Saturday 11/8/08

This morning I slept in until the late hour of 7am. I wasn’t sure exactly what the day would look like since it was my first weekend here in La Virgen. The morning began with empanadas and banana pancakes (I’m still trying to kindly explain that I don’t need banana pancakes made specially for me as an addition to every meal) while we watched Ice Age (which is ironic because I still have yet to see this movie in English or in the US. For some reason I’ve seen it multiple times in various parts of Latin America) When I realized we were going to have a marathon of movies I grabbed my homework and did some reading during Ice Age 2. While Maria was popping in movie after movie (literally! We watched 5 movies back to back) she was doing housework and wouldn’t accept my offer to help and told me to “descansar” (rest). This is extremely hard for me because I am such a go go go person and hate wasting a day sitting around. I finally grabbed the vacuum from my brother and cleaned just a little bit (anything is better than sitting and watching someone clean). Finally after a morning/early afternoon of movies, I headed to the soccer turf because some of the ladies at the school had invited me to play in a women’s soccer game. My youngest brother, Jose Manuel and I headed to the field and no one was to be found. I was a little bummed, but luckily within a few minutes some boys saw us and we created a pick up game of 3 v. 4. I have never experienced such sweat in my life. It was so humid that I was sweating more than I even have in the 120 degree heat of Mexico. We played for an hour straight and I think my willingness to be wild and crazy with a bunch of 4th and 5th grade boys gained me the title of “the cool teacher”. Immediately when we stepped in our front door it started to pour rain harder than I’ve ever seen it pour. I jumped in the shower and a thunder and lightning storm began and knocked off the electricity. The lack of electricity was a blessing in disguise because it finally took my family’s attention away from the TV and we were able to spend the rest of the late afternoon sharing funny stories, demonstrating our random talents and learning more about one another overall. The electricity eventually came back on, but we were having too much fun without it that we didn’t even bother using and sat around chatting under candlelight. We eventually had some dinner and turned the TV back on (I’m getting rather tired of TV since it’s not a frequent pastime of mine in the States but seems to be on all the time here). We finished up the evening with ice cream while watching “Bailando por un Sueño” (an equivalent of Dancing with the Stars).