Day 39

Thursday was a very good day for me. After school, I was to meet my new councillors!! Now, I was a little worried because they were picking me up at 1245, and I usually don´t get home till.. past 1pm. But thankfully, I made it with only a slight amount of waiting. Juan Carlos, my actual councilor drove me to their house in Las Palmas, which is a gorgeous little neighborhood in town.. they were loaaaaaded. They speak aboslutely no english, which was AMAZING! I didn´t even get the opportunity to speak english (I´ve realized that I´m only comfortable speaking spanish with people that don´t know any english). We met their son (who is my age), and some other random relatives and then JC´s wife, Maria Rosa came home from work and we had lunch (I have to add that this lunch was the most amount of vegetables I have had since I gotten to Bolivia). It seems that they´re kind of counciling me as a.. duo. So I have both husband and wife working on my problems with me. They seemed really nice, so hopefully everything will work out well with them. Friday, after school and spanish classes it was the same routine as the week before, going to Leah´s house. This time, we went and lounged around the pool, instead of sitting around speaking spanish. Not as... progressive, but totally worth it. We ended up walking to the movie theatre JUST for popcorn, and then walked down to the center to meet up with some other exchange students for coffee. We went to the Irish Pub. I realized I wasn´t really into spending the evening with a bunch of kids that only speak english, so I ended up going home not too late. Saturday was a rough day. For some reason, being at home seems to bring me down and therefore, weekends, if I´m not up to something, I tend to mope around the house. I got woken up at 730am by someone in the house playing really loud music too, so I´m sure that didn´t help. Finally, I made some plans to go out with Sarah and Leah to buy a present for Brodie, because it was her birthday party later that evening. It killed the rest of my evening, and then I was finally out having fun. Brodie´s was a lot of fun, with all the exchange students, and most of the kids from my grade at school. I spent the night at her house (which was so incredibly easy to convince my host parents about this time for some reason) and stayed up till 4am watching movies. Today, Brodie´s actual birthday, we went out to a "quinta" or house in the country, for a huge family reunion of her host fam´s. Transportation: BACK OF THE TRUCK. It was like an Ecuador flashback! The house was quite extravagent, and it was even on a lagoon (although it looked quite like an oversized pond to me). We spent the afternoon lounging around, eating, listening to the live music, and swimming when we got too hot. We were forced to talk to this old man from Virginia for a while, since his Bolivian wife had dragged him along, and he spoke NO spanish. We also met a half Bolivian girl from Texas that moved inbetween Bolivia and the States because of her father´s job as a silver refiner or something of the likes. At the end of the day, we all crammed into the truck again, laying on a mattress in the bed, for a relaxing drive back watching the stars. All of a sudden, Brodie starts screaming that something is on her, and like JUMPS on top of the other three girls in the back (including me). We then realize simultaniously that there is a huge bug of some sort, buzzing around the truck bed, flying into us and not flying out. We spent a good five minutes screaming, and diving from corner to corner of the truck, trying to avoid this huge bug (that we couldn´t see since it was dark out). Now, note that we´re flying down a dirt, country road at a good 65km, and jumping around the truck wasn´t the best of ideas. But finally it landed and we caught the dang thing in a cup, by cellphone light. It ended up being huge!! It was probably a good 5" long.. So we threw it off the side of the truck, and had a peaceful ride the rest of the way home.