Cooking and Cleaning

I hired a maid to do some cooking and cleaning for me each week. Culturally, this is a very typical thing, and while I am more than thrilled to have someone do these mundane jobs for me, it's quite new to me. However, I met my new maid last week and was able to communicate with her, through a colleague, about what I would like her to do. A bit of cooking, cleaning, and some laundry each week. All went well, and she arrived on time this morning.

After a brief walk around my place, we had a challenging conversation about a recipe in my Spanish-English cookbook (thank you, Liigsoo family!) because she doesn't speak English and I don't speak Spanish, and then decided that a dish she knew how to make without a recipe would be fine. Following a short and confusing game of charades, she was off to the grocery store for supplies and ingredients.

I worked away at my desk (which also overlooks the ocean- only a bit distracting!), trying to stay out of her way for five hours as she cleaned and cooked. Mmmm... the meals she cooked certainly smelled good, and my place was sparkling, from the windows to the floor. Impressive! I tried to make a list with what she could do on Wednesday as she finished up for the day.

We confirmed the plans for Wednesday and said good-bye before I took a closer look at the meal she had made for this evening... a chicken and rice meal with some type of reddish-orange sauce. Peruvian food- perfect... until I tried to cut into a piece of chicken and hit the bone. Ugh. For those of you who don't know, I didn't really eat meat until about 5 years ago, and eating it off a bone is still not something I can do. I thought we had explained that quirky rule pretty well last week, but it looks like we need to go back to the drawing board on that.

I could get used to this life pretty quickly!