Brownies

I made a big commotion the other day by baking brownies.

So, I bought regular brownie mix which cost the equivalent to $2. I added 3 eggs and 1.5 sticks of butter and that's it. As I was cooking the brownies my host mom, Norma, kept telling me that they were never going to be cooked all the way and that I needed to crank-up the heat and keep them in longer than the directions. I got nervous and called my real mom in Denver. She reassured me through my self doubt that I was making them correctly. Afterwards, I deemed them ready I let them sit and cool.
After cutting them everyone in the family I'm living with tried a piece and thought that they were great. I decided that I was going to hit the road around town and walk the dirt streets until there were no more brownies left. I went with my 8 year old little sister here,Ana, and I walked over to my neighbors house, Isabel, and let them try the brownies.
Next, I ran into Edgar. Edgar is the new, and fresh out of school, science, math, and English teacher at the grade school here in Ojos. Every once and awhile I'll help him with his English class curriculum and it's his class that I teach on "values". He was outside of his house talking with a friend. I gave them both a piece of brownie to try and they loved it.
Later, I went to Nati's house. I think of them as my second family here in town. After work I usually walk past their house and if they are sitting on the porch I'll stop to talk and kid-around with them. One of their older son's owns a coffee plantation in the hills. He told me that once picking season begins in November that he will take me with him to pick coffee. Their neighbors saw that I was handing out goodies and they tried the brownies too and loved them.
I ended up afterwards in the central park. In the park was a group of grade schoolers who I have in class. In town, and every town in Honduras, there are a group of kids who if they are together they will laugh and call out your name when your back is turned. But if you catch them alone or with only a couple of others they love to talk with you or will at least say hello. They called out my name and started giggling so I took that as my queue for me and my little sister to say "hi" back and visit them. They all tried a piece and I went on my way after telling them goodnight.
I walked passed and saw a couple of the guys from my counterpart NGO in front of one of the pulperias (random stores you'll find anywhere here) eating and drinking. I let them finish off the rest of the brownies and they were surprised when I told them that I had made them.
Usually men are never found in the kitchen to cook. First, the usual feeling by the men is that it's women's work and they expect to be waited on and served. Secondly, on the women's side they bolster these sex roles by saying that men are not able, or incappable, to cook or to even take care of themselves.
I feel like being taken cared of too; if that means having someone make dinner for me or me eating out while in the States. Here though, I find myself going an hour and a half by minibus (a sardine cramped death trap) to buy my groceries in the department capital. Side note: Comayagua is the department capital (sort of like a state; Honduras has 18 while the country is only the size of Tennessee). I end up cooking and cleaning everything for myself to the initial astonishment of everyone else. Norma likes it though.
Anyways, the point of the story is that everybody was amazed by the brownies which they have never had before and that I had actually made them. It has been about a week or two after that night and I still have people asking me when I will make the brownies again.

Currently Reading:
Walden by Henry David Thoreau