¿Cómo está el pescado?

I went to the house of the aunt of my friend Alejandra Taborga today, who plays frisbee with me at the UofC and is originally from Bolivia. I’ve been trying to network as much as possible here (and get some practice hablando en español), but it’s been a bit hard because I’m still adjusting to the altitude (check this out: my pulse in Chicago is más o menos 60, and my pulse here is 95!), and now I’ve come down with a mild version of the flu. Honestly, it’s hard to tell what is what, because all of the pollution from the sputtering taxis and mini-buses makes it hard to breath…but anyway, I’ve been really excited to meet her and her two sons, so when she offered to cook me lunch today I jumped at the chance. I got a bit lost on my way over, had a bit of an adventure, and finally found my way over to her nice yellow apartment building in Sopocachi (the south of the city). I had sent her an email saying I was vegetarian ("Perdón, no quiero ofenderte, pero soy vegetariana"), and as we were discussing lunch, she said she was going to cook me rice, fried potatoes, a salad of tomato and avocado...and some fish. Oh...

I knew that this was going to happen sooner or later, because here it’s basically unheard of to not eat meat, it’s such an integral part of the culture. When you say you're a vegetarian, unless you make it clear that you're allergic to meat, they think that you eat chicken and fish. I think she could see I was looking a bit tired, so she presented me with a huge hunk of fried fish on my plate. Honestly, I’d been walking around all day and I hadn’t really eaten anything in about 20 hours, so I just dove in and started eating it. Having not eaten meat for about 2.5 years now, this marks a pretty big event in my career as a vegetarian. But en realidad, I really, really liked it, era muy rico. I don’t exactly think that I’ll go out and buy myself a fillet of fish or order meat in a restaurant, and I suppose I should wait until I’ve been given a bloody llama steak before I say more, but I don’t think this will be so bad.