Cooking up a storm

This has been a truly exhausting but exhilerating week. Whilst preparing for my final cooking exam I have also had a friend staying here who has to be the easiest of house guests as she knows her way around the city. Good job really as I have been otherwise engaged and hardly the most attentive hostess.
I have been driving through the back alleys of local markets to purchase all the ingredients for the cooking exam that myself and 11 other class mates had to take on Sat. Our final task was to budget/prepare/cook/serve a buffet for 100 people. We had invitations to this event for only 5 valued and loved ones, and then we had to pay for and organise drinks/barman/rent plates&cutlery/flowers and buy all the ingredients. The market was an experience such sights, scents and sounds: Chickens hanging over tiled counters with claws & head still in place and blood dripping down the wall, our leg of lamb was presented with great pride as the tail had been left on lest we forget which poor deceased beast it was. Bowls of viscera, cows stomach, bulls balls and more were on display and customers yelled for prices whilst prodding at the animal anatomy. We loaded up the boxes and set off back to school with clusters of herbs trailing from bags full of vegetables and filling the car with their aroma, 13 chickens trussed up, chicken livers, pork and our woolie leg of lamb; I wonder had we been stopped for any reason what the police would have made of our "stash".
Friday was 7 hours of prep and Sat was 7 hours of cooking. Having spent months injury free in the kitchen I sliced my thumb open in the first hour and had to wear a plastic glove which gave me the look of a culinary Michael Jackson! It also slowed me down ( after reading "Kitchen Confidential" I feel the burns and cuts are the stripes/medals one earns) when having to prepare 80 tamales. Wrapping each individually in corn husks is very time consumming and more so because my entrada "buddy" was 3 hours late.
The buffet went well and I stayed back in the kitchen to re-load serving plates and because my uniform was dirty and my glove pooling with blood in the thumb area. I managed to find a clean one in time for the chefs speech and I was very touched by the fact he singled me out for mention. He said he was proud of his country and it's culinary delights but more so that an English women would come and chop onions and chili's in his kitchen and share of his knowledge and passion. Well words to that effect like I said I still have a long way to go with mastering the langauge.
No doubt they thought I would give up long before the end as 5 others had done. There were days when I did not want to go or wanted to leave early when they thrust a guinea pig(local delicacy high in protein) on the slab and said gut and prepare it. I grew frustrated at the lack of comprehension ( mine) for 10 words that all mean corn in some form or another. The language threw me off so often and I know there is a lot I missed due to my lack of Spanish but still I did it and I feel like it is one of my greater achievements especially as it was not in my mother tongue.
I then left my "buddy" to the washing up as pay back for the 3 hours he left me alone. I came home to a glass of bubbly and then slept 12 hours straight. After my long summer break ( all of July) I plan to go back and do the Patisserie course which is what I originally planned to do but got swayed by a friend on to Peruvian Plates. I have to say great as it all was I doubt very much I will be serving week night dinners of grilled bulls testicles, chicken blood, pan fried guinea pig or stir fried cows stomach. I know one man's meat is another man's poison........