¡Gringo Bingo!

Okay so after all that drama last week, how about a little light-hearted blogging??

So for some reason BINGO is huge here, and today I finally went to my first bingo night! $1 buy in for about 2 hours of pure entertainment. If they let me, I think I might have to become a regular. For $1 you get one sheet of paper with 6 games, and each game has at least 3 winners--linea (standard 5 in a row), cuatro esquinas (4 corners), and tabla (first person to get all the numbers on their sheet, but each sheet only has numbers on about 12 of the 25 squares). They also play cinco loco for a couple of the games (clearly it's too crazy to play EVERY game), which means the first person to get any 5 numbers wins.

On the second set of cards, I won cinco loco, and the crowd. went. wild. Mind you, by the crowd I mean the rest of the 50+ people crowded in the street outside the house of the woman with the microphone and boombox running the show. Being almost 6 ft. tall with blonde hair and blue eyes, I'm already kind of a celebrity, so when I victoriously jumped to my feet, threw my hands in the air, and yelled BINGOOOO! everyone went nuts. Shortly after I collected my prize (a sweet fake leather women's wallet), a group of young ladies asked me to pose for a picture on their camera phone. A couple games later, I was one square away from winning again, and I had a small cheering section around me. Alas, I didn't win again, but it was a great time nonetheless.

During intermission (what, did you expect people to play 2 hours of straight bingo without a break??), I bought some Delicious chicken and rekindled my love affair with mayonnaise. We used to be pretty serious back in grammar school (mayo & turkey sandwiches, mayo & kraft singles sandwiches, and my personal favorite, ketchup, mayo, & liverworst sandwiches), but at some point we had a bit of a falling out, and we haven't really been speaking in a while. I don't remember what happened, but I think things moved a little too fast a little too soon, and our relationship started to get unhealthy--for both of us. So we've been on a friendly break the past decade or so, but mayo is all the rage down here, so I've been giving her another chance as of late. And Dios mio, am I glad I did. Papi-pollo [fried chicken (pollo) + french fries (papas fritas, or papi)] costs $1.25 at most places and usually comes with a DELICIOUS mayo glaze. I don't know if it's the combination of chicken grease and mayo, or if the mayo down here is just better than back home, but I'm hooked. Give me some Big Cola to wash it down with, and I'm a happy man.

Vocab of the day - bulla (pronounced BOO YAH!) means noise, as in ¡mucho bulla! or ¡bastante bulla! or ¡bulla en la calle! I just love an excuse to say BOO YAH! so I was pretty pumped to find out it actually means something here.

thank you, Stuart Scott