As I pry open my eyelids, I see it's a beautiful day

A brief thunderstorm on Saturday night brought cooler temperatures which were much welcomed after a week in the high 90s. This morning I'm actually sitting here with a sweater on as I sip my drug of choice coffee and try to wake up. It is 9:13 a.m. I woke up at 8:10 and could.not.get.up.

Lest you think I'm a total lazy bum, let me explain that we were invited to someone's house for supper last night. We began to eat at 10:45 p.m.

We started with homemade empanadas which were some of the best I've had yet. The filling was just the right mixture of meat, hardboiled eggs, raisins, onions, olives and seasonings encased in a flaky crust and pan fried to perfection. Hungry yet? I never eat more than one empanada. I ate two. They were SO GOOD!

Then we sat and chatted a while longer. Now we'd been chatting up a storm ever since we arrived about 7:30 p.m. and gathered in the sun dappled orchard to pick plums. Right through a time of sharing in the Word around a picnic table, and continuing inside as we watched a 4-D ultrasound DVD of the baby due in April (Ahhhh! she's sticking her thumb in her mouth and sucking!), and as we looked at all the digital photos Oscar took at the Dakar Rally up in the high Sierras this past week...

Our hosts, being of Italian descent, enjoy talking long and talking loud (I am positive I have to have some Italian blood in me!). Topics ranged from approaching parenthood to proper protocol in the grocery store (more about that in another post) to a card game called Truco to... Quite honestly by the time we began to eat at 10:45, I was so tired I was only processing about one word in ten. Or twenty. But that was fine because I could enjoy my food undistracted by the conversations that ebbed and flowed around me.

It was like I was on an island enjoying a meal in solitude ☺

Back to the food (where it always goes, right?). We had churipan which is a wonderful combination of fresh bread rolls with a tasty chorizo sausage tucked inside. These were so good I didn't even add any condiments to mine. Just a leaf of lettuce for some crunch. There are many varieties of chorizo and the ones last night were closely akin to Polish sausage according to the host. He first made a vegetable broth by throwing carrots, onions, and celery into a pot of water and bringing it to a boil. After a while he threw in the chorizos and let them boil for about 20 minutes until plump and bursting at the seams.

After two empanadas I could definitely eat only one churipan. And then sit there feeling a bit like a beached whale at midnight. Estuve muy satesfecho! Y muy cansada tambien. Pero no terminamos!

No, we were not finished yet. There was still more conversation! And dessert. My co-workers who are on a diet brought pretty multi-layered fat-free jello and I made a totally non-diet apple cinnamon cake. Guess which I went for? We sat and talked long enough between the churipan and dessert that I was actually a little hungry and able to eat a small slice of cake.

I don't know what time we made it home. I was too tired to lift my wrist and look at my watch. Eventually I will get used to the Argentine way of eating late but I'm not quite there yet. I don't want to sound like I didn't have a good time. I had a fabulous time! I'm just saying it was a stretch for me. Having never been much of a late night person, this is taking some serious adjusting. But as I see progress with the Spanish, so I see progress with this. Five months ago when we arrived, I would have pooped out by 10 p.m. Last night I made it to midnight in a semi-coherent state. No idea how I was after that. But the hubby hasn't said I did anything to embarrass him so I guess it's all good.