Prepping for a Feast

On Thursday, we had another English class at Filiberto’s. We played a game for the first part and in honor of Oriana’s birthday, we learned the months of the year—and they already know numbers, so we learned how to tell folks when their birthdays are.

Per our arrangement with Daniel’s family, right after class, we went over to his house to begin preparing everything for the dinner on Friday. We paid for all the ingredients to cook the dinner. We were making “estufado.” Estufado is a beef stew—the meat cooks for 24 hours, not unlike cholent. Along with the estufado, we made rice and a salad—which is more like potato salad. The two younger boys, Guillermo and Byron, had a field day taking pictures and documenting the evening.

We cut up a variety of veggies, potatoes, and Maria, Daniel’s wife, cut the meat for the stew. We had a ball cooking there. We took turns crying when we chopped onions—we chopped lots of them. Daniel has nine children, five girls and four boys. Most of his girls have been coming to play soccer with us and Byron, Guillermo, and Delia have been coming to our English classes.

After Maria felt like we had prepared as much as necessary for Friday’s party, they invited us to eat dinner with their family. They ate black beans, cheese, and tortillas, or other bread and coffee. I love coffee with dinner, but the caffeine doesn’t do me any favors at that hour. Also, just as an aside, the cheese in Guatemala leaves something to be desired. We haven’t eaten a whole lot of it, but what we have eaten hasn’t been fantastic. That said, the cheese we ate at Daniel’s was good. Maybe we just aren’t buying the right type of cheese.

With eleven people, plus the two of us, you’d think there would be conversation at dinner—nope. There was a good 10 minutes of silence while people ate. It was a little awkward—and eventually I said I thought we needed a joke or two. That at least broke the silence—then folks started talking, laughing, and dinner felt like it should in a big family.

Everyone in Daniel’s family was falling asleep at the table and so Oriana and I excused ourselves, thanked our hosts and went back home.

We were scheduled to start preparations again at Friday at 2 PM.