Friends! Bowling! Food! Fire!

Last Thursday night while facebook stalking, I realized that somebody was passing through my town. And that somebody was...

Amber!!

Amber and I were in Phi Lamb together at A&M (and IMPACT, too) and I hadn't seen her in a year and a half. She didn't even realize I was living here, so she had already been here 2 or 3 days when I found out she was in town. Luckily, she had a phone so we were able to coordinate and get together for a few hours Friday afternoon. What a happy surprise!

Then on Saturday night, my home group from church went bowling.


I started the night off with a strike! I was hoping that was a good sign, but alas, my luck slowly ran out from there. I LOVE bowling, but I'm really hard on myself because I took a class at A&M and therefore should theoretically be a super bowler. Sadly, however, I am not. I'm pretty good at knocking down 9 pins but I can just never seem to get all 10! Despite my sad score I still had a great time.

Then my friend Damaris invited me to her parent's house for Sunday lunch.


We had a dish called "Cocido" which basically means "cooked." It's a traditional dish all over the country, but each region has it's own special way of doing it. At her parents house, we started with a soup with a thick broth and noodles. Here I am with my soup:


Then you have a selection of other ingredients, that you can either add to the soup to make a stew, or eat separately. Like this cabbage:



I chose to eat mine all together, like a stew on steroids:



My plate included cabbage with fried garlic, garbanzo beans, chicken, a pig's ear, some other kind of meat (it was good, whatever it was), and chorizo.

Chorizo is one of my favorite things ever. Too bad it makes you fat (everything good does).


The pig's ear, however, was not my favorite. It didn't taste bad, but in general I don't like eating stuff that has skin on it. Even chicken, unless that fatty chicken skin is super crispy, I don't care for it. And well, pigskin is no better. The meat was fine, but the skin...was kinda like a chewy, tasty football. But hey, at least now I know!

Then on the way home from church that night I hopped on the metro only to smell something like burning rubber. At first it was just a smell, but soon the car began to fill up with smoke. We all got off and saw that the smoke was coming from underneath where we had been sitting. The driver ordered everybody off and soon somebody had a fire extinguisher and put out the flames. I walked a little ways off from the scene and took a picture after the fact:


It may look like any normal metro station, but what you can't see in this picture is the smoke. There was a lot of it, but because it was a few cars down the platform (I didn't want to take a picture right where it happened - what if it blew up or something?) and a bit had cleared by the time I got my camera out, you can't see just how dramatic the scene was. But use your imagination. There was a lot of smoke.

In case you're wondering (and I'm sure my mom is), I did NOT get back on the metro that night. I walked the 25ish minutes home from there in the cold, dark night. :)

In other news, I ate a pomegranate today and got juice all over my shirt. I have a feeling this shirt will never be the same colo(u)r again.