Hungry.

M and I have only been in country (see how I’m picking up the lingo) since October, but we’ve already had the opportunity to get to know some about Honduran cuisine. In fact, my first day at work I ate what could be considered the national street food, the baleada. Baleada is a tortilla filled with beans and cheese and usually bits of scrambled egg (although different varieties are sold).   The name also translates to English as “shot,” with two competing folk stories as to the origin of the name. The first, that the little beans look like bullets that are shot into the tortilla, the second being that the street vendor who made the baleadas famous was shot in the leg while selling them. You can choose what folk tale you’d like to accompany your breakfast.

Anafre, another famous dish, is a mixture of cheese, beans and chorizo. The mixture is heated in a clay pot with a heating element underneath to ensure you have maximum melt-y cheese and hot beans at all times. You usually eat it with fried tortilla strips or fresh corn tortillas.

Anafre with beans, cheese and chorizo.

Typical plate with beans, cheese, salsa, chorizo, steak, rice and avocado.

Plato típico is a dish that you can order at most traditional Honduran restaurants. Roughly translating to “traditional” or “typical” plate, it is a dish that usually comes with a grilled meat, rice, beans, some type of fresh salad, and avocado.

Another typical food you can find at most restaurants, even the ones that don’t specialize in Honduran food, are juegos o bebidas naturales (natural fruit juices). Some of the most popular are piña (pineapple), fresa (strawberry), limonada o limón (lime or lemonade), and maracuyá (passionfruit – more on this particular delicacy later). Almost all restaurants make their juices with a blend of filtered water, fruit juice and sugar (sometimes), so they are safe to drink for gringo and gringa stomachs.

Sandía (watermelon) juice.

Soups are very central to Honduran cuisine. So far I’ve eaten chicken soup, beef soup, tortilla soup, a cheese and corn dumpling soup, seafood soup, and the crème de la crème of Honduran soups, sopa de caracol.  I have yet to try the legendary mondongo soup (intestine soup).

Cheese and corn dumpling soup.

But the best soup of them all is sopa de caracol, a conch soup made with yucca, cilantro, conch, coconut milk, green plantains and spices that taste a bit like a mild West Indian curry. Looks like I’ve found a favorite lunch for the next two years!

Conch soup!

The very large tree at issue.

Over a recent vacation to visit family, I showed my Mom a picture of our yard. She looked at the picture casually and said “Wow, you guys are going to have a lot of mangoes.” I responded with confusion and she gestured at the picture.

“That tree, the big one, is a mango tree.”

Because she is my mother, I refused to believe her.

Fast forward to this week, when I finally broke down and realized that our garden was too much for my limited time and even more limited gardening skills. So, I hired a gardener. He was a charming older man, who it turns out, worked as the gardener for a previous tenant, and was now happy to restore our garden to its former glory.  Walking around the yard, he commented on various plants, what to add, what to take out, how much sun, how much shade. He stopped and stood by the huge tree, considering it.

“Mucho mango,” he said, pointing up at the tree.

Good eye, Mom.

The infamous Swisher Sweets of my youth. Available in any and all gas stations in the U.S.

When I turned 18, I smoked my first cigar. (I’m sorry, Mom!) I vaguely remember going to a gas station somewhere, proudly showing my ID, and buying a cigar in a shiny red and white package. I remember much more clearly smoking that cigar. For lack of a better description, it was awful. The wrapper tasted oddly of sugar and the filler had not-too-subtle notes of tar, gasoline and black lung. I choked back the bile and sadly realized that yet another previously forbidden marker of adulthood was a disappointment.

As this was my first introduction to cigars, I understandably avoided them religiously for the next ten or so years. But after our first weeks in Tegucigalpa, we heard that a small group was going to visit a local cigar factory. We didn’t have our vehicle yet (it was somewhere in the purgatory of customs clearance), so any excursion was a welcome one. Honduras is known for fine cigars, and this would be an opportunity to learn more about them, and decide after all these years if cigars do have any redeeming value.

Much like a vineyard, both the Swisher Sweets grade cigars (awful) and the Rocky Patel Decade (apparently delicious) come from the same factory. The lower quality tobacco is simply used to make the Swisher Sweets, while the fine cigars are made with higher-quality tobacco, and a more refined manufacturing process.

A few observations about the factory. Yes, it did feel very strange to be in a room with hundreds of people rolling cigars. Also, all of the boss men and women, the overseers on the floor, were smoking cigars. This did make them look tougher, and gave everything a kind of colonial air. The workers did not each have their own cigars, but would sometimes share a cigar among a couple of rollers. There wasn’t any smoking in the drying, sorting or premium rolling rooms. The whole factory smelled very strongly of ammonia (and cigar smoke, obviously), and although it wasn’t unpleasant, you didn’t notice how oppressive it was until you got outside in the fresh air.

Sorting the leaves.

Also sorting, I think?

Rinsing the leaves? Also, this guy makes the cigar process look 100% more authentic with that hat.

Tobacco leaves.

Packaging the Swisher Sweets.

This machine tests the airflow through the cigars. After each cigar is rolled it is quality tested.

The premium room. Women were the rollers here because they are said to have a more delicate touch.

Another view of the premium room. I didn't capture it in this picture, sadly, but all of the women were wearing sky-high heels.

Butts!

Rolling room.

Side view of the rolling room.

An option of our tour was to have a set of custom-rolled cigars made for us. After coffee, our guide conferred briefly with the floor supervisors (all three smoking cigars, of course), and they laid out a variety of choices.

M ponders the selection. Our guide is the lady in pink.

We had to choose our filler, binder and wrapper.

I had no idea what I was doing, so I had one of the supervisors help me choose. Remembering my first experience, I just kept saying “suave, suave” (smooth), and although I have yet to smoke one, M reports that with some bourbon, they aren’t bad. (I know, he’s really taking up the expat lifestyle.)

Watching the custom-blend cigar rolling.

Home sweet home.

First, an apology. At some point in the late spring/early summer of last year, I stopped blogging. I had a lot of excuses for why I shouldn’t blog: I was in language classes, there were no new adventures, I had nothing to write about, I was tired of blogging, we had so much to do to get ready to go abroad, wah wah et al, ad nauseum.

The reality was, I didn’t want to sit down and think about why I was now uncomfortable with blogging. This blog was originally a travel journal, and although the inherently public nature of the internet made it viewable by anyone, my readers were friends, family, and the occasional traveler who was headed to some of the sites that M and I had just visited.

Then I got a new job. A job that involves, at its essence, representing the United States government abroad. My blog was linked to, and I got new readers, and these readers weren’t just friends and family, they were co-workers, and people who were now curious about my choice of profession and wanted to learn more about it.

So I got a little bit of stage fright, and I stopped blogging. I considered make the blog password protected, and giving the password out to family and close friends – taking the blog back to what it was before. But, you see, I’ve benefited immensely from internet crowd-sourcing in the past. I’ve used food blogs for recipes, travel blogs for itineraries, and even blogs from my colleagues when I was still waiting to hear if I would get the job or not. So locking up my blog seemed to go against the whole spirit of the blogging enterprise. I could delete it, but I knew that without the blog around, I wouldn’t be able to share M and I’s travels the same way – not with my friends, my family, nor even with my colleagues who I now consider friends.

I did the mature thing, and postponed the decision. Suddenly, it was half a year later, and I was talking to my mother on the phone. I was trying to describe for her the view from our house in Tegucigalpa, that right next to an aging Coca-Cola sign, there is a giant statue of Jesus with his arms outstretched, and how those two images together say a lot about Honduras, and Central America, and the whole tangled experience of commerce and conquest.

There was static on the line, and I could tell that I wasn’t describing it accurately, and I was suddenly very sad that I was living far away from friends and family and not sharing the experience with them because of my self-indulgent stage fright.

After that, it was an easy decision to restart the blog, with a few caveats:

• I’m not going to talk about my job in anything but the most general terms. I’m mainly doing that because, to be honest, I spend more time working, dealing with work, thinking about work, talking about work than anything else. When you are living abroad because of your job, and in government provided housing, you live your job all day, every day, even when you aren’t on the clock. Writing about this experience outside of the lens of work will make it more enjoyable (and less boring!) for me as a writer, and hopefully to you, my readers.

• Also, I don’t want my opinion to ever be confused with the “official” opinion of my government. While I have opinions (and do I!) I’d never presume to speak for anyone but myself (and M, when I’d like to irritate him). That’s a tricky line to walk, but I hope to do it by remaining true to the blog’s original intention: travel, adventures, and food.  That isn’t to say that I won’t mention local politics or events from time to time, because they do impact our daily life and how we experience the country. Just know that Uncle Sam didn’t clear my opinion, and I am not speaking on his behalf.

And that’s that! More adventures to come, and a regular updating schedule, so stay tuned!

A very classy class.

On Saturday, M and I had the pleasure of taking a protocol class. This was an optional class, not a formal part of my training, and something, I should add, that M signed us up for. Yes, the same M who believes that finger foods are the best kind of foods and meals taste most flavorful when consumed in close proximity to the keyboard.

The course covered both protocol and etiquette – that is, the rules of diplomatic rank and the niceties of diplomatic society. Of course, because I am a nerd, I kept thinking of C-3PO the protocol droid (that’s Star Wars to you non-nerds). And because I am a sentimentalist, I entertained a few fond memories of my Nonna. My Nonna had the most complete set of formal dinnerware of anyone I have every known (or probably will know), and I still remember her serving me tea from a silver tea set and showing me a series of tiny forks – some for desserts, and some for pickles. I’ll repeat that. A whole fork just for pickles! This was a lot of excitement for an eight-year-old.

Intimidating.

So here, for your amusement are a few “Etiquette-Related Things That We Learned” -

1.) Do not mix the Continental and American styles of eating utensil etiquette!

2.) If your host is eating Continental style, eat Continental style. If they are eating American style, eat American style. But only do this if you can execute both flawlessly.* (Our teacher’s words.)

3.) There exists a special knife for eating fish. This was news to me.

4.) My mother’s childhood rhyme about eating soup: “When the ship goes out to sea/It sails away from me” turns out to be correct.

5.) Except in some parts of China where you can slurp your soup and noodles. (M agrees with this philosophy.)

6.) Bet you thought that little wooden cup  in the picture above was for eating soft-boiled eggs. Nope, nice try! We learned that it a special cup just for eating kiwis.

7.) Americans and Europeans have different sized dinner napkins.

8.) Ladies enter their chair to their left and exit to their right.

9.) For toasting, the host first toasts the guest of honor. Then everyone drinks except for the guest of honor. Then the guest of honor toasts the host. Then everyone drinks but the host. This is an easy rule to remember. If you aren’t so important that you are receiving/giving a toast – drink!

10) At some point, you may have to eat boiled eyeball at a formal dinner. Eat the eyeball.  (True story from our etiquette instructor. She ate it. No word on if she used the Continental or American style.)

*M did demonstrate a flawless Continental eating style in front of the class.

M is going to eat so much coconut.

Flag Day is a long-standing tradition in the foreign service, where entry-level officers receive the flags of their first posting.

In front of everyone. In random order.

You can see how this combines three of my most deadly fears of 1) crowds, 2) ceremony, and  3) surprise. Three things I’m going to definitely need to adjust to with my new profession.

I was the third-to-last person out of our class of 89,  and by that point, I only knew that most of my high bids had been carried away by excited classmates and I had no idea what was left. Absolutely no idea. You see, M and I had rather a “shotgun” approach to the bidding process, choosing to bid high on places all over the world. M and I had made high bids on posts that either fit my background or would give me a new language (I’ll get to you someday, French and Russian!), then we added some extra highs that just fit “really cool places we wouldn’t mind living.” All of the first group were gone, but there was one last little country that fit the “really cool places” category.

So with my usual I’m-in-front-of-crowd-tomato-red-face I received the flag of Honduras. We leave in October after six more months of training, and then the real adventure begins!

A exploring D.C.

We did end up making it here (to D.C.) last week, safe and sound. Amazingly, A survived the trip which is something that he’s going to probably have to do on a regular basis as we travel more frequently. Below, you can see some photo proof of that survival, as he and I wait in the rental car parking lot. The strange thing about traveling with a dog is that it seems to not only lower your own I.Q., (seriously, I have never worried about another living thing’s digestive system so much) but the I.Q. of everyone around you. Strangers will squeal nonsense at your dog, and especially strange strangers (read: jerks) will stomp their feet and yell “Boo!” at your dog. Children who should know better than to approach a unfamiliar creature with sharp teeth will yell “Doggy” and fling themselves in your general direction. There is just something about a fuzzy animal that makes everyone a little dumber.

Those stickers do say "Live Animals." The airport guy kept laughing at this and checking to see if the dog was in fact, alive. Ha, ha, buddy.

In non-dog centered news, I’ve spent the last week in my first week of training for my new job. It was…interesting. As Diplomatic Security has managed to scare the stuffing out of me, that’s all you’ll get.  It goes on for another five weeks, and will probably continue to be interesting, and I will continue to be properly intimidated.

Today we managed to walk around some of the sites of D.C. right before we got hailed on. This made A very unhappy – he’s a California native who doesn’t understand that we live in a cold, cruel world where chunks of ice fall from the sky. Hopefully, as the weather improves, we’ll make it out again. I know that we’ll soon be venturing out soon to go to the Air and Space Museum, and make one giant nerd (if you guessed M, you guessed correctly) happy.

Hail?!?

Washington Monument pre hailstorm.

He's a lot higher on the org chart than me.

In a hilarious (to us) postscript, who should we see when heading towards downtown than our old friend, Simon Bolivar. That’s right, El Libertador had followed us. All we need to see is the “November 3″ bus (all the streets, roads, and bus companies were named after Ecuadorian revolutionary dates) and we’d feel right at home.

We can't escape.

A sample from Tumblr of what you're missing.

This is just a friendly reminder about our Tumblr for friends and family who follow the blog and wonder “why isn’t she blogging as often?” I will, I promise, but as much of what I’m learning now is job-related, and therefore uninteresting to both you, the reader, and me, the writer (I’m joking! Really!).  So keep in mind that  you can always head over to our Tumblr to see photos of what we’re up to and a ridiculous number of pictures of A being ridiculously cute.

And, yes, all the pictures on the Tumblr are shot using the Hipstamatic. And yes, my little brother informed me that the Hipstamatic is so 2009/2010. Being only about one year off in coolness is pretty good for me, so I’m still gonna use it.

Our third traveler.

Wanted to write a quick update to say a few things. First, we’ve gotten ourselves a third traveler! Our dog, henceforth known to the internet as “A” (gotta keep this Russian novel style initial-thing going) is a year and a half old poodle mix. Between the hours of 6:30 and 7:00 am, he’s probably my least favorite creature in existence, but the rest of the day he’s pretty great. Second, I started a Tumblr, and registered a Twitter, the former, because it is a good way to do picture updates without all this annoying text business, and the latter because I figured it was about time. Although I have yet to post anything, but that’s another problem.

Third, and most importantly, I’ve recently accepted a job that will involve a lot more travel. I don’t plan to write much about the job on here, suffice to say that I will be employed by the State Department in the United States Foreign Service, and can pretty much go anywhere and everywhere. I know, I know, fancy!

I’m relocating to Washington, D.C. (with M and A of course) at the end of March to begin training, and will start updating the blog regularly then.  And yes, I’m pretty damn excited.

Where we ended up. Pacifica, CA.

I realized yesterday after getting a nice comment from my uncle (Hi Tio Geraldo!) that I’ve been putting off writing this post, in the way that I used to put off writing book reports back in grade school.

It wasn’t because I didn’t have anything to say, or that I didn’t want to sit down at the computer to type it all out for the amusement of friends and family – it was, because simply, I didn’t want our travels, or this blog, to be over.

So I’ve decided not to stop. Of course, we don’t go on international excursions every day, but I’m going to keep this blog online, and hopefully update it the next time an international excursion occurs. We’re hoping to do a trip to Asia sometime this year: we’ve been to Vietnam/Cambodia/China, but would love to visit Japan and Korea should finances allow.

But back to this particular trip on this particular blog. I’ve really, really enjoyed having a reason to write for an actual real, live audience a couple of times a week. I’ve loved taking the pictures, or having a funny exchange with M, or watching something funny unfold and think how I would make it into a little narrative.

Most of all, of course, I’ve loved traveling. Even watching the news about Egypt this week – and now is clearly not the time to visit – I thought to myself, “Egypt. Damn. That would be a cool trip.” I don’t know if I can adequately express in words how traveling makes the world seem to me, how interesting and alive and stunning different each and every place that I’ve had the privilege to visit has been. It makes you filled with hope, somehow, that despite poverty and conflict, language and cultural barriers, that the big wide world is interesting and beautiful and filled with a lot of good people.

Of course, there were things I didn’t like about traveling: the constant stomach ailments, the uncertainty of the next place I was going to sleep, the non-stop hawking and street salesmanship, the requirement that I explain (and was expected to justify) a hundred-odd years of United States/Latin American power dynamics. Oh, and the fact that everything was happening in another language made even simple things very complicated. (Try buying a new computer power adapter or explaining the technical difficulties you are having with your internet connection. I learned some new verbs for sure.) There were even things I didn’t like about the countries we visited.

But visiting another country is like showing up uninvited to someone else’s home. Sure, you might not have chosen that rug and they didn’t have any cold beer in the fridge, but it was certainly nice of them to let you in, talk to you about politics and serve you some delicious beans and rice. I can honestly say that everywhere we went – from Patagonia to the Amazon to the Caribbean – we were treated with such friendliness and just genuine niceness. (You are traveling for how long? You are from Sweden, right? No, America! California! What do you think about President Obama? I have a sister/brother/cousin in California! You should definitely try the grilled lamb/fried rice/cow stomach.)

It was almost enough to make me feel all warm and fuzzy about the whole human race.

And on that note, I’m signing off (temporarily) until the next adventure comes along, and my mother has yet another reason to check in and make sure that I’ve caught that flight, survived that coup, and made it to the next destination.

Ecuadorian roses for sale: what I saw our first night back in California. I miss you, Ecuador!

For People Who End Up Reading This Website Who are Not My Mother

Welcome! I hope that however you found your way to our small corner of the internet you enjoy your stay here. If you are planning a trip to South America and have questions (I’m really no expert, but I have some experience on my side) or you’d like to offer me a sweet book deal that involves me backpacking and eating crazy food in Japan/Algeria/Finland/anywhere feel free to e-mail me at wearealivemom (at) gmail (dot) com.