On Breakfast

Well, that was awkward.

Usually, what I have found when living with host families is that you are constantly eating too much. They serve you big portions, they press additional food on you, and you don’t want to be rude so you eat it all. My host moms in the past have constantly asked me if I have eaten enough, if I want more, if I want snacks during the day between meals, etc. They even sometimes have asked me to name for them specific foods that I would like to eat, or have taken me to the grocery store to pick for myself. I couldn’t help but gain weight in Spain, France, and Chile, and I sometimes resented having to eat so much.

Here, however, I have had the opposite experience. To begin with, I only get two meals a day at my house, breakfast and dinner. I had been expecting lunch as well, but after looking at the description of Harvard homestays, I think that I may have just been getting an “extra” meal at other places I have stayed at. Fine. But on top of this, breakfast each day has been: (2) small pieces of white bread + jelly to put on top. I know that breakfast is treated differently in most Spanish-speaking countries, but I have lived in a few others and I’m not even what I would consider a huge breakfast eater, and I still thought this was pretty lean.

When I asked my host mom if we could swap out white bread for wheat and add a yogurt or a piece of fruit or something to the breakfast however, I got a lecture on how I couldn’t expect American breakfasts and how none of her other students had ever complained. Personally, I think others just hadn’t dared speak up – I know for a fact that at least the other student here right now supplements his breakfasts with food he buys himself. She said that she gave me the typical Argentine breakfast, and I just had to deal with it.

Mentioning how hungry I am in the mornings and how hungry I remain after breakfast had no effect, except to lead her to suggest that we could move dinner earlier. It wasn’t until I mentioned the name of the housing coordinator that she suddenly agreed to my “demands.”

Later, she came to my room to ask me exactly what type of wheat bread I would like and gave a conciliatory speech about how all people are different, and how most of the students she had housed hadn’t eaten hardly anything for breakfast. Which is probably true. But I am still a little astounded that it took so much negotiation just to get an extra piece of fruit or yogurt a day. I’ve been to the stores – that’s like 75 cents max.

Hopefully this little altercation doesn’t strain our relationship at all – because she is, otherwise, a very nice lady, and I love the location of her apartment. I just don’t want to starve myself while I’m here!