LaRoue - Blog Post #9

The most surprising information that I learned at Mitad del Mundo was easily everything about the shrunken heads.  The reasons they were used and the process that needed to be taken just to make the heads.  It was a little gruesome in my opinion.  At the same time, I could not help but compare this way of death to ours.  In a sense, they always have a person with them versus us, when we bury someone, they are there forever.  This is how I interpret it anyways.  I kind of compare it to how Rita felt when her father passed away in TFN.  I of course am not as accustomed to the head shrinking, but just as Rita felt, I understand how one could look at how we celebrate death as not very thoughtful and less meaningful.

I really enjoyed the food at Mama Clorinda’s.  I’m just as glad that we got to eat there as when we got to eat at Claudia’s.  Some of the food was familiar, but a lot of it was not.  I ended up getting ribs for dinner so that was very far out of my comfort zone.  However, the appetizers and some of the other dishes were certainly different.  The one thing that I tried that I found the most difficult to consume was the cows tongue.  I remember it being very easy to chew, almost like lamb in a way.  Honestly, I think that most difficult part had to be the peanut sauce of all things.  It just did not go with the meat in a way that I would have wanted it to.  Of the other things that I tried, but absolute favorite thing was the ceviche.  I’m not a big fan of shrimp, so I tried the fish.  That was easily my favorite thing that I have tried so far on this trip.  Somehow between the chewiness of the fish and the flavor of the acids that it soaked in, the fish was so good.  If I had known how much was I going to like it, I may have considered trying to make a meal out of it.