today´s post brought to you (unknowingly) by Laudio BHI

My students this week have been writing stories.

I give them a list of words, they get in groups and have to write stories using all of the words. I thought I´d share some of their results. I didn´t edit anything. The word lists were:

mango ugly sofa toilet embarrassed coffee Lady Gaga giraffe kiss dance skateboard chicken

or:

car Bart Simpson octopus fat Cristiano Ronaldo beautiful silly apples run gross sing foot

And now, the results.

Once upon a time, Bart Simpson throws a green and delicious apple to Cristiano Ronaldo and made him stupid. He run to the hospital but when he is arriving he imagines an octopus near his foot. And he say:
-Oh it is a beautiful fat octopus.
When he finished the vision, goes to the hospital and the nurse says:
-Cristiano Ronaldo the silliest and grossest person in the world is singing a song in the car.

In toilet Lady Gaga is drinking coffe, later she is dancing in sofa. The chicken is ugly and she eat mango. She is embarrassed with her giraffe. because it mount in a skateboard. the giraffe kiss very well.

Cristiano Ronaldo is very gross and silly man. This man is very stuck-up. that´s why the persons doesn´t like it, Meanwhile Bart Simsomp a beautiful happy and funy boy, his favorite food is apples and he sing very good but cristiano ronaldo sing very bad.

The ugly of Lady Gaga was dancing in the sofa kissing a mango. The giraffe was jealous. It was dancing in the street and it triped with a skateboard and it got embarrassed and it went to its toilet to cry. Another day Lady Gaga and her mango were eating chicken and the giraffe ate the mango. the giraffe was thirsty, so it dronk a coffee. When Lady Gaga saw her mango eaten she shot the giraffe.

just some things

So first off, Amorebieta - the town I work in during the evenings - has a pretty side. Did y'all know it had a pretty side? Because I didn't. You get there on the bus/train and it is mildly industrial and it has that weird spiny potato and sometimes it smells like a paper mill. But check it:



SURPRISE. Pretty.

Second, why does everyone have to pronounce all their S's in northern, um, Iberia? Spanish as a second language people: try to say "Las respuestas" with all the S's. It takes like 15 minutes, right?! I want my acento andalu back, now.

Third, guess what, people? I led worship in church today. Have you ever been a worship leader, Kit? No. Was it kind of haphazard? Yes. Was it kind of awesome? Yes.

In Defense of Foodies

An article came out recently on CNN Eatocracy about, basically, why "foodie" is a dirty word among chefs. I'm gonna lay it out here: it made me mad.

I should confess that I have a vested interest here. For me growing up, "foodie" was not a dirty word at all - it was praise my dad gave me whenever I was a good little eater. It meant you loved food, were willing to try new dishes and enjoyed discussing food with people. That's it.

Sometime between my upbringing in a food-loving and minimally pretentious house (my family's from Asheboro, NC, for goodness' sake), "foodie" acquired some negative connotations. My friend Marti describes foodies as "gross," "navel-gazing" and the foodie movement as "[l]ike some kind of commercialization or trendifying of the love I felt for food." Seattle Weekly writer Jason Sheehan (quoted on Eatocracy) takes it a step further, calling foodies "coup-counting, lock-jawed, cake-eating, nose-in-the-air dimwits."

OK, so let's be honest here. When people who are passionate about food are that quick to declare themselves absolutely not foodies, what they're really trying to do is distance themselves from people who are elitist and more interested in the impression they make on others than the actual food in front of them.

Let me ask you this. Why is it that adventure travelers can swap Everest-climbing stories or Bruce Springsteen fans can trade tales of the time they were at this concert and they swear the Boss actually looked at them, but the minute a foodie mentions to another foodie how good that mole they had down in Puebla was, or how sweet and down-to-earth Elena Arzak really is, or how perfect North Carolina Sandhills peaches are in the summer, they are immediately branded disingenuous and elitist?

Since when is it by definition elitist and affected to share my passion with other people who have the same passion?

Let's get even more honest, though, since I was really giving anti-foodie food lovers the benefit of the doubt there. In some cases, it seems an awful lot like distancing themselves from the elitist boors they call foodies is a way to show how much more elite they are than the elite.

Because here's what frustrates me about exhortations from anti-foodies to "shut up and eat:" you know they're not about to. Of course they are still going to talk about food; they're interested in it and for Pete's sake, talking is what people who are interested in something do when they're with others who share their interest. And so what may have been intended as a battle cry for the purity of flavor, untinged by the flapping of gums about it, ends up sounding like: "I can talk about food; you can't."

Another common complaint against foodies, so the argument goes, is that it's a label used to differentiate oneself in a separate (higher) social class. Of course there are plenty of people who will seize whatever they can in a bid of "look how rich I am," but I'm calling BS on foodie-ism being intrinsically so.

First of all, people of the very lowest income brackets can get ingredients and take an interest in how to put them together in tasty ways. They can appreciate things they think taste good, and they can talk with their friends about it. For goodness' sake, have we learned nothing from Anthony Bourdain's countless diatribes about how the best cuisines of every nation sprung from necessity - poor people figuring out how to cook the cheapest things well? If anything's elitist, it's the assumption that people without a high income can't be foodies.

Second of all, and I know this is a crazy thought, but terms exist to differentiate things from other things. What do I mean here? Not all people are fascinated by food. This doesn't make them less civilized or lower-class any more than not being a kayaker or a pop art fan or a ukelele player.

People have different interests, and not everyone's is food. Anyone who looks down on people with different interests then theirs is first and foremost antisocial, not a foodie.

Oh, but cooks hate foodies, you say. Foodies are always being jerks in restaurants and making the chefs come out so they can look important in front of their friends. Foodies are always sending food back because they can. Foodies are only interested in chasing trends, not the purity of flavor.

Here's the thing: you haven't just described foodies. You've just described pretentious jerks, obnoxious bullies, and silly trend-chasers. And excuse me, but I guarantee you that there are pretentious jerks, obnoxious bullies and silly trend-chasers who are rock climbers, art fans, ukelele players and so on. We don't stop using the terms "rock climber," "art fan" and "ukelele player" just because there are jerks who do those things. We let the words keep their original meaning.

"Foodie," I should point out, came about as a term to describe people who loved food because "gourmet" sounded too pretentious. Sound familiar? A question for all the foodier-than-thou anti-foodies out there: what term do you suggest? If we go running from "foodie" next, how do we describe people who have a serious interest in food?

Another question: let's say you have a deep respect for cooks as professionals. You truly appreciate good ingredients prepared creatively or even just well and simply. You tip generously. You don't look down on people who don't share your interest in food. Now, how many cooks are seriously going to hate you just because you call yourself a foodie?

I thought not.

A thought for lovers of food: let's spend less energy punishing the language for the behavior of a few pompous jerks and more energy on being good examples of what a foodie really is.

My name is Kit Cox, and I am a foodie.

adventures in medicine

x-ray of my happily pneumonia-free chest


I'd had a sore throat the past couple days. Overnight, it went from "just sore throat" to sore throat, earache, fever, terrifying cough - the whole nine yards. So I called my insurance company, they sent me to the doctor's office, and let me tell you, it was ON.

First the nurse took my blood pressure, temperature, and all the standard stuff. Then it was back to the waiting room, then on to the X-rays (see above).

By the way, visiting the doctor's office really highlights the gaps in your foreign language proficiency. I made everyone repeat instructions twice ("I'm pretty sure she just said to take off my shirt and lie down over there, but what if that wasn't what she said at all and now the funny American is stripping and lying down?").

After a game of musical doctor's rooms (I believe I went to four, including a brief but exciting visit to one wrong one - who would have thought there'd have been another Katherine in the clinic?), I was informed that my throat and right ear were indeed infected, but on the bright side I didn't have pneumonia like apparently a lot of other people had. Prescription in hand, I marched to the pharmacy, then straight back home.

How much did all this cost, you ask?

...21 euros. And that was for the prescription, which apparently my insurance will also reimburse me for. Basque Government, I'm sorry I ever doubted your ability to hook me up.

learning curve

I was out for dinner and drinks with my roommates and kept noticing myself zoning out because I was having difficulty following the conversation. I could swear my Spanish is actually worse than it was a few weeks ago because it feels like I am so often missing the words I need to articulate myself. What's going on? A few weeks ago I was positive I could understand any conversation in Spanish, and now it feels like all confusion, all the time.

I've hit that point in language learning where I feel like I'm at a plateau, where it feels like my spanish isn't improving at all even though I'm using it all the time and goodness knows I'm immersed. The tricky thing about this period is that although it's the easiest time to get discouraged and retreat into an expat circle where all you use is English (or the Spanish that everyone understands because, claro, we're all English speakers first), I really believe it's also the time when the most growth happens.

It's only at this point, having lived here for a month with Spanish (ok, and Basque, but that doesn't help me a lot)-speaking roommates and encountering new situations, that I'm becoming unable to coast by on my casual conversation abilities. It's not all "hello, nice to meet you" and "excuse me while I order this pintxo"-type conversations anymore, and I'm noticing my weaknesses because I'm being challenged more.

In retrospect, of course, this is really the best stage someone wanting to improve a foreign language could hope for. Every time I become frustrated that I can't communicate a certain story or view the way I want to to my friends and/or roommates, I learn in retrospect what I was missing.

Leaving me at once frustrated and hopeful every time I open my mouth and my second language comes out.