more altruistic…in a selfish-sort-of-way. Before today, I was using a pre-paid SIM card in my BlackBerry so I could call and text. Most people in Mendoza have phones, but they pay as they go. Whenever they run out of credit, if they can afford it, they go to a kiosk/mini-mart/ice cream place to set more credit on their phones. The process is actually very expensive, as you are in fact paying more than double per minute for phone calls and 6 cents more than double for texting when you have the pre-paid card. The only advantage is that you pay a small amount as you go.
I went to my friends at Movistar the other day (not worrying about a line since I have been there so many times with problems they know me well enough to give me a half-kiss on the cheek) to talk about the possibility of a plan. Essentially, I will be paying probably half per month of what I paid recently and actually pay per minute and per text less than half of what I had been paying previously. In addition to that, I get 2 free numbers. Since most of my calls/texts are to two people, there we go. I can add more credit if needed and still pay the same rate. I can read the New York Times every day. And, drum-roll please, I finally have consistent INTERNET! What that means is that I can BBM, I can email, I can receive TEXT MESSAGES with my Google Voice phone number (send me an email if you would like the number) and send text messages back in REAL TIME to anyone back in the States! So, now, you have an absolute right to be mad at me if I am MIA.
<3 you all.
K bye.
No comments:
Post a Comment