Wednesday, November 6

Today at school was pretty boring. Nothing exciting happened except that I was a lot happier. I had been feeling kind of sad and neglected the day before, like I really had no friends here and couldn’t connect well with the people here. I used to think they were so similar to my friends in the US, but they’re actually really different. They don’t laugh at the same jokes or do the same things for fun, but at least today I felt more included. I also learned some interesting things at lunch. Apparently girls here don’t shave their legs. They wax them or do laser treatments. When Katie and I told our friends that we shave, they looked at us like we were crazy. I also learned that girls here don’t use tampons for anything other than going to the beach. And even then some of them don’t know how to use them or are too scared. When Katie and I told them that most people in the US use tampons all the time because they’re more comfortable, they all thought we were crazy. I confirmed this with my mom when I got home from school, and she told me that she doesn’t even know how to use a tampon, and asked me what the little string is for. I was downright shocked. Anyway, after school, Katie and I walked into the center of town to hang out for a while. We walked into this little market off the side of the street where they sell things for cheap, and we noticed that there were places to pierce your ears. It was super impromptu (we had no plans to get piercings that day although we had already asked our parents and they had given us permission) and in a super sketchy location, but we decided to do it. I went first, and got a second piercing in both of my ears. I made sure to watch the dude sanitize the gun first, and it really didn’t hurt that much (although I don’t know how badly I hurt Katie’s hand from squeezing it).

Then it was Katie’s turn to get her third piercing in each ear. The guy pulled the trigger on the gun, but the earring didn’t go all the way through her ear. He tried two more times, and it wouldn’t go through. Katie’s ear was bright red and bleeding and I told her we should probably just give up and leave, but the guy insisted that he should try one more time. He did and this time the earring went through. The piercings cost us $3 if that explains to you how sketchy the place where we did it was. After we finished, Katie desperately needed ice cream to cheer her up, so we got some, and then walked over to the mall and walked around for a while.

Then we took a micro to the Jumbo to buy rubbing alcohol for our ears and walked back to my house. At my house we sat around and talked for a while until Katie’s parents came to pick her up. Then I went for a run, showered, worked on my blog a tiny bit, and went to sleep.