Saturday, February 22

My whole family slept in the same room, and the room stayed dark the whole morning, so we didn’t end up getting out of bed until noon! I got up and dressed, and then chilled for a while with the kids I’d met last night. With Connie, we went outside to pick blackberries (a truck comes by in the afternoon to weigh and buy them, so it’s a good way to make a little money). Then Miguel Esteban invited me to go for a ride on his motorbike. We went pretty for a long ride to his grandmother’s house to get helmets. I met his aunt and grandmother and we talked for a while and they showed me the house. They were super sweet and welcoming and told me about the family and showed me pictures of all my cousins when they were babies. Then we put on the helmets and went speeding down the road and back to the house.

We arrived just in time for lunch. After lunch I talked to Cristobal for a little while over Skype, and then we all got ready to go to this natural pool nearby. I didn’t have a bathing suit or anything, so I just put on shorts and the shirt I had worn to bed the night before. Monse, Josefa, Flo, Fernanda, Octavio, Maxi, Miguel Esteban, Felipe, and Dani all went. We sat in the back of my uncle’s pickup truck and drove a way out in the desert on this barely-there dirt road to get to the lake. It was kind of gross getting into the lake because there was a bunch of moss and it was slippery and disgusting but once we got into the middle of the lake, it was deep and clear and great. We swam over to the other side and had a bunch of fun diving and cannonballing off the rocks into the deep water. We stayed for a few hours, and then rode home in the back of the truck getting our wet clothes covered in dirt. When we got home I ran to get the first shower. Then I ate dinner with the little girls and sat talking with Maxi and Maria Jesus for a long time. Eric and the little girls had brought out the projector and were watching Guerra Mundial Z against the wall of the house. I went and sat on the hood of the car and wrote 3 college scholarship essays in the notepad of my cell phone. I got them done because I had no other choice but the whole time I was just laughing at what a different life I am living now than last year. After I finished, I went to sit with the adults while they made empanadas. After we talked for a while, Miguel Esteban came over to the house to invite Jesus, Maxi and I to the birthday party that the other half of the family was at (it’s kind of awkward because the country house is divided into two sides and each side belongs to one half of the family and although they’re friends, they go to different parties and stuff). He drove us over to his grandma’s house, where we had came earlier, and we greeted all the family. The kids all went into this garage apart from the house where there was a pool table. We didn’t play, but we just sat around and talked. It was the coolest experience ever because I hadn’t seen any of these people since September when we went to that pub, and at that moment I had barely been able to understand anything. Now, instead of making such a huge effort to have fun, I could just relax, tell stories, and talk to them. It was really gratifying to see that my work here is paying off. We stayed over until like 2:30 and then another uncle who lived close to our house drove us home.