Saturday...

Today Vikki and I went out for a 'date.' There's this really cool 'pollo a la brasa' restaurant in Winchester that's run by a native Bolivian. It's the closest thing to latino rotisserie chicken that I've had since our research trip to Peru in the summer of '02. We had authentic Inca Kola, and yuca (Audriana especially liked the yuca), to go along with the chicken. Wow it's great...the only thing I didn't like was that I tried to speak Spanish to the owner and he was totally unimpressed. I mean I'm getting pretty good at speaking Spanish, and it didn't mean much to him at all. I remarked to Vikki that maybe he gets a lot of people trying to practice their Spanish on him...but I think it's more than that. Something about speaking the native language of the people in their country is impressive to the people of the country, but speaking a foreign language in your native country to others who speak the foreign language as their native language isn't. (i.e. speaking Chinese in China is adored by Chinese people, but it doesn't mean as much to speak Chinese to someone in America) It's like there's an inner circle of native speakers and you're not allowed in that circle...something like that.

Weird.

Anyway, for those of you who were wondering what yuca is, here's the definition from Wikipedia: "The cassava, casava, yuca or manioc (Manihot esculenta) is an a woody shrub of the Euphorbiaceae (spurge family) native to South America that is extensively cultivated as an annual crop in tropical and subtropical regions for its edible starchy tuberous root, a major source of carbohydrates. Indeed, cassava is the third largest source of carbohydrates for human food in the world, with Africa its largest center of production.[1]"

Audriana loved it. She's starting to pull up on furniture and other objects now. Her mother tells me that she maneuvered from her belly to sitting up on her bottom for the first time today!