Sunday, June 22

Today I got up late, ate breakfast with Manuel, chatted with him and Lilian for a while, and then went up to my room to work on my blog for a while. Then I went with Manuel to the feria. He goes a lot, so many of the vendors there know him. We talked to one of his friends for a while, and the guy let me try some candied sweet potato, which is a treat here.

random dude walking through the feria playing guitar for tips (there was another guy with a boom box dancing cumbia for tips)

Then we walked through the rest of the feria and while Manuel bought what we needed, I took pictures of all the cool things that you would never see in a farmers’ market in the US. A guy selling peanuts noticed me taking pictures and asked me to take a picture with him. Of course, I did it.

Around 2, I went over to the San Martins’ house. Nacho, my cousin, was visiting for the weekend, and he told me to come over because we hadn’t seen each other in a long time and he was sad that I was leaving soon. I spent the day over at their house, catching up with Nacho, having a long talk with Maxi about history, and making crepes with Sally and Nancy. I was planning to leave around 5 to watch the USA World Cup game with my family at home, but they convinced me to stay and watch with the whole family. They had face paint left over from the Chile game, so Sally and I painted our faces with the US flag (she will probably never let me forget that her painting of my face turned out way better than mine did… The flag on Sally’s face only had 4 stripes).

We sat down to watch the game with the whole family plus Nacho and his mom, dad, and brother Benja. Nacho’s mom was sitting in the room cutting Eric’s, Maxi’s, and Nancy’s hair while watching the game. Nacho and I were laughing and talking, and every time the US scored (twice), Sally and I would run up to each other screaming and hug. I was never this spirited about the World Cup in the US, but here in Latin America it is a much bigger deal. We ended up tying against Portugal 2-2. After the game finished, Sally, Nacho, and I made chocolate chip cookies. Around 9, I really needed to go home to my family, and so Nacho drove me home. To my great surprise, his car was a Hyundai Sonata in silver, which is the exact same car I have in the US. It was pretty cool to be sitting in “my car” again, and it made me realize how much I miss the freedom that being able to drive gives me (although I know I’m lucky to have so much public transportation available to me), and made me excited to return to that freedom so soon. I said goodbye to Nacho, talked to my family for a while, and then went upstairs to shower and go to sleep.