Found in Translation

The local park guards are the sincerest guys I know here. After awhile I came to realize that we have a mutual appreciation, and a similar viewpoint about the work we're all doing. People like them have kept me going when things seem pointless.

A few months ago I got a formal request from them, typed, printed, and addressed in an envelope, which was hand delivered to me. These are not guys who are exactly computer saavy or into writing things down, so it was pretty touching that they took me so seriously, even if it was a request for money (basically).

I'll share it just to give you a taste of the culture here, and the formality used in written communications:

[my name here]
Peace Corps Volunteer
Municipality of [my site here]
Present

By means of the present receive the warmest greetings on the part of the park guards of [my site here], at the same time we wish to desire you every type of success in your daily labor.

WE THE BELOW SIGNED all majority of age, Guatemalans, holding the title of Municipal Park Guards of the municipality of [my site here] of the department of [my department here], BEFORE YOU RESPECTFULLY direct ourselves in order to expound the following: FIRST: That it is of your knowledge that our work is practiced in the communal forest of the municipality in order to maintain and watch over the forests of our municipality, for which it is necessary to carry mountain backpacks in order to carry medicines for first aid and others. SECOND: For the reasons written above, and with all the respect that you deserve as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the municipality of [my site, department], at the same time we solicit to your good person and willingness that you would help us by donating three mountain backpacks.

Without anything else to add for you, we thank your fine attention and understanding.

Attentively,

[names and signatures of 3 park guards]

...to me it sounds pretty funny translated nearly literally into English! I've realized that my spoken Spanish is also quite a bit more formal than I speak in English, basically it´s natural to be a sponge and repeat whatever style of language you hear.

We could speculate on why written language, and even public spoken discourse, are so formal here ... vestiges of Spanish colonialism? acquisition of Spanish as a second language used mostly to speak with strangers and write formal documents? influence on Spanish from the local Mayan language? It's so interesting to reflect on the way that culture influences language -- and hey, vice versa, right?!

(And if you're wondering, I found a local outfitter: one backpack will cost $65, approximately 1/4 of their monthly salaries. I´m trying to convince them to solicit the bags from the new mayor, because I think it´s important people rely on their local systems when possible - and our town hall is in pretty good shape. But if they decide not to, it´s going to be hard to say no to such an earnest request!)

A Day in the Life: Guatemalan-German Christmas

So this post might be a little late at this point -- I was conceiving of it about a month ago as a response to a call for posts on a blog I'm mildly addicted to (That Wife). If you're not in a Christmas mood you can always bookmark it and come back in 11 months, though :-)

As background, I have a long-distance boyfriend/partner/marido/hombre/esposo/ch'mil whom I've not really mentioned on this blog. It's a confusing situation, but for the moment, it suffices to say that we spent Christmas Eve/Christmas Day with his family here in Guatemala and it was really great.

It was my first Christmas away from home, but it wasn't sad as I expected, just new. Here are some new traditions we got to try:

Christmas Eve Day, 9 am:
Woken up by the cat-scarf. This is a tradition we plan to replicate in the future.


10:30 am: We give the cat-scarf good-bye snuggles, and go off to begin the gluttony with a delicious brunch at a restaurant in a nearby city. Then we go in search of an elusive flower for boyfriend's mom's Christmas present. On the way, we walk through the market, which is an amazing and complete zoo.


1 pm: Lunch with boyfriend's family. Afterward we wash dishes, nap, and work on the computer, while I wrap a few presents.

4 pm: Family friends come to visit, and leave, and others come. The gluttony continues with tea, coffee, and rounds of spiced chocolate treats from Germany, plus US-style Christmas cookies we bought from a local bakery. At this point I've consumed in one day what in site I usually eat in three days.

7 pm: Mother-in-law and I go off to collect our Christmas tamales from her special supplier. It's freezing outside but I'm warmed by the boiling-hot tamales in my arms, and we admire the Christmas lights in the neighborhoods on our way home. Feels like Christmas.

The tamales come in two kinds: sweet with chocolate, and savory with raisins and red sweet pepper. Around 8 pm we eat dinner. Here are the tamales, or "paches" as they're called here:


11:00 pm: We light the Advent wreath and Christmas tree (German traditions), then sing some carols. Those Germans really know how to serenade their Christmas greenery. I mumble along and pretend to know the words. (I'm pro at this point with all that Mam practice.)


Safety first!:

After singing, we put all the presents on the table, one or two for each person. My boyfriend and I got basically two presents: a nice photo book of Guatemala from his family, and warm winter hats from my mom. (You know you're finally grown up when you get excited about...)

This was really different for me, but sort of liberating. At home everybody gets a LOT of presents, they go under the tree from Santa, and we open them on Christmas morning with stockings. At home we've "down-sized" since I was kid, but even last year seems quite extravagant comparatively.

I have a lot of dear childhood memories, but I admit I liked the one-present idea this year. It's fun to open something, but kind of seems totally besides the point. People in my site don't even really give Christmas presents, although kids might get some fruit or candy.

There is a bigger present coming, after all...

Waiting for baby Jesus to arrive (the fruit/moss/nativity under the tree is a Guate tradition).

Christmas morning, 12:00 am
The streets and skies erupt in pure pyrotechnic joy. For miles in every direction you can hear firework shells echoing in homage to baby Jesus, or perhaps simply in homage to the fact that Guatemalans just really love fireworks. After about five minutes the fireworks stop, and we give each other "the Christmas hug" (also a Guatemalan tradition). Then it's off to bed.

10 am
We roll out of bed, eat breakfast, and spend the morning relaxing. I'm content, but I do think of my mom's sticky buns!

12 pm:
Another round of fireworks. It's amazing how much Guatemalans love pyrotechnics.

1 pm:
We go out to eat for lunch, the big meal of the day. This was maybe the most different tradition for me-- I have never in my life gone out to eat on Christmas day, let alone for pizza! At home we usually eat a sandwich or cereal on our own for lunch on Christmas, then have appetizers and a big prepared dinner with the extended family in the evening.


3 pm:
Unlike at home in the US, Christmas is sort of winding down at this point, and we have another relaxed afternoon: we go for a walk, take a nap, fit in a Skype session with my fam and grandparents at home, and watch Andrea Bocelli's "My Christmas" video through dinner. (Not going to lie that I didn't love every second of it.)

7 pm:
Tamales, round two. We also eat a special German Christmas bread called stollen. (16% butter. yee-haw!)

My brother-in-law's baby Guatemalan fir made its debut this year. Public service announcement: The Guatemalan fir is an endangered species endemic to the Western Highlands, endangered precisely for its excellent Christmas-tree qualities, and its unfortunate propensity to drop seed only once every two years. (And in December, right around the time people would tend to cut them down - tough love, evolution, tough love.)


8 pm:
We capped off the day with an animated Christmas movie, then headed off to bed.

I really enjoyed Christmas this year, and not to sound corny, but I experienced first hand that it really is being with family and being part of their traditions that makes Christmas great, whether they're your traditions or not ! Less is where you are, what you eat, or what you receive...

Gender and identity in highlands Guatemala

One of the gals?

One of the guys?

I sometimes forget that I am a light-skinned, grotesquely tall alien. Then someone takes my picture in a group with local people and I’m reminded why small children usually either react to me with fascination or abject fright.

Yet beyond that, I put up these two pictures to illustrate an issue of identity that has been central to my experience here – gender.

I grew up in a small town in upstate New York wanting to think that my gender didn’t matter, that being female didn’t make me significantly different from any of my male peers. I distinctly remember the first week of third grade, when my teacher asked for some strong boys to help her hand out the math textbooks. The comment struck a strong chord – placed by whom and when, who knows – but I put my hand up and volunteered; and later that year I went on to beat all but two of the boys in my class in arm wrestling. I still remember so clearly those early affirmations that gender in itself is not a limitation.

So I guess it was odd for me to experience, coming here, that local attitudes surrounding my gender really did limit me, much more so than in the US. Having always wanted to be “gender-blind”, I didn’t really perceive it a lot at first. Yet over time I became more aware of the general inflexibility of gender roles - and accompanying attitudes. I also became more aware of my place as a pant-wearing female, smack dab in the middle of the two gender worlds, seemingly receiving the worst of both of them, especially as a foreigner to boot.

In a place where identity is assessed principally on two axes (first, foreigner or local; and later, female or male), I felt especially out of place, since locals – once having identified me as a foreigner - could not confidently place me on the female/male axis. I felt unwanted in either camp: uninvited to go work in the woods, even when I asked; uncomfortable walking alone at night; heckled by drunks in certain neighborhoods; plagued by the sense that my counterpart was frequently ignoring my comments and proposals; questioned by everyone whether I was afraid to live on my own. Yet neither was I invited to chit-chat with my female counterparts, or asked to help them at events, and am still met with skepticism that I can do my own cooking and cleaning.

It seems like I ought to offer some sort of breakthrough, a turning point to all of this; but there hasn’t been one, really. I’ve simply gone about figuring my identity here by getting to know more and more people, trying to prove that there are things I am capable of even if I can't fold 100 tamalitos in an hour or plant an acre of potatoes by hand in half a day. Overall, my experience hasn't been tough as some have it out in the really remote villages, and being female has given me a distinct advantage with the wonderful women's groups here.

And I've had the numerous little rebellions: taking joy in carrying heavy things in front of and with my counterpart and the park guards, wielding a machete, hiking fast with open enjoyment; fixing technology; wearing corte when it's appropriate; and always requesting in a quiet but firm way the respect I feel I deserve - not as a foreigner or a woman, but as a person.

[Note: 4/22/2013: As I remained longer in my community, I realized that like in many cultures, age was another important aspect of identity and social hierarchy. Being male would not have automatically brought me respect.  I still think that being a foreigner, first, and of ambiguous-but-female gender was more principal to the way I was perceived than age.]

Intercultural Communication, 101

I think that in any town, region, or country, you are bound to find a variety of people, and thus, a variety of communication styles. Even so, people in my town happen to err on the side of being more 'indirect' than not on the direct-indirect spectrum, and my formal counterpart himself tends to have the most indirect of local tendencies. I myself tend to err on the direct side, and since we come from opposite perspectives on communication, I think our time together has led to lots of personality-expanding learning experiences for both us.

Some days I feel as though my counterpart and I have come to our own sort of peace: he is more direct with me, and I'm more indirect with him, without being too timid or too pushy. Other days it still seems as though we are communicating from different planets using walkie-talkies that someone's little brother accidentally dropped in the toilet.

In my first three or six months I was in a flexible, more passive mindset, open to getting my bearings and learning “when yes means yes and yes means no” (in the wise words of our training director). Now that I’m in my last year, I'm going to admit that I hear the clock ticking: I'm impatient, stir-crazy, and antsy to get something substantive done. It's still crucial to remain flexible, but in this context, attaining fluency in “indirect-speak” has been on my mind more than ever.

In that spirit, I present to you a sampling of common phrases, translated from "indirect-speak" (What You Say) to "direct-speak" (What You Mean):

What You Say (WYS): Yes, that is totally necessary. I agree.

What You Mean (WYM): The idea may interest me right now in this particular second since you happen to mention it, but the honest truth is that I would probably watch paint dry for 24 consecutive hours than follow through on what you’re proposing.

WYS: “Yeah, that’s what I’m looking at, that seems good to me, we’ll do that.”

WYM: “It seems that I genuinely agree with you, since I am nodding and making eye contact with you, but in reality I’m actually mentally planning which fields I’m going to be planting potato in next weekend, I’ll get back to you on that idea next year, if I remember.”

WYS: Let’s have a meeting on the 13th.

WYM: Actually, let’s plan to have a meeting on the 13th, but it’ll actually be held a week earlier, and we’ll call you between two days and two minutes before to let you know.

WYS: Okay, we’ll leave at 9 tomorrow.

WYM: If I’m feeling punctual, I’ll roll in around 10:30.

WYS: Yes, I will be there tomorrow.

WYM: I would really love to be there tomorrow, however, since I already have six other obligations for that same time, it will be difficult for me to actually arrive. However, I hope you will accept my agreement to be there as an apology in advance for my absence.

WYS: Yes. I’d love to.

WYM: Probably not.

WYS: Yes, that’s fine.

WYM: No, not likely.

You also have subtle differences in communication. Aside from downright fibbing and an aversion to saying no, local (and you could argue, generally, Guatemalan) language is simply more formal and protracted. For example, instead of “Could you pass me my pen please?”, you have to say, “Could you do me the big favor of passing me my pen?” or “Will it be that you can pass me my pen?” or “I don’t know if you could do me the big favor of passing me my pen?”

Another clear example: the ubiquitous “welcome” and “acknowledgements” that must be given at every public forum, lest people be put off by the informality of it all. What in the US would be, “Thanks everyone for coming”, turns into: “Before everything else, I just would like to thank everyone for their presence today, anticipating their valuable efforts in carrying out this small project which we are carrying out, and which I am sure will prove to be quite valuable for us.”

Obviously, there is a lot of room for indirect-communicators to be perceived as long-winded and pointless, and for direct-communicators to be perceived as downright rude. And then you also have the other side of indirect speak: What You Say is What You Mean, but the listener is reverse-translating into Oblique Speak, converting WYS/WYM into What He or She Understands. I’m getting better at recognizing such situations, but this has happened to me several times when I forget about cultural differences, and chatter away to people as if I were at a sorority social, thinking they will appreciate my friendliness, e.g.:

What You Say/What You Mean: [to a person who is arriving late]: Gosh, you must have a lot of work to do today!

What He/She Understands: I am personally offended by your tardiness, explain yourself.

WYS/WYM: “Don’t worry, there’s no rush, we’ll be here until 5.”

WHSU: “There is a rush, be sure to get back to me by 5!”

(If there really was no rush, you wouldn’t say anything at all. That’s the assumed baseline state of existence.)

Communication is something I love and have always felt fairly good at, and so it came as a surprise to me how frustrating and tiring it could be. I realize now that my cross-cultural exposure was low before coming to Guatemala, and the challenge was something I really needed to grow as a person. All part of the process of identifying and stretching my limits...

Show me your mental map; Techniques for navigating a new cultural landscape

One of the most valuable benefits of Peace Corps service, I think, is an extended-length, purely experiential lesson on culture. So what is culture? I read a few things for a graduate sociology class once about culture, but in the past year I’ve had the chance to live it and reflect on it quite a bit. Ultimately I think the metaphor of culture as a shared “mental map" – which I first came across in Earl Babbie’s work, I think – is particularly helpful.

So culture: comprises the shared features of individuals´ mental maps that indicate, like those of any map, both the nature of reality and how to navigate that reality.

To borrow the idea from Babbie and sociology and develop it a little further from my own perspective: From birth we develop a mental map which is somewhat congruent with that of others around us, most heavily influenced by family, friends, teachers, and other influential persons. Every person has one of these maps, and each map bares differing similarity to others´ maps. Our map may be close that of our parents´ or totally different, but we will usually share quite a bit in common. And the thing that helps bridge differences in our native state, city or town, especially our native households, is that we know the landscape intimately. That helps us to converse about a common feature even when we have differing representations on the map. We come to know the subtle range of differences in the representations of these features, and form a catalogue of these representations that we can refer to.

As a PCV not only are you are surrounded by people with a very different mental map than the one you hold onto, you are in an unfamiliar landscape, as well. You don't even know what variation is out there or what features are necessarily important. You’re frantically trying to sketch out new features based on what you hear and observe of others. But rather than the 18-21 years you had to form and test the mental map that you carried with you when entering the adult world of the US, you have about six months to make some sort of usuable map of your new landscape, and learn how to orient your own pre-existing mental map with the local map – whenever and however it is necessary.

Sounds tough, and it is. But, it’s do-able. It’s also indispensible to surviving and working in the local culture.

One easy example is cold beverages. My mental map tells me that cold foods may not always do good things to my stomach. I know that Guatemalans´ mental maps usually tell them that it is a bad idea to drink cold things when you have a sore throat. If I feel skeptical that it´s a good idea to take a cold drink I´m offered, I say I´ve got a sore throat. Works like a charm. I don´t have to drink it, and no one is offended that I won´t take what they´ve offered.

To be fair this is kind of a lame trick; I am not getting people to understand my mental map – just manipulating theirs to make it coincide with my own. But what's easier? Tell someone I've got a cold, or give a three-hour lecture on hygiene and microbe pathology? While these tricks are useful, genuine intercultural exchange takes a lot more work.

What I am finding as a PCV is that depending on the person, getting people to really understand my mental map -- and understanding theirs -- takes a lot of time, patience, and conversation. Even then there are people – for example, rural male farmers or very old people - with whom I feel I can never really communicate a significant part of my mental map, or understand a significant part of theirs. (That is, the unique part other than what almost all humans have in common, by virtue of certain biological and physiological realities.) Rather, if I want to communicate with them, I have to adapt my mental map to theirs as much as possible. Yet this is challenging, since we’re talking about something that is largely inaccessible to me due to social and linguistic barriers - the mind of a rural farmer or an elder.

So the natural solution around this is that I gravitate to work most with people whose mental maps are most compatible with mine: young people, school teachers, and young to middle-aged women, that is to say, people with malleable mental maps or whose experience and perspective more closely matches my own. No matter how similar the perspective, you are usually wisest off in trying to guide people to understand, or at least follow, your own mental map using their own. The more similar the two maps are, the easier it is for us to actually communicate our maps to each other. (And the more able and willing the other person is to share their map so that I can understand it, incidentally.)

But no matter how effectively you can bend, mimic, adapt, guide, even with good friends in my town I’m usually left feeling that there will always be significant portions of our mental maps that will be mutually unvisited and misunderstood. And, it’s always treacherously easy to get stuck in the woods, trying to figure out what to make of our conflicting map information, and with no compass to mediate our surroundings. In which case, a shrug, a smile, and a change of conversation do wonders.

Note: In response to a commenter; it's not that I want to spread my mental map - and it is of course crucial to absorb and understand others' maps - but the point of my post is that effectively communicating the discordant features on my map, while often very difficult, is sometimes necessary both to achieve common goals and to form genuine relationships. Thanks for that, though - this hits on a crucial point in "development" work generally- the dangerous waters of "they should think like I think!"

Life on the rollercoaster

What to report of late? It's interesting, but in these past two weeks since my vacation I am really getting back into the “life here is so worthwhile” and I dare say, on occasion, “I love it here!” frame of mind, which is great. It is so interesting to note my own mood swings and the “rollercoaster” of emotion as my good friend from my training town commented on her blog. It is fascinating to me how we humans are able to adapt ourselves to different situations, and the processes we go through during that adaptation - how different my feelings can be from week to week and day to day.

Things are looking up primarily for the fact that the new environmental educator has started in my office, and coincidentally a whole pile of potential work and collaborations have started showing up. My counterpart also recently suggested monthly planning meetings - which I have mentioned a few times and have been fantasizing about for months - and I am really psyched. In this month's planning meeting we already planned October's planning meeting. I am sure it will actually happen, too, +/-7 days from its scheduled date. Amazing! My philosophy in these past nearly six months has been that for sustainability's sake there is only so much you can exert yourself if local counterparts don't take initiative. So when they do, it is a real eureka moment! It just requires a lot of patience... perhaps 24 months of patience...

In the months before summer vacation sets in we're primarily doing a survey on local opinions about tourism, as well as some activities with local schools and young people, including promoting the park and recreation center as a good location for the sixth-graders' farewell party. I feel good about this work. It's important in my view to make the community aspect of “community tourism” actually happen, and not leave it as a half-baked idea. (Of which there are unfortunately many in my municipality and in my office, specifically.) We also are starting a project with local Mayan priests to name and “label” the 20-something altars in the protected areas of the muni with wood signs, assuming the priests give it the OK. I am thinking this collaboration could lead to some cool projects later on, too. Not to mention everything else we'd like to do in November and December...

So at this point we have a ton of work to do and it constantly feels like herding cats. Or at times, juggling them. Efficiency is a whole other concept here and keeping track of all the loose ends requires a lot of organization and patience. I am kind of hoping I don't adapt too much – could make reverse-adaptation to the US work-world a real shock!

A recent downturn of events is that Mishi has gone on the lamb, presumably in hunt of a nice sexy lady friend, or several nice sexy lady friends. He took off three days ago, disappointingly the day before I got a package of toys and catnip for him from my parents. (Heaven help my future children from the spoiling they are going to get!) The package is a whole other cultural commentary for another day...

The downturn is mostly because he had been acting out-of-character and aggressive lately, and gave me a good bite or two in the last two weeks. Per standard protocol I had been keeping an eye on him since the last bite to be sure the aggression was behavioral and not medical (rabies, for instance) – but since he took off, you can't say for sure. So, rabies prophylaxis it is; I get the final shot on Monday. I really doubt he had rabies, but nevertheless, the idea scares the hell out of me, so I called in. The Peace Corps Medical Officer was really understanding on the phone, although clearly not too excited I'd adopted a quasi-feral street cat. Fair enough.

But you had to know him. What a great cat. I hope he comes home.

Adventures in Guatemalan food: Paches

At the basis of many a Guatemalan adventure in food is the phenomenon of being “tortillar-ed”. Not to be confused with the action of “tortillar” in the sense: “The masa was tortillared into tortillas,” “tortillar-ed” refers to the rather passive phenomenon of being offered significant quantities of food no less than three times between your house and your final destination (generally involving significant quantities of tortillas, as implied by the verb). And here in Guatemala, being offered food is as good as eating it, so more appropriately, to be tortillar-ed implies being force-fed a large quantity of food within a short time via the Guatemalan ethic of hospitality and sharing.

I do not have to preoccupy myself much about being tortillar-ed. There are other things that occupy the prime worrying slots: the well-being of my wandering street cat in a land of rabies, vicious dogs, apathetic people, and assorted diseases; making friends and fitting in; trying to understand what people really mean to say or not say; avoiding spending more than 10% of my week in church; pick-pockets on the bus; attempting work of some value; among others. Now and again, however, I am tortillar-ed. And I mean hard.

Here I would be referring to my experience with one of the most popular typical foods of this region of Guatemala: paches. Paches are a mushy porridge of starch (either rice or potato) with a pepper sauce and large chunk of chicken in the center (bone optional) wrapped in a big green leaf and then boiled. They're good-sized and inevitably the meal of choice at every special event in my town (goodbye parties, birthdays, lo que sea), served on a styrofoam tray with two slices of Wonder-bread style white bread, which no one here eats under any other circumstances whatsoever. (I'm still trying to wrap my head around this particular tradition.) In some towns of this region the folks with economic means to do so make them every Saturday, although I assume they forgo the styrofoam tray and probably even the white bread- I get the sense that's a special touch for events.

Paches de papa (potato), served with white bread and a warm pineapple drink.

While I inevitably feel wonderful about being included in whatever special event warrants the paches - even if most of the conversation is in Mam and I'm left nodding and smiling - I have very divergent opinions about them depending on what they're made of. I'm always fairly anti-white bread and anti-styrofoam, but aside from that... Paches of potato are delicious. I could eat maybe 3 or 4 of them in one sitting. To me they taste something like curry. Whenever I eat them I always finish feeling more connected to my local community members and somehow happier to be alive. Definitely my favorite local tipico food. End of story.

Paches of rice are bad news. About five bites into my first one I'm remembering how awful they are and my stomach begins to feel as though it is full of sawdust. Nevertheless you have to smile and act extremely excited, because paches of rice are many people's very favorite food here, associated with happy memories of community and family and celebration.

It is common to give two paches here, as a type of snack or small meal, and typically I can manage one paches of rice just fine, and fake my way through the second. The striking beauty of paches is that they come wrapped in a huge leaf, so if you're sneaky, you can actually give the impression you've eaten everything, even when you feel another bite would possibly cause you to explode. I don't mean to come off as ungrateful or wasteful of food, and anyone who knows me knows I almost religiously subscribe to the clean-plate club. But man, you have to be there. There is only so much flavorless twice-boiled rice one can fit inside oneself. You get to be pretty thankful for that leaf.

The worst was when I was invited to the birthday lunch for the 1-year-old daughter of the coordinador of the Office of Municipal Planning. It was actually also the best, because the coordinador invited everyone from the muni a week ahead of time with printed, hand-addressed invitations, made a special arrangement with a local microbus driver to take us all to his aldea, paid for all our bus fares, was clearly so proud to present lunch to all of us in honor of his baby girl. It was really touching to be part of, if kind of comical. All of the characters from the muni traipsing out to this party was undeniably a bit reminiscent of an episode of The Office - if The Office were titled “The Muni” and 95% of the dialogue was in Mam.

At any rate: THREE PACHES for each person! Wow. It was incredible. The family pride was palpable; they certainly must have spent a fair chunk of change to make three paches for something like 40 people (as well as buying THREE professional cakes). I ended up taking my third paches away in a little plastic bag, as is socially acceptable here, since I couldn't even fake that I had touched it. No aguanté, pues. It's so weird, too. I usually can eat so much, and even immediately following the two paches I ate an enormous slice of cake.

But another rice paches, no. They're my kryptonite.