In With the Tias

or "Pancakes are Forgiving"

12:28 PM

I think I'll wind up posting two entries today, so watch the time stamps vs how I note the time.  Today has been full already (yesterday was very full, too), and it's only 12:30.  I didn't finish a sermon yesterday (or start one) but I did a lot.  This morning has been great, though.  The clouds of ominous are gone and the wind has died down.  Today might be a day of laying out and reading in the sun...or just taking a walk in the sun.

We had the best breakfast we've had yet.  It was so, so, so good.  We had two slices of French toast with cinnamon on them, and those were fine.  That wasn't what was so amazing, though.  We had a fresh fruit salad of fruits from around here: papaya, apples, pear?, melon?, and maybe some pineapple.  On top of it was an amazing cantaloupe yogurt thing.  That's what I think it was, anyway.  In addition to the fruit salad of awesome we had perfectly ripened bananas.  They were soft and the epitome of banana taste.  Not like bananas that are practically green and crunchy and taste like cardboard.  No, these were outstanding.

We volunteered to wash dishes this morning, and I think that's what got us in with the tias.  They are the women who look after the boys (Tia Isabel) and cook and clean in the kitchen.  We've washed dishes before a few times, and today we learned a lesson.  We've been doing the order wrong, but Carolina gave us tips on how to do it correctly for next time.  Saturday is great scrub/cleaning day.  All of the chairs and tables aren't just wiped but are scrubbed.  The windows are cleaned (with a soapy broom and then splashed with water to rinse).  The floor looked like Chick-fil-A when I used to have to clean it, especially after Sonia dumped the scrub bucket on the floor.

Since there was so much going on, we asked if there was something we could do and the tia in charge of cooking pointed me to a giant (more than five gallons) bucket of mixture and told me to stir.  I mixed the stuff together and then she poured in what was easily a pound and a half of melted butter.  It was pancake mix!  I thought that I was just mixing, but no, we were making pancakes together.  She got me a spatula and asked me to reach down the half-gallon jug.  She spooned some mix into it and then poured. And off we went.

We didn't talk much, but I'll work on that.  I was scared that we'd get into a conversation and I wouldn't know what else to say.  She laughed with me when I made mistakes and had a lot of grace about some of my uglier pancakes.  That helped me have grace with myself about them.  And they're pretty forgiving; if you don't completely flip one, just smash it down flat anyway.  When we eat I'm going to tell Stefanie and Dori that if they get an ugly one I probably made it.  Toward the end of our time I folded one completely in half.  She laughed (as I laughed and apologized) and said that it was a quesadilla.  That made me smile.

Before breakfast we did 8 Minute Abs but didn't run.  Since the clouds and wind have broken we were able to say Morning Prayer on the roof (beside the clothes line, no less!)  I think my stuff is probably totally dry now that the sun has been out, so when I write part two I'll go get it.