A • D A Y • I N • A • B A K E R Y

 

"Quesitos"

I have had the privilege and opportunity to travel to various countries and places with my family. While being on another country, one is a tourist, and usually stand out. Since in between the to and fro of things, we stop to try new foods, to take pictures, basically, do anything and everything to stand out. As part of a class assignment, I was instructed to play the part of tourist for a day. I decided that I wanted to try and play off my best impression of a British accent, and decided to go to a bakery not too far from my house, and not to far also from the common tourist area of Isla Verde. The name of the bakery was "Panaderia Metropolitana". I discovered this bakery while on a volunteer work one night, and what impressed me the most, was that it as a 24 hour bakery.

  While in the line, I was getting cold feet. I was so nervous, I could hear the sound of my heartbeat in my ears. I wondered if they would look at me funny, if I would be so nervous that I would start to laugh; so many other things filled my head in that moment. I had never felt so nervous! When it was my turn to order, I started speaking in a British accent, and I stated that I found this bakery while driving without aim in order to see other aspects of the island. I noted that the person looked at me in a weird way, and I started to panic a bit, because it looked as if she didn't understand me. It was here that I to panicked internally. She started to flash at me with her hands that she didn't understand me, and started to look for someone that did speak English. She finally found someone in the back that spoke English,  at this point I gave up on trying to do the British accent impression. I told that I wanted to buy some sweets, but that I didn't know which. He then proceded to recommend me "quesitos", "tembleque", "tres leches" and "flan de queso".

"Tembleque"

  Although my impression of the British accent was kind of off in parts of the conversation because I was so nervous, I think that they really didn't believe I was a tourist, and the way they would look at me made it even more true. Fortunately, the lady that took my order first didn't understand my English, which prompted the change in the person, and thus made me regret speaking in the British accent, because it made me really self conscious. While pretending to be a tourist, I experienced first hand the different treatment that is given to tourists, even though I think that they didn't believe me, they went along with it. Even though I think I got a treatment that was a little courteous and more friendly than usual, I don't think that the treatment, in this particular place, was not going to be much different than the treatment that a local would get. Regardless, I was glad to have the experience to be a tourist in my own town. This experience is one I will certainly be doing for fun in the future.