Making a grocery list and tearing it up.

Something that reminded us of home -- at first glance -- were the giant grocery stores. With names like Jumbo, Bigger, and Lider (Leader), we were pretty sure we would eat happily ever after.

Then we shopped in them. Granted, right now our main shopping trips occur at a store with a much less promising name -- UniMart -- but I´m thinking they´re probably all about the same. The size is grossly misleading.

There is an entire row of flour, an entire row of sugar, an entire two rows of wine. There is an entire row of rice -- but no brown rice. There is an entire row and a half of milk -- but no soy or rice milk. There is an entire row of mayonnaise, for heaven´s sake. That one is probably my favorite, because there aren´t even different brands of mayonnaise. It´s the same brand in the same size container on every shelf for half the row. And they don´t have jalapeños, either.

Not that we aren´t eating well. We´ve found some fantastic restaurants and cooked some wonderful meals, even without jalapeños, and part of moving to a new country is abandoning some of your old favorite things (jelly beans) in exhange for finding new ones (dried pears, porotos y fideos, rosehip tea). I can´t say I´m not a little disappointed in the rice situation, though.