I help teach English as a Second Language one night a week at my church. I figure if God has blessed me with a gift of teaching, then I should use it. So I try.
The students in the class are adult learners, with a huge amount of courage. My heart goes out to them because I know what a great challenge this is, and that they are doing it to better their lives and the lives of their families.
For our Thanksgiving holiday celebration, we had a fiesta!
Everyone brought a dish.
A potluck if you will.
As the students meandered in, bearing their platters, bowls, and such, they brought great joy and smiles with them. In the Hispanic culture, food is a big deal. They find it insulting if you do not accept food that they offer. Keep in mind, this is not Tex-Mex, like I’m accustomed to, this is good home-cooked, authentic Mexican food. I try to stay away from Menudo or anything that may be made from bovine intestines.
As the plates were uncovered, revealing an assortment of great smelling foods, I could pick out a few familiar items. Among the recognizable were Chile Rellanos, rice, enchiladas, and fajitas. I gravitated towards those.
One of the students wanted me to try her dish. A fajita-type thing-a-majigie. With her hand gestures, thick accent, and broken English, she explained to me to begin with a corn tortilla, put a lot of beef on it, add a little cabbage, and a little cilantro, and a little caliente sauce.
I finished filling my plate and sat down to eat. Everything was good, but the fajita dish was my favorite. I nibbled on the other things, but hoovered the fajita.
When the meal was finished, and we were cleaning up, another teacher was talking to the fajita cook.
That’s when I discovered, (gulp), that it wasn’t beef after all, (big gulp), that the delicious, succulent, tender meat that I piled onto my tortilla, and ate with great enthusiasm, was after all, (gulp),
tongue.
Tongue.
TONGUE!!
Just in case you didn’t catch all that.
I ate tongue!
Angel Wheeler 