The Struggle with the Stracciatella

Hey, today is a twofer. I forgot to post what I wrote yesterday, so another update today that is actually about today! Yay.

Today was yet another day at work after a lovely holiday. Yesterday evening, I got an e-mail from the boss with an assignment for the following. I actually had a task to do. I freaked out because I didn’t have the requisite software to do it on my computer at home, but when I got to work this morning I had one of the programmers fix me right up and everything was dandy.

(Uninteresting work stuff excised, including potential new friends, office gossip and fellow intern stories. Oh my gosh I just passed up an opportunity to use an Oxford comma I think I’m going to die)

Today I hung out with some Spanish people at the local church. It was a Family Night, and after a brief lesson, we played “El gato y el rato” and a game which I’m calling “Mi casa.” For the first game, we all sat in a circle. The evening’s game moderator brought out two scarves, one of which was the cat, the other the rat. Players would have to wrap the scarf around their neck and tie one knot if they were the cat, two knots if they were the rat. The scarves started next to each other, but the cat was in front. In order to “catch” the rat, the cat essentially had to lap it. Whoever was caught with both scarves had to do something funny in front of the group. We had a big group, and it was a little boring until one of the missionaries kept the rat so that the cat could catch up. The cat indeed caught up, but the rat managed to pass five or six person and it ended up catching the rat on me. However, one of the loud, little Spanish fathers had been accused of dishonest play, so he had to dance the samba instead of me.

The second game played by getting people in groups of three. Two people would stand near one another with a hand meeting above their hands. They would be the casa. Another person would stand between them, the “inquilino” or tenant. Whoever was monkey-in-the-middle would call out “derecha,” “inquiero,” “inquilino,” or “terra mundo,” and the person on the right, the left, middle, and everybody, respectively, would move. Needless to say, it was a recipe for minor mayhem. Collisions!

At the end of the evening, a friend of the Daughter (look - she's capitalized now! Must be her official name) came up to me and said "Yo creo tu no hablas espagnol." I understood that she didn't think I spoke Spanish! I said "no" to her question, and was amused that she waited until she was about to leave to make this comment. Heh - perhaps I can pass for a Spaniard? Probably not.

I had thought about including my struggle with the stracciatella ice cream today, but I think I won’t expend as much effort as I had planned into writing about it. This evening after work, I felt like some ice cream, so I took out the small tub I had purchased earlier in the week. It was frozen all over, and the ice came off in little sheets like frozen plastic. I pulled on the lid, thinking it would pop off easily like American ice cream containers, but no - this was going to be a struggle. My fingers scrabbled all over for a purchase to pry the lid apart, but my efforts were to no avail. Tips of fingers cold and slick with melting ice, I began to be desperate for my ice cream, that milky, creamy cold prize kept from my be a quarter centimeter of plastic. Oh the travesty! Then I found a small tab which broke under a little bit of pressure from me. With the tab broken, and a few more scrabbles, the lid came off easy as pie. I was actually a little disappointed at how easy it was to get my ice cream.

P.S. Sorry for any mistakes and incomplete thoughts. It's been a long day and I'm tired.