The sound you are hearing is that of our cholesterol levels smashing through the roof like a rocket. Daiva, the chair of the department, and our host for the month invited us to lunch after my classes today. She wanted us to try a famous Lithuanian dish called cepelinai ( zeppelin), and she wanted to be sure we had it in a restaurant that does it well. She also believes it to be strictly a cold weather dish, and today fit that criteria quite adequately. Everyone we meet asks if we have had zeppelin yet and what we thought of them - the Americans with knowing smiles on their faces. Daiva told us that they are not healthy, and Americans usually don't care for them all that much, but everyone should try once. So it was zeppelin all around, preceeded by a delicious hot cucumber, broth based soup. Well, when the awaited dish arrived, it smelled wonderful, but the portion was clearly from the For Those Planning an Afternoon of Grueling Labor section of the menu. We each were served a casserole dish with two dumplings the size and shape of those little footballs they throw out at football games - the size of my fist, but tapered at each end - with a large amount of sauce. The dumpling part of the dumpling was made of potato - a mixture of grated raw potato and riced boiled potato moistened with potato starch water. This created a sort of shiny dough, with a texture similar to tapioca, if I remember tapioca correctly. The only person I ever knew who made it was my aunt, Stella, and that means it is close to 50 years since I ate any. They form this dough around ground pork and boil the dumplings in water. The sauce is made of smoky bacon and onion that seem almost ground up, bacon grease and sour cream. Sort of like doctored up red eye gravy, but creamy instead of runny.
I have to tell you, they were delicious, and the sauce - yum. Unfortunately, about half a dumpling would have been just the right size. This is not a country where people subscribe to my theory that half of most restuarant meals should be taken home for another meal, and leaving it might have implied that we didn't care for the national dish. Let's just say there has been no dinner at our house tonight. It is such fun to watch Del broaden his food repertoire, by the way. Speaking of broadening repertoires..... Oh, dear.
My classes went pretty well I think. In the advanced class, we were learning some general pronunciation rules for plurals and past tenses based on the spelling of words, voicing, etc., which led to defining some words. Why didn't I just say, "The meaning in this sentence is ..." and suggest they write it down to look up at home for discussion next week? Have you considered how many meanings "date" has? Too many! You teachers would have known to do that, but it took me until 9 o'clock tonight to figure it out. Fortunately, the other examples were more straight forward.
We also worked on /r/ as a vowel. (/ ɝ/). It has so many spellings - work, burn, learn, bird, etc., and your eyes would make you think you should pronounce each differently.
The beginners worked on pronouns and "be" in present, past and present progressive ("ing"). They call it present continuous. We also worked on forming and answering yes/no questions and greetings. Okay, I'm sensing glazed over eyes.
Well, folks, tomorrow is another day, and I get to sleep late, which for me usually means 7. I guess I need time to work up to my nap.
Oh, Oh! I almost forgot - I got to see the everyone drink at the same time dance at lunch today. Fortunately, Del was sitting to my left, so I could pretend I was listening to him when he and Daiva were talking library evaluation while actually watching people at other tables. So, here's the deal. One person lifts his/her glass, looks expectantly at the dining partner and waits until the partner notices and lifts his/her glass. Then they clink, take a drink and set the glasses down. I did observe that at one table the level of wine in the woman's glass lowered faster than that in the man's glass. (Just like home, Tommy.) I am hoping people who might have been observing me thought I was gazing adoringly at Del, hanging on his every word, instead of being my nosy self. Thank goodness we were drinking water. I would have perished if I had to wait for the librarians to notice my raised glass. To be fair, the same would be true if Del went to eat with the lunch bunch or the hall ladies.
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