Hace Mucho

After many days and 2,240 miles la familia Suave has returned to Casa Pepino in beautiful Pepinoville. Here is the sequence of our journey:

• Far Southern Ohio for the Suave Family Reunion. We gathered with kin in the foothills of Appalachia for three days of swimming and nature hikes (er, hike. Sorry blood. We'll watch nature from the window next year. My bad. Calomine for the itchies, little ones).
• Upstate New York to provide cheap labor. Pepino Suave dropped off the Pepino Chicks, Pepina and Li'l Pepinita, at Tia Agronima's Orchard/Fruit Stand. There they visited and toiled along with Tia Agronima, Tio Tractor, Prima Bailarina, Primo Lap Top, and Prima Pennsylvania. Li'l Pepinita even got to work the cash register at the fruit stand where fruit is sold at the same prices as cars. $2,476.08 for a quart of Slap Knee Rasberries. By the way, I love how fruit is named for the market: sugar snap beans, honey nut squash, dew drop peas. I made these up, but you get the idea. The market made like a gazilion dollars, so they''ll probably break even. I can understand, now, why farming needs to be heavily subsidized by our generous government 'cause you can make 3 bazillion dollars on a plot of sun kissed soy beans, but still have to walk barefoot in the snow. In the summer. I'm glad I teach for food....
• Upstate Vermont, where English is a second language. Lots of French spoken along our Northeast border, friends. I attended a teacher conference in a hotel that could have been anywhere in the U.S., on a street that could have been anywhere in the U.S. I really didn't feel I was in Vermont until I drove a few miles to Lake Champlain, where I camped until it rained. Then I felt like I was in Vermont, so I moved to the reknown Ho Hum hotel, down the street from the conference, where I felt like I was anywhere in the U.S. again.
• Side note/rage: Conference was tres excellent. More on that later. Let's talk about hotels, 'cause they got the same thing going as agriculture. Get this, it is a teachers conference, so we got a slim budget, 'cause we squander all our money for bulletin board decorations, and chalk. We decided not to get coffee as part of the hotel package. You know why? I'll tell you why: $16.00 a pot of joe is what these hotels are charging. Yea. And they charge the same for a stale, boxed lunch if you choose to cater that, too. $16 a box lunch. What a racket. I got my coffee from the gas station and stomped right by the registration counter with an air of " I'll show you", my hand gripping a styrofoam cup of steaming coffee, some dripping over the side 'cause I was stomping. I'm going to write my congressmen. I should charge that rate for each lesson. Each kid. Hey....

Stay tuned for more on our week, as well as a review on Papa Pepina, the caretaker of the Suave Estate while we were gone. Be good.

Tu querido vegetal,

P. Suave