Food

For saying this a Third World country, they eat a lot. The only difference is, none of it is healthy. None that I have found anyway. Mostly you get a staple of rice and beans (although my family is quite american in their food choices).

The water is not drinkable although it is treated to use for bathing and brushing teeth etc. They buy drinking water a la Culligan type things. I have one to myself in my room.

There are fruit trees everywhere, mostly mangoes and bananas. There are also pineapples and limes and papyas. And yes, I know pineapples don´t grow on trees.

Mostly everything here is fried. Its quite gross actually. Butter, oil, lard and salt go into pretty much everything. The ground is still healing itself from the effects of Hurricane Mitch in 1998, sao getting good produce is hard. There is a lot of canned veggies brought in from outside countries but not much fresh and nothing frozen. I eat a lot of veggies at home so this has been trying for me. They love fried chicken here and it gets served at least twice a week. With rice and tortillas and bread. You are pretty much guaranteed to get three starches with every meal. A lot of eggs as well. It all tastes fantastic, but none of it is really healthy at all and it is doing a number on my stomach (not to mention my waistline... so much for Third World diet). I suppose you can liken it to a student diet... lots of KD and cup a noodles cuz its cheap... same concept.

Elva makes me pancakes a lot and they have maple syrup here (a lot of American products here) or I get corn flakes or oatmeal for breakfast. Lunch is usually pasta and bread with cream sauce, or chicken and rice, and dinner is usually beef or chicken and rice again. Lately she has been visitng people at night so I have been fending for myself and found some veggies for a stirfry. Oh, and she doesnt like white meat so even the chicken I get isn´t healthy. But damn, it all tastes good

The export heaps of coffee here, so they drinks buckets of it as well. Now Im not a coffee drinker but from what others have told me, its better than Tim Hortons!! They LOVE Coke here!!! They drink full fat coke like water and its hard to find diet pop... they have coke zero but its gross. They also love drink mixes like Tang and Koolaid type stuff. Of course sugar gets added to everything. I try and drink a lot of water.

So that´s all I can really think of to say about the food. Nothing weird has been offered to me nor suggested, so I guess Ive been lucky that way.
:o)