Home sweet home. Or atleast as close as I am going to get to Washington whether in Argentina. For Father´s Day weekend my family drove up north to the Province of Tucuman to visit family. It was my cousins fourth birthday and my mama wanted to be there for it. Now I have always been a lover of road trips so I was super excited to go...until, that is, that I found out it was an eleven hour car ride with me, my aunt, and my sister Sofi all packed in the back seat. It might have been fine if our car was a cadillac and had a back seat like a bed and us three women didn´t all have hips but unfortunetelly none of that was true. It was an awfully long car ride with very little room to move. We left at six in the morning which thankfully gave me something to do for the first couple hours - sleep. The rest of the car ride was filled with starring at the changing scenery. Which I was happy to find was quite interesting. San Juan is generally really flat and really dry but as we started up north some mountains came along. I also got to see GIANT cactusas. These cactusas were as tall as trees and as wide as a car. I would hate to get one of those prickers stuck in your foot! Once we passed the mountains and arrived to the city of Tucumán, I found the I could practically breathe in the rain in the air. It was wonderful!
The weekend was spent meeting my family and having many lunches, dinners, brunches, late night coffees, and birthday parties until I was completelly exhausted. On the night that I arrived I was introduced to so many relatives that I could hardly keep track of who was my aunt, who was my cousin, and who was an aunt of my cousin! I still have yet to remember all of there names. :) But I can tell you about some of them. I have four cousins: Lourdes (who was turning four), Santiago (who is five), and Valentina and Amelia (nineteen and twenty two). I was so happy to be able to hang out with young kids again! I have been really missing volunteering at the special needs preschool in Washington and I got to play "the crocodille is going to eat me!" with Lourdes and Santiago. It still makes me smile so much. Here are some pictures of when they decided to tackle me:
Sunday was Lourdes birthday party and Father´s Day. We all had asado and lunch together and then a bunch of Lourdes school friends came over. They were all dressed up as princesses and had face paint on. It was all very sweet. I hung out with my cousins and talked with a girl I met at the party. I always love when I meet people who are really interested in going on an exchange. She was only thirteen so had few years to wait but you could just see the thirst in her eyes to get to explore other countries. She reminded me of myself just a few months ago. :) In terms of Father´s Day, we really didn´t do much. I was able to send my Dad in the U.S. a quick email at about midnight when I finally got around a computer but Santiago was trying to tackle we and give me kisses so it was awfully short (I later sent him another email and a couple days later we got to Skype).
Sunday night (We were going to leave early Monday morning), Sofi, Valentina, Amelia, Santiago and I all went out to McDonalds for dinner. Afterwards Santiago was feeling sick and was sent to his mother´s room to lie down and watch cartoons. Us girls put on a romantic movie and curled up on the couch. You might have heard of this movie. It is called "Beastly" and comes out in theaters this July 31st. Yep, that wasn´t a type-o, this movie hasn´t even been officially released! How in the world we got it I have no idea but Valentina had it on a pen drive and it was actually in pretty good quality. Argentiníans are famous for their pyrighting abilities. :)
Monday morning our car wouldn´t start because the battery was dead. My parents decided that we could let it charge and have lunch with the family. Well lunched turned into tea time and soon it was five o´clock and we were just leaving. With an eleven hour drive ahead that ment we would be arriving at the wee hours of the morning. And unforuntely I had school the next morning. I was able to sleep a little in the car but it was never very solid. When we finally arrived home and I got into bed at about three a.m. that only gave me three and a half hours of sleep to work with at school. I am starting to get pretty good at functioning on little to no sleep. :) I was also really sick that weekend so it took me the rest of the week to get better.
It was so awesome to be able to meet more of my family and I always love it when I get to talk about my home country and teach people different things about who I am. My soul was refreshed with the rain and I came back home a smiley (but very tired) happy Sanjuanina.
P.S. Don´t forget to check out my photos by following the link!
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