My Spanish Kitchen:
A Panoramic

"Just then, from one of the boats tied up to Brown's dock, a rocket rose with a whoosh high into the sky and burst with a pop to light up the channel." – Hemingway, "Islands in the Stream"











The jet lag had not last long after the first day and Sam was very happy about that. It was one of the things most feared, he remembered, of traveling overseas and losing the six hours. If you don't make up the sleep jet lag can stay with you an entire trip and a cast a shadow over everything that you did. They had woken up at the noon the next day to the buzzing of the phone on the side table next to the bed. The room was so dark that it would have been impossible at that moment to tell what time it was exactly; there were brown shudders that left absolutely no light into the room and it felt much like a cave, very cool, very dark, the walls like concrete. "It is time to get up," he said, as he reached for his phone and saw that it was 11:30 in the morning, only half an hour before the time that they were to pick up Allyssa. This would be the end of it, Sam thought, all of this work to make this trip, the mother would be furious, the only rule that they had for the entire trip was to pick up Allysa by noon, a simple seven minute walk across the city village and there were the dorms at Juan Frays Collegio, as simple as that. "Everybody will have to get dressed right away." He lifted the blankets off of Sarah's head, who always slept with covers up over her face and especially her ears to stay warm. "You can go by yourself," was the first thing that she said, of course. "No we must all go ever there, we promised," Sam said. He had turned on the main light in the hall and the room was now quite light and white and it seemed unusual to have slept for 12 hours, like a time travel, and he felt a sort of lightness throughout his entire body and felt like he could go on forever now that the jet lag was washed out of him. He walked over to the Katie's bed. She would be far more difficult and of course would not want to walk over for any reason whatsoever and so he thought about leaving her right there and they would be back quite soon anyway. "Katie, it is time to get up, we don't have any time. No showers." In the bathroom he quickly put on as many clothes as he could quickly find and combed very quickly, then flipped an espresso pod into the machine and let it run for two cycles, the coffee aroma smelling so spectacular that he wished he could sit right there and drink coffee all morning, a little cream, watching the street just below the window where the student's cars had parked, and the balconies above were quite with colorful flags waving from them. He looked at his phone, a missed call, from Allyssa, "where are you, my director is wondering." He knew this could be the end of things right here. He had worked so hard for this trip and did not want it to end this way, not like this.