Housewife Progress

I've learned alot about cooking. While we had a maid, she loved to cook, and she didn't have to pay for it... so I learned from her how to cook some things using fresh produce from the market. I've never before seen the death of a chicken turn into a chicken soup, but I have now! I can also make juices of all kinds, spaghetti sauces, salsas for chips or to go over meats, and TORTILLAS. Down here people eat tortillas with EVERY meal, not kidding. Corn tortillas, which we've never been a fan of. So, Monnie taught me how to make a flour tortilla which we do on occasion, not every meal. Anyone who wants to learn how, I can teach you! I'm also a fan of the newly aquired skill of making chow-main. Now that I like the foods here, I have more motivation to have a bigger, better garden than I did last year so I can continue with the fresh stuff and can for future use.

As far as teaching my children, I've been teaching Cobin the alphabet, colors, and shapes with a homemade flashcard like notebook. Hes doing so good, we're also working on various songs in english and spanish. The teacher in me made out a two step lesson plan for every day this week so I don't forget.

Lastly, I'm glad that we've lived here for the knowledge of how to live without things like electricity and washing machines and Target. Some people don't have a refrigerator...I'm glad for the knowledge, but also grateful that I don't have to live without my conveniences. I now know how to wash clothes by hand and hang dry them. I might sound less intelligent saying that, but to really get them clean and dry in a timely manner (ie, before the afternoon rains come) there are guidelines I've learned. Even now that I have a dryer, I still mostly hang dry everything and plan on continuing to do so when I return to the states because its absolutely free and just requires a little bit of planning. I feel bad for all the times I've been too lazy to fold clothes right after they were done and just popped them back in the dryer so I didn't have to iron them....