Life is full of fun surprises...

One of the things that I love about life in El Salvador is that you never know when you're going to get a fun surprise experience. (It can be frustrating at times too--like when you have a planned event and other things pop up and supercede your schedule.) Monday was a day when we got a fun surprise learning experience for the kids.

Jose showed up with a giant pole of sugar cane--several feet long. He had been out doing visiting and had picked it up and was stopping by our house to talk before church. We wanted the kids to see the sugar cane up close and Jose said he'd cut some off for them to try. He asked for a machete so Nathan happily went and got his new machete to use and Jose hacked off a section of the sugar cane. We followed him outside where he hacked at it to remove the outer layer of the cane.

He then told me to take it inside and wash any dirt off of it so I rinsed it well with bottled water. Then he used a kitchen knife and cut it down into a length of about 3 inches and quartered it lengthwise. He then demonstrated how to put it into your mouth and chew on it to release the juices and told us you don't eat it--just suck the juices out of it.

Unfortunately, it wasn't terribly sweet and we didn't like it that much. We did chew on it a bit, though, enough to get a good taste of it. While we were rather timid in our method of chewing on the cane, Jose's method was to put the whole piece in his mouth and chew it till all the juice was gone and then throw away the pulp that was left. He said it normally is sweeter but that because it's the end of the rainy season the rains may have affected the taste. Even though we didn't enjoy the taste it was a fun surprise in our day and a good learning experience for the kids. Rarely a dull moment around here. :)