School Field Trip...Written by Kurt Watters

Two days ago, my family and I went to school just like any other day but this time without our Spanish books. We were scheduled to go on a field trip! This was a great experience for all of us. We hitched a ride to Plaza de Armas on a combi. For those that aren’t familiar with combi’s, you pretty much squash as many people in as possible and you take a twice as long of a trip than a taxi would take, but at ¼ of the price. Once we got there, we looked at amazing Cathedrals. The architecture is very cool to see in person.  After this, we headed to the good old open air market.  My parents have been to this market before on their one-week trip down here this last February, but for my sisters and I, we haven’t witnessed anything like it.  Goat heads took on a whole new meaning, cow carcasses and heads hanging from the ceiling, dead chickens being hung by their feet and very alive frogs being beaten to death on a wooden counter-top.  I took a picture by the goat heads, and as soon as I looked down, I saw blood scattered all over the floor, dripping down off of everyone’s butcher block tables.  Now this was mainly the unpleasant things.  The market had isles full of fresh fruits and grains.  The smoothies were delicious.  Actually, they would have been delicious if they were cold, rather than lukewarm.  As we pass down the isles, we came to a booth.  This is where the magic happened.  We ordered our first frog juice smoothie! J  Watching him pick out a fat juicy frog and slam it on the counter a few times to its death, started to make me feel like I didn’t want to try this juice after all.  He mixed in many different kinds of seasonings, from bee pollen, to entire quail eggs.  He poured it all into a mixer and stirred it up until it looked like a dark gray smoothie of some sort.  He poured it into a cup on the counter.  Tara and I were the first ones to take a swig.  Okay, maybe not a swig, but a sip.  The texture is hard to describe.   It tasted like a milkshake and “mate” (a type of tea drink from Argentina) mixed.  After gagging a little, we passed it to my mother and Kelly.  My dad then took it.  He pulled all of the straws out and really chugged the entire cup of frog juice.  Great times.  I loved being out there and trying all sorts of new things.  It really does feel like a whole other world down here.  I hope all of you will get the chance to do something like this at least once in your lives. Los extraño a todos. Chau.

PS  My Dad says he now feels like eating flies...