The String Cheese Incident

My host brother asked me the other day where I would draw the line at trying new foods. "I eat everything!" I told him. Instead, I was proved a liar by one of America's favorites: Kraft Cheese.

Peace Corps is teaching me that I am a pretty fachenta person. Fachenta, my favorite word in Nicanol, is used jokingly (or not) to refer to a person who thinks they are better than others. I definitely wouldn't say I think I'm better than others, but it's becoming rather obvious how obnoxiously refined my tastes are. This is evidenced by the fact that the things that I miss the most from home, after the obvious family and friends, are bookstores, attending lectures, art museums, pesto, dark chocolate, Equal Exchange's lemon tinged espresso and mate lates. Basically, I'm a giant snob.

Anyway, the cheese problem ocurred while visiting my host family. On my first morning there, my host mom made me breakfast: delicious eggs and bread, with a side of two slices of Kraft American cheese, still in the wrapper... I was already feeling sick and had slept horribly, due to the fact that I wasn't used to the chickens outside my door yet. There's a pretty good chance my host mother had gone at least slightly out of her way to find this cheese for me. I needed to eat it. Yet, for whatever reason, the thought of having to ingest the orange substance almost made me gag. I've been known to scarf down Kraft macaroni in prodigious quantities in exam season, so it wasn't a question of principle. Sometimes that many fake particles can taste delicious. But I couldn't do it. I stared at that cheese, loitered over my coffee, thinking I might be able to manage a bit. Nope, no dice. In the end, I just told her I wasn't very hungry and left it at that.

And felt vaguely un-American.