Adventuring in Antigua today. There was this shop called Epicure that we sometimes went as Peace Corps Volunteers for fancy foods. Well they have now moved and expanded. When I find "my food," aka imported gringo food, I go stupid. My eyes get big and I read labels and just stand there holding the imported food. So Epicure, much to my surprise, now has a bunch of food from Trader Joe's. The prices are outrageous so I didn't really buy anything, but I actually touched Trader Joe's products today, including TJ's real maple syrup, dark chocolate crisps, and mac n' cheese. I'm not even going to tell you how expensive this stuff was. We had been walking for awhile by this point but I had a renewed energy to stand and inspect food products for a good half an hour.

But Epicure does have a pretty sweet bakery and deli. I bought real sourdough bread, a big loaf, for Q12 or just under $2. I felt like Little Chef from Ratatouille smelling the bread and trying to convey to Andres just how important good sourdough bread is.

And my dearest pal Erika sent us a box, which received today, full of little baby clothes, some knitting needles and pregnancy-friendly loose teas. What a treat! This has definitely been a very minimalist pregnancy in terms of accumulating baby things, which I'm glad for but, of course, also feeds a little homesickness and a deep down desire to, I guess, nest a baby space by buying stuff. Oh well, it's very Guatemalan of me to be keeping it this real.

Finally, the lady in our neighborhood who sells tamales de chipilin finally stopped by the house and now we are enjoying the best food ever! I'd post a picture but we already ate them actually.

Here is a very good picture of tamales de chipilin I found on the internet.