I struggled to wrap my tongue around the language. The rhythm and the unfamiliar consonants were daunting, and my roommates and I used to wander around town, muttering words to ourselves. This not only gave us practice, but was a good deterrant against thieves. Also dates.Then one day we went to the grocery store and practiced sounding out the words on all the packages. Somewhere near the checkout line, we began to wonder what we'd think if we saw a group of girls in the United States, staring at a package and muttering, "haaaaaaaaaaaaaam" or "meeeelk," which is, I'm sure, what we sounded like to the locals.
This story came back to me
Thursday when we travelled to Teochtitlan del Valle, where the women taught us how to make tortillas. Our group took several thousand pictures as we rolled the dough between our palms, flattened it in a large, green press and heated the tortillas over a wide, flat stove.The women were polite, although I imagine I'd be slightly bemused if a pack of tourists came into my home to marvel at the novelty of preparing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So here are some photos (and a video!) of the gawking masses and although I don't appear in any of them, I assure you I was gawking with the best of them.
This tortilla is about to get flattened like a pancake.
J eats a tortilla con salsa.V gets artistic with the tortilla dough.
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