Cena con los Morales

Last night our landlords made us a welcome dinner and they and their 3 kids joined us in our dining room. Michelle is 11, Daniel is 9 and Paolo is 18 months old. Like many kids his age, Paolo is very excited about his newfound ability to walk and spent most of the dinner exploring the apartment before climbing up onto the couch and falling asleep. At one point he proudly pushed the rolling dehumidifier into the dining room, just to show us he could.

Dinner was arroz con pollo, bean paste and ensalata de papas. All very good, especially the potato salad. I've never seen potatoes so white before, I thought at first it was jicama. Costa Rican's don't like things too spicy, in perfect accord with my own spice preferences. José and María told us they have been renting apartments to UPEACE students for the past 10 years. They started off with one apartment and one Italian student back when the school was much smaller. Since then they've added more apartments onto the building, which accounts for its piece meal layout. They've had many good experiences and look on it as an opportunity to meet people from all over the world and learn about different cultures. They also seem very pleased with their own country and happy to share it with visitors.

Benjaman and Mai (totally guessing about the spelling) both say they like to cook so I look forward to seeing how they adapt their Thai and Vietnamese recipes to the local ingredients. And Ben promises she won't make things too spicy. I, however, once again find myself without an oven so I won't be able to show off the greatest of my own culinary talents by baking for them. Fortunately, at least one of the studio apartments has a slow cooker and since I figured out how to make Tuna Hotdish in my crock pot when I was in Kansas City, I WILL be able to share some quintessential Midwestern cuisine. They have no idea what they've been missing.