I’ve lived here a year and I still don’t know street names.  Obviously I know MY street name but outside my little neighborhood? Uh. Not really. Actually, the name of the main street in my gated neighborhood escapes my memory while writing this.

Besides a couple of the main ones like Hwy 2, and Post Street (which also has two other names) I couldn’t tell you even the street names I use everyday to get to school.

The lack of street signs is prohibitive to giving directions, but since people are so used to using landmarks, everyone expects it. If the intersection has no signs, it’s just easier to say “Turn left at the Denny’s” or “just after mile marker 5.6”

Sometimes our GPS takes about 6 solid seconds to spit out some long street names and by the time she says “in a quarter mile” we are already at the turn!

No signs

There are a couple of streets with simple names like Calle A, which intersects with Calle AA. (Which is really funny to hear the GPS lady say, which is the only reason I know the name of the road. Go ahead, say Calle AA out loud.  Btw, you pronounce ‘calle’ like kai-yay.  Now say AA in English.  Teehee)

My Sana box was half full of produce I couldn’t identify this week. Facebook hive mind helped me out tremendously.

Is that’s big green thing guava? It wasn’t an avocado

it was so hard it just fell open on my counter

My Facebook friends told me it was a Pachira aquatica ….. in other words,  a chestnut!

Trevor, “It’s only ok”

Wikipedia confirmed.

They weren’t so good raw. So…youtube told me how to roast ’em!

http://youtu.be/oEpBu6U6xu8

add cinnamon and sugar = yum!

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Zika sounds like an Italian dish but it’s a virus that has garnered a lot of attention in the news recently. Brazil kept the taboo subject out of the Olympic media, but it seems to be the Mecca of Ziki, with the virus spreading to places like Columbia and here in Puerto Rico and even more recently, Florida. 

The Zika plague (as the press has promoted it) doesn’t seem to phase as many people here in PR as it does in the States. Nearly everyone asked me this summer if I was worried about Zika. My answer was generally no, while Trevor’s was a bit more leaning toward yes. 

Mainly I think because he and I read from different news sources. Ok, my news source is Facebook haha (it used to be the paper edition of the Onion so I’ve stepped up people). And my newsfeed is filled with the people of Rincon protesting chemical spraying to combat mosquitos and generally poo-pooing the paranoia that the media is perpetuating. (Floridians don’t seem to care so much. Spray away!) Just today I read this article saying that Zika effecting fetuses was not entirely true. 

But there are other articles stating that Zika is not only harmful to fetuses but to young children as well who have developing brains. (Sorry no source for that). 

So nobody knows what the hell they’re talking about. 

From the symptoms of Zika on average adults, I’d take it over Chickengunya. 

Meh. We haven’t booked one way flights outta here. Just bought our kids pants to wear to school where they don’t have screens in the windows and are outside a lot. But they told me they were too hot. So yesterday I sprayed their legs with deet. But I forgot today and thought ‘meh’. 

And according this article you have just gotten Zika from reading my blog. Sorry ’bout that, amigo. 

Alleluia!

One of the first things I searched out when we moved here was organic food. While Natucentro supplies plenty of dry goods and organic leche, they don’t have produce. Enter Sana!

I don’t remember how I first heard about them. But they are an organic CSA in Cabo Rojo. I forgot, or actually never learned what CSA stands for. But it’s the way all the cool tree huggers get produce. To put it simply, get a box full of farm food directly from the farm once a week. Score!

You order online and they come round on Thursday. Mayaguez has a pickup location near the university. Maybe no one else in Mayaguez orders from them, or they are so nice that they just meet me by the Denny’s near my house. It’s on their route anyway.

Yum!

I had no idea what these were. hello google! Didnt like em

Once during their delivery time I was stuck at the doctors clinic without a car. They obviously understand the whole doctor-can-take-four-hours thing, and they brought my produce to the parking lot of the clinic. Awesome!

The most recent batch I received included some extra bonus food. A whole bag of organic ginger! I immediately made ginger snap cookies for my kids. But…they were really orange gingers! (I should say they were ginger gingers, haha).  No really, my fingers were yellow for the next three days. It stained my kitchen towel. Crazy! The cookies turned out well though.

Today I told one of my Puerto Rican friends about this crazy orange ginger and she told me it was probably turmeric. Oh.

I swear it looked and smelled just like ginger

A perminent reminder of my innocent confusion

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