So, yesterday, Amy and I decided to try to make some traditional Dominican food for dinner: red beans and rice. It was quite eventful. First of all, we forgot that you're supposed to soak beans before boiling them. The beans took about an hour to cook. And we were in such a hurry to get them on the table, they ended up pasty like refried beans instead of soupy like red beans. But they were full of cilantro, onions, and garlic, so they still tasted good.
And DR rice is cooked differently. They use a little oil, too, and it ends up a little firmer than our rice. The directions I got online said: "Heat up 3 spoons of oil, add the salt and water." I knew this sounded fishy. Do you know what happens when you put water on hot oil? It erupts. But I blindly followed my internet resource. And it erupted. When the oil cooled a little, I boiled the water, made the rice, and it actually turned out okay. Not as authentic. I have since learned to cook the rice for a bit in the oil before boiling it. That makes much more sense.
Today has been pretty uneventful. School is mostly prep-time now. The real adventures have been happening in the apartment.
I woke up a little earlier than usual today, about 6, just to get a better start to the day. Only to find that the water in our apartment is not turned on until 6:30-ish. They do this. Some places turn it off during the day when you're supposed to be at work. Ours turns off at night when we're supposed to be sleeping. So we have to make sure to shower before 9 and after 6:30, apparently.
If that little water adventure wasn't enough, today when we got home, we found that we didn't have any water. All afternoon and evening. It just came on a few minutes ago. We went to Amy's house to eat since they had clean dishes. Apparently it is common to store up buckets of water for such a time as this. We're figuring this out. Slowly but surely.
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