Summer Postcards
Border Crossings
Rolduc is the location of a monastery in the southernmost part of the Netherlands where I spent the first week of my summer course. Besides medieval architecture, spacious rooms, and a deer park, Rolduc’s attractions include its location on the Dutch-German border.
How to Not Make Flan
Maria Elena is an elderly lady who rents me a bedroom in her apartment and sleeps with the TV on. When I told her that I wanted to make tamales, she scoffed. Apparently that’s not something you do at home. When I came back one day with a bag of raw black beans, she just blinked at me silently. I soon found out that they take hours of simmering and stirring to cook. When I said I wanted to make mole sauce, she told me to just go to the market and pick up a quarter kilo of it. So finally, fed up, disgruntled, and itching to cook, I decided that I was going to make flan, and that I wasn’t going to tell her.
A First Course in Cuba
Our first concert took place in the coastal city of Cienfuegos. Two Cuban percussionists—I’ll call them Carlota and Roberto—were joining our shorthanded percussion staff, of which I was half, for George Gershwin’s Cuban Overture. After the dress rehearsal, I asked them in high school-level Spanish if they wanted to eat dinner. They did, and so did their music director, Tomasina, and the arts administrator coordinating the concerts, José.
The Neighborhood Pet
Everywhere, walls are jutting out their limbs—metal pipes, nails, and wooden frames—almost as if in dialogue. Dust and rubble cover the surface of every cracked wall, and the buildings seemed to merge into one another as I passed them.
