all things big and small

My time here has been marked with many revelations. Revelations about life, love, happiness, God, myself. Most recently though, my Albanian story has thrown me a curveball that has affected my life in every way. It has challenged me physically, mentally, creatively, even psychologically. It challenged the way I think about the world as I know it, and really, it infuriated me there for a bit.

T-7 hours before the incident.

So I'll get right down to it. There are many ways in which I feel that my background, or really, my Americanness has failed me. The latest manifestation of this short falling happened the other day when I decided to make some Mexican enchiladas for dinner. Niku, weirdly, does not like ground beef, which is very confusing because America is essentially made of ground beef just like all but three of my favorite recipes from back home, cheesecake, banana bread, and chocolate chip cookies. Anywho, I made the sacrifice to make beef chunk enchiladas instead of ground beef enchiladas, and walked proudly into the butcher shop to make my purchase, and was met with this fated question, "sa kile?" or, "how many kilograms?".

Now I'll pause here for a second. 1 kilometer is less than a mile. It's like.... a stupid high number of milliliters to a cup. A liter is less than a gallon. When it's 37 degrees, I am reduced to a puddle of sweat, which is subsequently reduced to vapor nearly immediately. So here I am, making decisions in the butcher shop, and I remember all the times I've made conversions for various recipes or felt massive drops streaming down my back in the summer, and I proudly stated that I wanted 2 kg of meat. A statement which raised some eyebrows. Niku said, "no, 1 kg", to which I was offended that my decision was being questioned and said, "NO, 2 KG". The butcher looked at Niku and said, "she knows", then laughed as he walked into the freezer.

**see mini fridge in background**

He emerged 7 seconds later with a hunk of meat about the size of my torso. I'm thinking surely he will chop of a nice little chunk for me, but nope. He put it on the scale, then added some more, put it all in a bag, and my wide-eyed self paid 17 bucks to lug that haul home, all the while wondering where in my mini fridge I would stow it.

So what I ended up buying amounted to nearly 5 pounds of meat. The enchiladas were delightful, for the record. So was the Lomo Saltado, the second batch of enchiladas, the quesadillas, the soup, and the second batch of soup. Don't worry though, the third batch of soup is on its way.

It's funny really, considering at least once a day someone tells me I'm too skinny, I was fatter when I got here, and I should really be taking measures to get back to my chunkier self. I think I may just be on my way.

I don't have any other pictures this week, but here's the cinnamon roll recipe I translated for my friend's mom.

As an aside, I recently made homemade cinnamon rolls and was told that I should open a bakery because I could make some serious leke. Obviously that's not happening, but I appreciated the vote of confidence at any rate.

So that's the story, and I really have nothing else to offer you this week because really, honestly, that 5 pound bag of meat has consumed (and been consumed) every bit of my energy this past week. It truly has been a physical and mental feat, and my creativity in cooking has been verified in many ways. So I'll leave you with this lesson/warning, learn the metric system, or suffer the consequences.