One of the most important yet nonvital things died today. My blender (second one in 6 months…) kicked the bucket today trying to make me a cream of spinach/green bean/cracked wheat soup. See yesterday I happened to make a mixed veggie soup, with broccoli, celery, onions, and garlic, which I then decided to blend. And it was rica! A little backstory: I was in Guayaquil the other day and the store had fruits and veggies 20% off so I bought tons of veggies (celery, peppers, onions, broccoli, cucumber, spinach, etc) because I haven’t been eating very healthily lately. Ok, so anyway today I decided to do the same thing, but I wanted to make it spinach based and I threw in some beans that are getting old. So what happened? I steamed the veggies and boiled the cracked wheat in milk, let it all sit a few hours, then put the spinach with a sufficient quantity of liquid into the blender. A few seconds in I knew it was having trouble but I gave it some encouragement and thought it would pull through. Nope. I stopped the blender after a few seconds to see what the problem was and when I tried to start it again, it made no noise, no movement, absolutely no effort to convert my veggies into a delicious creamy soup. So instead I have a milky soup with clumps of spinach, floating cracked wheat, and whole green beans (I was going to cut and blend them after the spinach but with the blender broken it just seemed useless so I'm eating them whole) Though the presentation is waaay off, the flavor turned out pretty good, so looks like soup for the my next 5 meals. Just gotta watch out for the whole garlic cloves I steamed thinking theyd be blended into a pulp…

My other culinary choice today is a fruit called Pitahaya, which is yellow and looks kinda spikey, almost like cactusfruit (I think it actually is a type of cactus fruit…). Inside is a clearish jell with little black seeds. The secret about this fruit is that it is a natural laxative. I had bought one when I was living in the sierra but didn’t know what it was and didn’t eat much because the host kids poked at it until it was really gross looking. And I tried one at carnival that another volunteer brought from the amazon region. It has a delious flavor but if you’re not careful you’ll be in the bathroom the next few days. Anyway, I found it when I bought all the veggies the other day so I bought one. I cant remember how much is too much, but it was soo good I ate half of it :/ and I guess I’ll find out. I haven’t had any parasites or stomach infections for awhile, so this will be a good cleansing haha
On a side note, I went back to the school today for the first time with my host mom. 3 minutes in I remembered why I hadn’t been back to the schools. Not only is it a Friday, but I also was unaware that she is teaching the very same class I had my first school experience with. This is the class where I nearly was stabbed with a pencil and a kid was depantsed when they were under my “control”. I’m happy to say moving from the 5th to 6th grade at least a few of the kids have matured… But today I went to help my host mom make abacas with the kids. I had prepared one out of recycled materials, using Styrofoam (from my TV purchase) as the base, sticks as the poles, and 2 liter caps with holes punched in them as the ball thingies. Well only a few of the kids had brought supplies, so I came back and got the mountain of Styrofoam I had in a box to use for crafting or whatever. I got back to the school and chopped them up into pieces for the kids who didn’t have any, making a huge mess of little Styrofoam pieces, which I then cleaned up. The crafting went pretty well but the atmosphere is just too much for me. I need to find some actual regular work, but if I’m going the school route I’m going to go to the high school. I also need to continue preparing the tutoring programs that I’ve planned… ya mismo haha