The Best Cookie I've Ever Had

Some of my favorite memories of this place will always be the times where Leigh Ann and I are just sharing stories and laughing--often till we cry. I adore laughing. It is one of my favorite things to do, but it is always so much more precious when spent with someone else who can also release joy unbridled. Today, we ventured out for the first time since the orphanage, and this time, we were walking. We are going to Taxco and Teotihuacan this weekend, and we needed to go to an ATM. So, we walked to the local super market and back. While at the Superama, we were looking around and were fascinated by some new sweets and other dulces we had never seen before. All kinds of candies were arranged on a table, including a neatly wrapped brown package of something including both chocolate and cinnamon. That sounded like a magic recipe to me, and it was a cheap package, so I decided to buy it although we couldn't actually see what was inside. (Which Mama Bear Leigh Ann lectured me about. . ."Of course, you would buy the one thing that you can't tell what it actually looks like, Sarah.") The outside of the package said tabletas, so I figured that they were cookies of some sort. We had a delightful walk (although hot and uphill--I'm super out-of-shape), and when we returned, we decided to break out the cookies. I upwrapped the brown package to find individually wrapped, dark circular wonders that smelled delicious. I bit into it, and although it was hard, I was pleasantly struck by the taste of dark chocolate with a hint of cinnamon. Leigh Ann tried one bite and thought it tasted too strong, so she didn't eat the rest. Meanwhile, I am devouring this cookie. It was really sweet--you could actually feel the crunch of the sugar between your teeth--but there was also a dark chocolate, spicy bitterness to it. I was chatting with my brother via Skype and started bragging about how I was eating the best cookie ever. As I was licking the crumbs off of my fingers, I began to wonder if I could make them at home and remembered that there was a section on the package that said how it was made. You would think that it would have occurred to me that cookie makers don't give out their secret recipes or expose how they make their delicious confections, but I was in "best cookie ever" ecstacy, so common sense was absent. As I began to read, I started laughing until tears streamed down my face. In short, in Spanish, it said:
"Heat a liter of water or milk before (word I didn't know at the time. . .it's "boiling") (another word I didn't know. . ."place") a tablet of chocolate for (another word I didn't know. . ."hot chocolate") (another word I didn't know. . ."dissolve") (yet another. . ."beating") with a (when am I ever going to be fluent?!. . ."grinder") until it makes a (froth)."
The sad thing is that it wouldn't even have mattered if I knew those words because I ate it without reading the package. I ate an entire liter's worth of hot chocolate. Leigh Ann and I died laughing with tears streaming down our faces. Then, at dinner tonight, we told our host mother and housemates, and we had yet another laugh. Needless to say, I may not be sleeping tonight, but at least I had the best cookie I've ever eaten.

With laughs and love,
Sarah