these are the days of our lives...

"These are the days of our lives"

I don't take enough pictures.

well...i decided to take some time out of my busy schedule of cooking and watching "17 again" to bring you some pictures of food and a little story about something that happened this weekend.

Disclaimer: I’m fine. Don’t worry. I can almost laugh about it. Probably definitely laugh about it by tomorrow…

So I’m sitting in my room in my jams, minding my own business on Saturday night when i hear a noise at my window. I go to check it out...there's a car idling outside and as soon as i open my curtains it speeds off. weird but not completely out of the ordinary. so i go back to sitting at my desk (I’m watching episodes of how i met your mother on my computer and sewing my Halloween costume) and i hear another noise outside my window...so i go check it out. nothing that i can see. i mean...it is midnight and the streets are pretty quiet so it very well could have been a dog or something.

then a half-an-hour later i hear another noise and this time i am 100% sure that it was not an animal and not in my imagination because there is a little sealed note laying on my floor by the window.
this is concerning to me on several levels but I’ll just start with the most concerning- 1.) my window is about 6' off the ground (which is entirely too high for most people to reach into, we're in a mostly indigenous site, damian and i are GIANTS here). 2.) In addition to there being bars outside of my window (so that no one can break in) there is also mosquitero (screen material) that i have duct-taped around my window to make a screen. there is a small area at the bottom corner where the screen has started to roll up because the duct-tape has worn out but bugs are not swarming in through it nor would it be easy to toss something through...especially with the bars…so, more likely, a person would have to be directly outside of my window to reach in under & past the screen to drop me a note. 3) it's 12:30 am and 4) my curtains were cracked just a touch to let a breeze in and i have no idea how long a person could have been there watching me.

so i hear the noise and look over to see a note laying on my floor.
I stare at it for a while trying to rationalize all of the ways that something like that could be on my floor. maybe it was a tag of some sort that fell off of my curtain when the breeze came through...and maybe that's what the sound was?
well, i get up and walk out of my room because i'm starting to freak out and i need to regain my cool. I grab a glass of water and come back into my room, walk to the window, close and lock it and then draw my blinds completely shut and seal them that way with a claw hairclip before picking up the mysterious package.

the first and most distinct quality is that it has been entirely covered in cologne- we’re talking serious, junior-high schooler’s amount of cologne, i have it now in a ziplock bag by my door just because it is so strong. second thing i notice is that it is in fact a little package, crudely taped together with pieces of masking-tape and there is something inside it. I know before i open it that it is unmistakably a condom inside the package. I start to hyperventilate because there is no way that i can rationalize that what I was holding was a tag that could have fallen off of my curtain. I rip it open and sure enough- a condom (strawberry flavored if you're curious) and a note that says, "quieres compania esta noche? (do you want company tonight?) Call me" and a phone number.

so...in case there was any way for me to try and trick myself into believing that this package was mistakenly delivered to my window it was gone due to the fact that they wrote "call me" in English. rude.
so... i don’t know what to do. my first impulse is to throw up because i am so creeped out all of a sudden and second is to call someone. i start walking around in circles in my room to decide what i should do because my roommate is asleep and i don’t want to wake her but i have to talk to someone right now, i need to tell someone what happened so i can calm down. damian was out of town but I decided that i should call him anyways because he knows my house and our community and he'll probably tell me I’m overreacting and that it was probably just some kids messing around with me, I’ll agree, feel embarrassed but ultimately calmer and I’ll be able to go to bed.
as soon as damian picks up the phone and i try to tell him what had happened i started sobbing and asked him to please come back to site because i was really creeped out and i didn’t know what to do. (I’m such a pansy… I’m going to man-up from now on…well…I’m going to try).
The rest of the conversation went pretty much as i predicted. it ended with me agreeing that it was probably just some kids messing around, that there was no way that they could get into the house and that i should just go to bed and not let it get to me.

like i said, pretty much what i predicted. although...admittedly i was still scared despite damian's solid reasoning that there was no way anyone could get into the house so i cried and walked around my room in circles for a while longer until i was ready to go to bed.

The next morning I woke up and told my roommate about it and she told me that she was out sweeping the sidewalk in front of our house that morning and she noticed that there were cinder blocks stacked up outside of my window and she thought it was odd so she moved them. So…now I know that I’m not looking for like the one guy in town that’s tall enough to reach the window…since they were standing on cinder blocks they could be considerably shorter, that‘s like…98% of the people here. Neat.
So I’ve been pretty indiscriminately glaring at every male that greets or even looks at me on the street for the last few days… I should probably stop doing that….it’s not very friendly.

I am in much better spirits now...and I do think that it was probably some kids just messing around...looking up how to say "call me" in English etc. but if anything like that happens again I’m going to freak out...I think we can all agree that people peeking in and watching someone through a tiny crack in their curtains is cause for some discomfort.
　
I am going to try and keep my window locked and my curtains closed but it does get really hot here and I’m not about to let some little creeper juvenile delinquent with a Spanish-English dictionary take away my cool evening breezes…should they try again, there will be hell to pay.

And now…to the pictures.

So I went to the market with the intention of making some salsa to put in with my makeshift yumm bowls (I’m out of the sauce…but I’m experimenting to make a substitute…) anyways, Jalapenos were on the list. So I went to one of the vendors and asked how much their jalapenos were- 4Q a pound he says. I pick up 4 of them (a pound would be way to much for my needs) and ask him how much for only 4. 1Q each he tells me.

So I bought a pound. It was pay 4Q for 4 of them…or pay 4Q for about 25 of them. i mean, I couldn’t NOT buy a pound... my hand was forced.

It was clear as day what I had to do- I had to make some jalapeno poppers…and they were really tasty. However- should you plan to make some yourself…do wear gloves. Not wearing gloves was a HUGE mistake. I scratched my nose like 6 hours and multiple hand washes after making them and I had to soak my nose in a glass of milk until it stopped feeling like it was going to burn off my face. It was bad news.

Here’s the pics of the process.

take some jalapenos, cut off the tops, core them out, de-seed...

　

cheese mix- i did cream cheese, mozerella, a little bit of minced garlic and some cilantro...

fill the jalapenos with the cheese & put the tops back on

batter and bread them...put them in the fridge for 30 minutes.

fry and enjoy.

After I made the poppers I was not finished…I decided I should use some of the rest of the jalapenos to make some chili.
So I did…and was really…really good.

i've decided that chili never looks as good as it tastes...

a bowl of chili and some pita bread: check.

Kristin, is that a chili-dog-burger? yes, yes it is: check.

I also made some peanut butter cookies…just to take the edge off. They were okay I guess…I don’t know who ate them all but all of a sudden they were ALL GONE. It was so weird.

mmm...

　
And that’s all I have for you guys. Until next time…
Peace & Love,
Kristin