On Friday, resident Jesuit Father Gene invited nine students to his apartment to cook and eat delicious Ibero-Latino food. It was a very fun night in which we shared laughs, spices, recipes, and stories about our first month in China.
To get the ingredients for the dishes, we went to South Market right next to our university and got fresh vegetables, fruits, meat, and spices. Then we went to his apartment on campus and started cooking! Being the only Hispanic person while cooking was an interesting experience; while I don’t know much about cooking, I felt excited to give my classmates a taste of my country’s food and try dishes from other Hispanic countries. I followed recipes by memory, handed down from my grandmother and mother. It was the first time I was cooking food from my home country of Spain by myself and I felt really proud of myself by being able to show my heritage through cuisine. Father Gene provided us with recipes, and all the dishes turned out amazing. From Central and South America, we made arroz con pollo, salsa, guacamole, shrimp and chicken quesadillas and from Spain, I made gazpacho and sangria and tortilla de patata with my friend Mike.
While my dishes are going to need more practice to end up perfect, everyone else’s foods turned out pretty and delicious. However, my sangria, made from watching my parents make it year after year at family parties, turned out exactly how I wanted it to: fruitful, fresh and light.
Father Gene will be doing this every month, providing ingredients and recipes to make dishes from different parts of the world. I had a great experience learning about cultures through food and I can’t wait to see what other amazing dishes we prepare in the future.
Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in a volunteering activity that left a deep impression on me. It was a day dedicated to cultural exchange, creativity, and a wonderful reminder of the vibrancy of tradition — both Chinese and beyond.
The past few weekends have been some of the most exciting of the entire semester, full of trips to the zoo, mountain hikes, ancient parks, and more! Our first trip out of many was a visit to the Beijing Zoo. I had mentioned earlier in the semester that I wanted to see some pandas, since I was in China after all, and our TBC friend Andy made it happen.