So Chile is obsessed with soda crackers. I sincerely don’t get it, but they’re like the dessert or snack after almost every meal. Don’t get me wrong, a soda cracker with some honey or jam on top is pretty delicious, but it isn’t just a tasty (fairly) healthy snack here, it’s an obsession. And there are quality soda crackers and low calorie ones and gross ones, but I couldn’t honestly say they taste any different. Clearly my palate is not sophisticated enough to appreciate the delicacies of the soda cracker. So I suppose my question is, is this just a Chilean phenomenon, or are other countries, particularly in Latin America, equally enthralled with the soda cracker? Addy, do they obsess about this tasteless treat in Ecuador?
Right now is the beginning of the grape harvests in the wine vineyards, so there are wine festivals (vendimias) in a lot of the small vineyard towns hereabouts for the next few weekends. Apparently a vendimia is the Chilean equivalent of a county fair but with wine and perhaps cheese instead of cattle and pigs. Not that I don’t love me a good county fair (or the state fair, fried snickers on a stick) but something tells me going to a vendimia will be a blast. We’re thinking about making that happen in the next few weeks, seeing as no one has classes on Fridays and travel is so cheap.
Also, another random thing that I’m just thinking about since I just took a shower. It is absolutely disgusting how much dirt I manage to get on me in the course of a day. To help quantify this for you, when I showered today, the soap turned a grayish color from all the dirt I was rubbing off my skin. I sometimes think I’m looking tanner, but it turns out to be evenly spread dirt that disappears with a shower. Even though the pollution here isn’t exactly visible, it gets all over you and sticks to all the sweat you produce in the heat of the day leaving you all sticky and dirty. I’ll leave you with that cheery mental image.
2 comments:
Yaoundé is really dirty, too. Normally when I shower I'm not actually dirty, but here I get FILTHY. I even snot brown.
Supposedly Atlanta has the worst air quality in the U.S., but I'm curious how the air here competes. Granted there are fewer contributors to air pollution, but the cars here are even worse than American cars, and there is a mountain in the distance that I can only see sometimes, and I've noticed that I don't see any stars here at all...
I am tired of being sticky and sweaty and dirty all the time.
Also my room gets really dirty. My floor gets gross, but I hate cleaning it because they don't have a good broom in my family, so I have to get on my hands and knees and scrub, which means looking at the crocodile skin that lives under my bed, which I try to avoid.
Poem: "Soda Crackers," by Raymond Carver, from The Collected Poems. © Knopf.
Soda Crackers
You soda crackers! I remember
when I arrived here in the rain,
whipped out and alone.
How we shared the aloneness
and quiet of this house.
And the doubt that held me
from fingers to toes
as I took you out
of your cellophane wrapping
and ate you, meditatively,
at the kitchen table
that first night with cheese,
and mushroom soup. Now,
a month later to the day,
an important part of us
is still here. I'm fine.
And you—I'm proud of you, too.
You're even getting remarked
on in print! Every soda cracker
should be so lucky.
We've done all right for
ourselves. Listen to me.
I never thought
I could go on like this
about soda crackers.
But I tell you
the clear sunshiny
days are here, at last.
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