Today was uneventful and disappointing. Wanting to not be lazy, I looked online and found a breakfast place that would push me out of my comfort zone and in a direction I had never explored. After getting slightly lost, I found the place—except that it was closed or had never been open to begin with, and then I had to walk all the way back to my neighborhood and start the search again. Ended up having breakfast on my very block.
On the bright side, the fact that breakfast had been so late meant that for the first time, I wasn’t ravenous during class. We had a nice chat with the other students before class, followed by a lecture where I was able to understand and copy just about everything. Once we got into the kitchen, things got chaotic, so I ended up following instructions for most of the day without ever really knowing which dish I was actually working on. It was frustrating, but less frustrating than previous experiences when not only the “why,” but also the “what” and “how” were lost on me.
Before I was even aware that we were finished cooking, people were loading up their Toppers (this is Mexican Spanish for Tupperware, and I love it) with chicken, enchiladas, and leftover huaraches. In contrast to previous days, where we had plated all the food on the big table and eaten together with our teams, my team was packed and gone before I knew it. We didn’t even try making the enchiladas placeras, which are fried on this neat table that you set up over a charcoal fire, and which have to be eaten immediately after cooking. Another team did make those, but the teams sometimes got weirdly political and territorial about Their Dishes (I don’t understand this—there’s plenty for everyone, and we’re all following the same recipes), so I ended up packing up and leaving without trying any. A few days later, my teammates apologized, saying that they had had family obligations and hadn’t been able to stay, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth: the taste of no enchiladas.
Lost in Three Pines 
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