El mercado

Today was so much fun! Grocery shopping day and a trip to el mercado, chalked full of tropical fruits, vegetables, butchered animals, crafts, and objects of every description. Ohhh how I love markets! Walking the narrow aisles of produce piled high and staked out by various vendors. Old Quechua woman waiting idly by ready to haggle you everything from potatoes to cherimoya fruit. The diversity of tropical markets is dizzying with sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. Markets back home, even local farmers markets, seem drab and boring in comparison. Big green and orange papayas, bulbous gaunabana, piles of plantains and bananas, mangos, guava, passionfruit, piles of every sort of potatoe imaginable, Andean choclo corn, beans of all variety, onions, pumpkin, chamomile, on and on and on, and that is only just the fruit and vegetable section of the market.

Needless to say the students loved it and it was a great way to get excited about exotic new foods and practice Espanol with the bemused market woman. Likewise I was smiling and giddy with the magnetic energy of the market. Snapping pictures here and there and having a hard time settling on just one blip from so many colorful moments. This one struck me, taking in the breadth of the market in all its kaleidiscopic color and variety...