Pick-Me-Up

Doughnuts!
Originally uploaded by russandval.

I said I was going to continue telling you about our trip to the beach but there's just not much to tell. We went to the beach. It was fun.

I'm pretty unenthusiatic right now- I've caught a nasty headcold. Alicia has one, too, and there's reports of a few sore throats among the team. Oh, the dangers of team missions! I did go to the pharmacy to find medicine for it. What they gave me isn't as good as my trusty Dayquil/Nyquil combo but seems to be getting the job done.

On our way home for supper this afternoon, we stopped in our corner market. We were just going to pick up some potatoes, which are kept along with the other vegetables outside the main part of the store (you have to carry your vegetables the wrong direction through the checkout stand to get to fruit, bread and anything else you might need). Anyway, we wandered into the main part of the store. There is a glass case in the middle that usually has a variety of sweets in it. Russ glanced in the case, which, usually, is full of cakes with prunes and other unidentifiable fillings. But today he discovered...doughnuts!!!

You have to understand, doughnuts are a rare find here. Dunkin' Donuts once opened a shop here in the city but it quickly closed, apparently due to lack of interest. (Sidenote- one day when we were out shopping, I noticed the old Dunkin' Donuts sign and insisted we had to go check it out just on the off chance that it wasn't an old sign at all. It was an old sign.) But whether you eat them American style (for breakfast) or Canadian style (for dessert), doughnuts have been a big part of our lives. Until now, of course.

So imagine our shock and delight upon finding a tray of doughnuts in a small corner store in the middle of Salvador. We immediately bought some then raced home to eat dinner so we could eat them for dessert. (I know, we could have just eaten them outright, but I'm sick and I just figured I needed something a little better on my stomach before that!)

As we bought the doughnuts we briefly acknowledged that these might not taste like North American doughnuts. They might be horrible. They might be like the packaged brownies we bought or like the fake cheddar cheese. But we quickly pushed those thoughts to the backs of our minds and took the chance.

The verdict? Definitely doughnuts. As Russ said, "They tasted like a very fresh Wal-Mart doughnut." I prefer Tim Horton's to Wal-Mart, but I'll take what I can get! That's not to say there wasn't a Brazilian spin on them- they had been sliced open and filled with chocolate (the one with chocolate sprinkles) and doce de leite. But actually, the modification was quite good!

So yes, this is a Val-getting-very-excited-about-nothing post, but I'm on decongestants! What do you expect?

In other news, today we paid our deposit to attend the missionary conference in January. We'll share more about it as it gets closer, but I'm already looking forward to it!