Too Many Chickens
Turns out La Mesa became famous for a “botanical expedition” that launched out of here 232 years ago way back in 1783. At least, that’s what I think the plaque on the old Catholic church in the town square reads, which looks about 232 years old.
Despite being thousands of miles away from home, tucked snugly under the equator in mountain country, I still follow my Cardinals baseball as religiously as I’m able. So this morning I woke up hot under the collar because my favorite reliever, affable-drawl-easy-going-North-Carolinian, Seth Maness, was ejected without warning by the 1st base umpire for no reason at all.
Granted, mothering a two year-old all over again tends to distract you from being irate about unjustness in sports. He was in one of those testy moods this morning. Whine, whine, whine.
By late morning, however, he was clearly over it. Probably because we took a walk through the streets past chunky brightly painted buildings to La Brasa al Rojo – which apparently had something to do with “many wives” – rotisserie chicken. That’s where Oxbear accidentally ordered two whole chickens. I think I just stared at him.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he chuckled to himself. “Let’s give one chicken to the police department.”
Fearing the police officers might see the offering of a delicious rotisserie chicken, potatoes, and arepas as a potential bribe – I’m pretty sure they don’t speak English either – we offered it to a very grateful hotel staff instead. Eight staffers lunched on one box.
By this point, I’m afraid I’ve dropped most sanitary pretenses. I let Yali walk around barefoot in the courtyard outside the hotel while we dug into a hot chicken dripping in some bright yellow spice with bare hands. When in Rome. It was good. (Yes, we did use hand sanitizer first.)
If I’ve learned one new thing about Yali every day, I’ve come to finally realize that – Colombia is in love with my son. Especially the ladies. They can’t get enough of his chubby dimples. But even the guys express an abnormal amount of interest in coaxing an “hola” or a wave or a smile out of him. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the kid is cute; I had nothing to do with it, so I can freely admit it. But the level of “oohs” and “aahs” (that’s universal in any language) is definitely escalating in exponential fashion. Maybe I should start checking out the other babies on the street to see what kind of local cuteness scale we’re talking about here.
Tomorrow, Yali legally becomes ours.
If all went well, we were told, we’d be back in the States as early as next week. Glory.