A Day's Meal

Each morning I wake up to a latte and bread for breakfast. Sometimes I have had fruit, such as papaya, banana, or mandarins. Typically, there is marmalade served with bread, but I brought my host family some Ohio maple syrup (made locally in Medina), so we have been eating that with the bread in the mornings. Maple syrup is actually a local product to the temperate forest so many other places in the world do not have it. My madre here always tells me how much she likes it. She says, "Muy rico! Me Encanta!" :) I thought it was pretty funny that she simply ate it with bread rather than pancakes, french toast, or waffles, but I have grown to really like it with my morning bread!

At school, we have class from 8-10 am, and then take a half hour snack break. We always have our choice of tea, coffee, or hot chocolate, and fruit, bread, or crackers served with some type of jam. After our snack, we return to class until noon and then I usually go home for lunch.

Lunch at my house is vegetarian for me. Erika and Cristobal come home from school and work to eat. Sometimes my mom is home from work as well, but she is a massage therapist and travels to people's houses, so her presence depends on her day. Lunch is the largest meal of the day, and it is very common for the whole family to be at home to eat lunch.

My favorite meal includes avocado, scrambled eggs, red peppers, sliced cucumber, rice (of course), and a grilled plantain (YUM!). We also always have fresh juice with our meals, Rosa makes it in the blender herself! After the main dish we always have soup at my house. Mote is a popcorn-like grain that we often eat in our soup, or other times we actually put popcorn in our soup (which is something I will bring back to Ohio)! My favorite soup, and a very common soup in Ecuador, is a potato soup. My mom told me that she spent a year studying in Atlanta when she was young and the one thing she could not wait to get back to Ecuador for was the soup, or "La sopa"!

I have also eaten in a vegetarian restaurant near by my school a few times; each time I have tried a different dish, but they always cost about $1.80. For this price I am served a freshly squeezed juice, and plate piled with veggies and rice, literally too much food for me to finish. Price of eating out in Ecuador is one thing that I really appreciate! For $5 you can get a three course meal just about anywhere! Adjusting to $5 as a minimal price for food will be a little sad for me when I return to America.