Un Tipo Diferente de Aventura / A Different Kind of Adventure

EN ESPAÑOL ABAJO...

[This is not your typical travelogue, but an important part of my story in Costa Rica. For this bilingual series, I compose the story in Spanish and then translate into English so that we can see my progress in learning the language. (By the way, I'm back home now. It was a difficult adjustment.) Disclaimer: All grammar errors in the dialogue are my responsibility.]

ENGLISH TRANSLATION FOLLOWS.

[Todos errores gramatical en el diágolo son mios.]

¿Se preguntaba sobre que pasó con Walter? Me preguntaba tambien; pensaba sobre esto mucho. 

El domingo siguiente mi tour de su campo, Zeidy y yo debíamos tener una cita en su casa. Recordé el consejo de mi amiga Kim el día antes mi viaje: “Pinta sus uñas. Quizás tú vas a conocer al amor de su vida.”

“No tengo tiempo,” he contestado. 

“Si conoces a un hombre guapo, vas a desear que había pintado sus uñas.”

Decidí que corro el riesgo.

Sixteen Tidbits About Me

My friend Melissa at Until the Jasper Walls invited her readers to share little-known facts about themselves. Let's see what I can come up with.

1) I enjoy doing laundry. Really, I do. I love creating order out of chaos, and returning every piece to its rightful place.

2) I despise mopping the floor.

3) I love making homemade cleaners from vinegar, baking soda, etc. It's a bit of an obsession.

4) I once won second place in a math team contest in junior high. But it was for calculator use, which hardly counts!

5) I still remember how to do algebra, and I love tutoring my friends and family. Let's see if I still love it when it's time to help Ethan.

6) I used to own a Chevron convenience store with my ex-husband. It was the most difficult year of my life. Being your own boss is definitely overrated.

7) By age 30, I'd held thirteen jobs! But I've been at my current job for nearly nine years.

8) I have a vague fear of swimming pool drains and those flapping filter thingys on the side of the pool. I once nearly drowned trying to avoid a filter--while I was taking swimming lessons at age 4.

9) I don't know how to dive.

10) I'm really into cloth diapers, though I didn't discover them till Allyson was nearly two. Now she only wears them at bedtime.

11) I'm not a baby person. I love my own babies, of course, but I'm not one of the girls who stand in line saying, "Let me hold the baby!"

12) I used to play the viola. I played it from fourth grade to eighth grade. Do you even know what a viola is?? It looks just like a violin, but it plays lower notes. Violas get all the boring harmony parts.

13) I know how to program in BASIC--the same language I learned in junior high. I love writing programs even more than my real job, which is training development.

14) I hated all fruit until my early thirties, when I gradually started learning to like and eventually love many different kinds of fruit. This was thanks to my mother-in-law.

15) I think I'm becoming a crappy driver. I used to be a good driver, but now I find myself making stupid mistakes. I'm too easily distracted.

16) I love breakfast. I usually fall asleep thinking about what I will eat in the morning: Banana oatmeal? Blueberry pancakes? Fiber One with pomegranate seeds? Peanut butter bagel with banana slices? Mmm!!!

Give the Boy a Whoopie Pie!

Excerpt from Ethan's journal...

Tuesday 3/20/07 (age 9):
Grandma Bushong had given us six whoopie pies, and we had three left. [A whoopie pie is two pieces of devil's food cake sandwiched together with something like Twinkie cream in the middle.] After all those sweets on our trip, I wanted to save these fattening treats for awhile, but I didn't want to let them get stale. So I wrapped them up and put them in the freezer.

A few days later, you wanted dessert one evening, and you asked if we could get out the whoopie pies. I replied that I was saving them for a special occasion. Bill snorted but said nothing.

You asked if you could eat yours and I could save mine for a special occasion. I said if you ate yours, I'd want some, and I didn't want any more sweets for awhile. You accepted defeat with a sigh and began rummaging through the freezer for an alternative. "Can I have these Girl Scout cookies?" you asked when you found the three peanut butter chocolate cookies I'd been hoarding.

"I'm saving them for a special occasion," I answered. Bill burst into laughter.

"You're never going to eat them," you complained, and Bill pointed out that they'd been in the freezer for three months now.

"Oh, I'll eat them," I argued. "You guys ate your Girl Scout cookies three months ago. Leave mine alone!"

"For Pete's sake!" exclaimed Bill. "Give the boy a whoopie pie!" I relented, and Bill cut one of the pies in half for you. You savored it after your shower, though you left two bites for me to finish. What a dilemma! I couldn't eat sweets on a Tuesday, yet I couldn't bear to throw out a perfectly good fragment of whoopie pie, either.

My phobia of food wasting won out over my phobia of fat grams. I ate the rest of the pie, and oh my, was it good!