Birthdays, baking, and other extreme sports

Today was such a good day! It started out like they all do, with me waking up at 11:30am and heading to the IFSA office to go to my development class. Today I had to head in a bit earlier than usual because we had an orientation on obtaining our visas. After that orientation, we had a little break where most of us had our lunch, then we went back into class and discussed developing vs. developed worlds and what were the factors that made them the way they were. We did that for about two hours and when class let out, I went with my friend Emma into the city so that she could buy a few things and then we decided to head to her house because she had a sudden impulse to bake cookies. The only problem is that she didn’t remember how to get back to her house… excuse me? Girl, we have been here for almost a month, what the hell do you mean, “you don’t know how to get back to your house”??? Apparently, she recognized certain signs and restaurants, but couldn’t remember if they were close to where she’s picked up or where she’s dropped off… what!?!? What does that even mean? Eventually we found the right stop and headed in the direction of her house. When we got to where we needed to be, we stopped into the nearest supermarket to buy the necessary materials for cookie making as well as chocolate covered Oreo’s… just because they were there.

We walked to her house and set to work. We weren’t 100% convinced that the recipe that we found online was right, so we decided to just wing it. We began throwing ingredients into the bin based on what we thought looked correct, the entire time laughing about how we didn’t know what we were doing and reassuring ourselves that it did, in fact, look like cookie dough batter. When we tasted it, it tasted fine, so we kept going like that until the batter was done. The next challenge was the oven. We didn’t know how to turn it on and, when we tried turning the knob in different directions, all that came of our efforts was us somehow turning on the gas and not knowing how to turn it back off again. We did eventually figure it out, and decided that we should probably read the directions on the oven door before we blew up the entire house up. The only problem with that was that the directions were in Spanish, so we brought her computer over and sat on the kitchen floor while we Google Translated the direction. It didn’t help. We decided that, for the sake of our lives and the lives of our neighbors, we would just leave the baking for when her host mom got home.

I left her house and took a micro home where I found the house getting ready for Dan’s birthday. Tons of family and friends came over and I found myself meeting more family that I hadn’t met before. I talked with different members of my host family, and I’m beginning to notice that my speaking skills are improving, which is heartening. The food was amazing and the atmosphere was even better. Dan sat on one side of the house with all of his friends and I sat on the other side with the family, listening to conversations and chiming in when I could. After some time passed, I went to see what the little-ones (I have six host nieces and nephews under the age of 10) were up to. Mistake of the night. Upon meeting me, three of them decided that I was to become their personal jungle-gym and proceeded to climb all over me... These children have obviously not been reading my blog. I only had two arms, but that was not a satisfactory situation in their eyes because all three of them wanted me to carry them at once. At one point I had a child in both arms and one jumping on the bed trying to lunge at my chest. I suppose to a kid person, this would be a moment worth living for, but I am not one of those people, and one of the little crumb-snatchers kept trying to bite me (I had to resist the urge to kick her because that is not how you make friends with a host family). Slowly but surely, family began to leave and [mercifully] they took their children with them, but not before two of them ran at me, called me ‘papa’ and tried to cling to my legs (no but seriously kids, read my blog post from August 12^th … I made a list).

Finally I got time to just relax while the rest of the adults filed out. I sat on my computer in the living room and just listened to Dan and his friends on the other side of the house. It sounds like their having a drunken dance party in the garage but, hey, it’s his 21^st… live it up Dan, live it up. Tomorrow looks like a less hectic day, but don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll find something to shake things up… I always do!