Thursday, September 19

Today we all woke up really late, like around 12.Maria Jesus and I were kind of laying in bed still waking up, when our younger cousin Monse, Flo, and Josefa came in carrying a rabbit. I touched it, only to realize that it was dead! Apparently Charly had caught it in one of his traps this morning, and was planning to smoke it and then eat it. I guess that’s the deep country for you.

We ate breakfast, and then went outside to fly kites. Flying kites is a very popular tradition during the week of September 18^th. I was pretty bad at it, so I let Maxi launch the kite and once it was safely in the air I took the string.

After a while, the adults called us in to eat lunch. We ate, and then Seyla, Maria Jesus, and I walked over to the house of one of Maria Jesus’s friends Leo. Jesus lives in Talca, so she comes to the country a lot more. She has a big group of friends here who all live in Talca and come for vacations here. We walked into the house and talked with Leo’s family for a while (as is the custom here) and then Leo offered to give us rides on his motorbike. We accepted, and we each took a turn riding in the back of the bike down the dirt road. It was exhilarating!

Then we walked back to the house. Later I went with my cousin Anais on like a 10 minute walk to this tiny one room store to buy sunflower seeds. On the way back it started raining and we had to run. When we got back, I ate dinner, talked with the adults for a while, and then Leo picked me, Maxi, Jesus, Seyla, and Camillo up in his truck to take us to a party. The party was at a bar in town, but when we pulled into the parking lot here were literally no cars. Apparently 11 here is way too early for a party to start, so we went to a store and bought some alcohol and took it up to this hill overlooking a lake. They drank, and we talked, and I froze to death because it was so cold and so windy. Then we left and went back to the bar. There were still no cars in the lot but we decided to go in anyway. When we walked into the room, it was literally empty.

There were lights, and a DJ in the corner blasting music, and a bar ready to serve drinks, but literally no people. I thought we would leave because this was an incredibly awkward party, but they decided to stay. They ordered drinks from the bar (I was really surprised that they would serve people under age here) and we danced for a while (awkwardly because I am not a good dancer to begin with and it was infinitely more awkward because there was nobody else in the room). We stayed until like 2:30, and then Leo took us home, we sat around the table and laughed for a while about how terrible the party was, and then we went to sleep around 4.