Curveballs

Being on exchange throws you a lot of curveballs, sometimes completely different from what you were expecting.  Sometimes they’re really hard to accept and move past, but other times they’re rather simple.   Nevertheless, in either situation one usually must improvise to work around the difficulty.  Today was one of those days.

In school my classmates asked if I could bring something in for a surprise party tomorrow for what I guess is the hall monitor of sorts.  I’m not entirely sure what her job title is to be honest.  Anyways, I said that I would make a cake, so they attempted to write my name on the board under cake.  I didn’t realize they were struggling because I was attempting to read Harry Potter, but when I looked up they had crossed out the letters Ketlr and had written “a Americana” instead.  Haha.

When I got home I decided that I would try to make tandycakes, even though if I did I would probably use up my peanut butter.  Anyone American who has ever spent an extended amount of time in a foreign country will tell you that this is a depressing situation.

Around 5 o´clock I made my way over to my host father’s house (not a very tiring journey seeing that it’s just next door) and asked if I could make the dessert there.  He looked over the recipe and said that he had everything.  But then he realized he didn’t have vanilla extract, so he called his wife and she brought some home on her way from work.  Turns out he didn’t have flour or baking powder either…but we took care of that.  Everything was going well until I tried to take the hot milk/butter mixture out of the microwave and I spilled it.  So I cleaned up the mess and estimated how much I had spilled and put more milk and butter in the microwave.  Did you know that about 2 tablespoons of milk and a bit of butter after 2 minutes in the microwave sort of hardens?  Well it does.  But you know me, I just threw it in the mix anyways!  The ovens here are a little funky, so I had to estimate the time-I’d like to think I did a fairly decent job!

Thankfully I didn’t use up all the peanut butter in the jar, so I still have a bit of comfort food left. :D  But, he didn’t have chocolate, and neither did my host family to improvise and put on top.  So, instead we improvised.  I put chocolate sprinkles on top.  I suppose that life throws you curveballs anywhere you find yourself, but it seems that on exchange I have experienced more than any year!

My Tandycakes!