La Gringa is warm and toasty (and don't call me an ex-patriot)

Lincoln Memorial

We've had a (relatively) cold and rainy couple of days here in La Ceiba, Honduras. Yesterday we had 3 inches of rain and today might be close to that. (See my rain counter under the weather gadget in the sidebar.) I won't report the temperatures because judging by the US and Canadian weather reports I've seen, most of you would just snort or guffaw at the thought of being cold in this temperature, but my tropical attire included sweat pants and socks for the past two days.

I had planned to make fajitas for dinner and was lamenting the fact that I didn't have anything to make a nice hot pot of soup instead. El Jefe said he had a craving for potato soup so...Eureka! I had potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic. The fajitas can wait since Honduran beef needs a couple of days marinating with meat tenderizer anyway.

El Jefe was going to watch the Honduran-Chile futbol (soccer) game upstairs at 6 p.m. so that seemed a good time for me to retire to the kitchen. I turned on the downstairs television to keep me company while I was peeling potatoes. Searching around all the usual channels, I was stopped dead by HBO. A lovely older black woman (Bettye LaVette, I later found out) was singing with Jon Bon Jovi − "Change is a-coming." Wow. That was so powerful. I actually started tearing up and felt shivers.

This was an HBO inauguration special called "We are one" that possibly everyone in the world knew about except me. I'm not sure how much of the show I missed but I watched/listened from that point on. I was really emotional going from the warm fuzzies to the shivers and tearing up several times. Beyonce's singing of America was the perfect ending.

What a beautiful show! What great music! And best of all, no politics, just celebrating, instead of bashing, America. I am a patriot.

Which brings me to my next point: People who have left their home countries and live in another are called expatriates, not ex-patriots! It has nothing to do with patriotism.

And finally, the soup was fantabulous, seasoned to perfection, and Honduras won 2-0! A real warm and fuzzy evening.

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P.S. If you missed the special, you can apparently watch it on the HBO site IF (big if) you live in the US. I wanted to watch the beginning that I missed and received this notice:

This video is available only in the US and its territories.
We apologize to the rest of the world.

Darn! This kind of thing makes me feel like a third-world citizen.