Thursday, February 27, 2014

A Taste of Colombia

I had some errands I ran on Thrusday, the 20th, which made me late for the Monash Abroad Bushfoods event. I still got to have some food, but they were all out of kangaroo, so I still haven't tried it. This will be a short post, but I have to mention my Colombian food discussion with Miguel.

I have had many cultural discussions including how to ask for Beer in at least three other languages, but I have to say my favorite one at this point in my journey was the discussion on Colombian food. I meet a Colombian during the Bushfood event named Miguel. He was wearing the Flash T-shirt much like Sheldon sometimes wears on the Big Bang Theory. And I swear he looks like a shorter version of Sheldon himself. He is studying Physics for goodness sake! He has a tattoo on his arm of Euler's Identity (e^i*pi + 1 = 0), and during Toga night I soon discovered he had a more complex tattoo of many different equations all depicted in a photo of the sun rays onto a flower or something.

Anyway, the discussion revolved around a meal that is the epitome for his region of Paisa called bandeja paisa. He tried very hard to describe what was in it and how it tasted, but we ended up having to look it up on wikipedia. I thought it was just one dish, but it's a whole entire meal! Here are the main ingredients: read beans, pork belly, white rice, ground meat, chicharon, fried egg, plantains, chorizo, arepa, hogao sause, black pudding, avocado, and lemon. When I looked up how to make it, I discovered it probably takes four hours in total to whip up each individual part of the meal. I cannot even describe the joy I have had from then on asking others what traditional food their families make.

I also was excited when watching the band teach some partners how to dance an Aussie old hoedown sort of traditional step dance.

That night I had been invited to the Nott by a few groups of people; The Nott is the local bar hang out for past and present Richardson Hall residence. I went that night after so many people asked me to come (it was positive peer pressure, though, because I wanted to go to the local bar at least once, just so I could say I went) unlike tonight. I am not going tonight because tomorrow morning I am getting up to go to Healsville Sanctuary. I have already been to two animal sanctuaries, but I thought it was such a reasonable price, and it would be another way for me to hand out with and meet the other exchange students. I probably waited 30 minutes at the bar to order one single drink. Eventually, after sitting down on a chair (not the booths, they were sticky from spills). Krishna and Evan started bromancing. Seems that when guys drink they all turn gay no matter what sexual orientation they actually are. I have some good blackmail photos of them. They probably won't see the light of day on the web; I am not that evil, but I like sharing it with the other Richo residence. Talli, Matt and I left early because we would prefer hanging out where everyone can talk and hear each other rather than at a loud music bar with drunk college students. Matt doesn't drink anyway, and both Talli and I were sober. We did get a little lost (we knew we were on campus so we weren't really that lost) walking back, and strangely enough ended up in near the Engineering faculty building, which made it easy for me to lead the rest of the way.

Some girls walking ahead of us got stopped by campus security; they were looking for McDonald's. We pointed it out, but I will never know if they found their way. It was pretty obvious to campus security, who didn't even drive by us, that while the girls (who were walking in the middle of the road) were drunk, while we were minding our own business. I hope they got home safe.

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