Today we had a couple misunderstandings.
       Last night there were no...err.. night surprises from the cats (thank god) so I slept well until my alarm went off.
      We ate breakfast and found out by watching the Olympic commercials that the women's gymnastics all-around was going to be on at 10:30 a.m. while we were at rock climbing!!!! That just wouldn't do, so we decided to leave at 11 o'clock from rock climbing and watch the last parts of the all-around. While we were at the rock climbing gym, we did some new routes and jumped off of stuff. Near the end of when we were going to leave, Alejandro, our normal trainer, left and put some other people in charge. The guy who he appointed wasn't as skilled as Alejandro and when I was having trouble with this one course he just kept telling me how I was supposed to do it instead of helping me figure out how we could make it easier. All-in-all he was okay. He was nice just not as experienced.
      We walked home and watched the all-around. Gabby Douglas from the USA won and it is really cool because she is African American! Two Russians got 2nd and 3rd and the USA Captain got 4th place. The USA Captain tied for 3rd with another girl but the way they break tie-breakers in Gymnastics is whoever got a higher score in execution instead of difficulty. We watched a little bike racing after and then turned off the TV to read a little. While we were reading our parents left to go get bread for lunch.
    When they returned we had sandwiches for lunch and soon after a while my parents had their Spanish lesson. I read some more and then Oscar and my dad left to go to a clinic so that my dad could give Oscar his allergy shot. We were supposed go to the climbing gym at four since our first session was so short but my dad forgot that he had to give Oscar his shot today. We were planning on going to the gym after but Oscar's shot took a really long time so we decided to bag it.

  We ate some left overs from some other nights and watched some different shows. One was Extreme Makeover Home Edition in Spanish and the other was a show in some sort of Indian language which had Spanish subtitles. That was kind of depressing.

Harmless from the outside right?!

Deadly on the inside!!

  Good Night!!!

Today I did a range of things.
   A little recap of the very eventful last night. When my dad came into my room to say good night I showed him my nearly-falling-off big toenail on my left foot. He replied by saying "oh it's going to go, you should pull it off." So I did. We put a pad on it wrapped in tape to protect it until my next toenail comes in.
      At about 7:15 I was woken by Cowjie jumping up onto my bed. He said hello by walking over my head to sniff the sleeping Goldie. I had a feeling that this was going to end badly so I pushed his face away from her and as I did Goldie woke up and hissed at him. Cowjie, unalarmed flopped over next to me and fell asleep. I was tired, so I fell asleep again, to be rudely woken up by my alarm clock to be at the climbing gym on time.
      After watching some Olympics and feeding Cowjie (the big baby) his medicine, we walked over to the rock climbing place and started stretching. I felt kind of stupid doing it where everyone could see me but oh well, I want to postpone turning into some seriously self conscious teenager for as long as possible. We started climbing by playing different games. The last thing we did before we left to go watch Mexico vs. Switzerland (or as they say Suisa pronounced SWEE-sa).
      For those of you who didn't watch the game, Mexico won 1-0 so they will be moving on from that group to the quarter finals. We watched some swimming and before we were going to do some exercise in the back yard, my dad enthusiastically called us upstairs to see a spider hunting a very daft fly. After a couple minutes trying to stay silent and urging the spider to eat the clueless fly, we gave up and went outside. We did planks, push ups, burpies (they aren't as gross as they sound), stretching and squats (which kind of make me think of toads).
        When my parents' Spanish teacher showed up, I moved inside to draw clothing for fun. You may be thinking that you don't remember me being a girly girl, however I do have fashion opinions even if I don't typically dress fashionably (except at some parties). For example I am currently wearing a German club shirt and bike shorts. I taped the drawings into my unused journal.
      After my parents's Spanish lesson (well they say it was a Spanish lesson but they were watching youtube!) we went to Sam's Club (or as they say Sam's kloob). We had to borrow our land lady's card since we are Costco members.When we arrived home, Oscar and I had to clean the litter box which prompted Oscar to say:"Cowjie has SOME nice qualities but this (referring to the poop we were scooping up) is not one of them!" My parents had a brief consultation with a Mexican friend and then we started watching the Olympics.
     We ate a really yummy dinner of green beans and steak. It was delicious and we got some good vegetables from the market in. We watched some of the Simpsons in Spanish!

This is the adorable baby Jesus in a little suit after going to church.
The woman on the right side of the picture is his aunt (his mother's sister).

Good Night!!
   

         Today was somewhat formless. At the "early" hour of 8:45 I was forced to wake up. I ate breakfast and taped my feet. With Oscar and my dad, we walked over to the rock climbing place where my brother often climbs. After signing some papers and setting up the mats, we were ready to start climbing. Our trainer Alejandro made up this game where every time it was your turn to climb the route you would add on two different hand holds that everyone would have to do. So after you climbed the route of rock hand holds that everyone else had made up you would add on two more. It got kind of hard some times. After every turn my hands would be killing me. They were red and starting to get callused. Maybe I am doing something wrong because I hardly have any soreness in my arms!
          We came home and watched some more olympics in which two Mexican women won the silver medal in synchronized diving. The rest of the day it was hard to find anything else besides replays of the event. I made some earrings and read during breaks. At one point I flipped through the channels of Spanish-speaking channels and english channels with subtitles, to see if any channels had randomly decided to play some Olympics. As I was doing that I ran across some sort of reality show with Kim and Kourtney Kardashian. As I watched, something controversial happened and Kim said in an "interview" "Scott is acting like SO immature, he needs to like grow up". I was thinking "Uh YOU need to like grow up".
          Before my dad left for his adult soccer game, I started to make Pesto. It is my favorite meal ever!!! First, because we bought the basil from the market, we had to pick out the bad basil and clean all of it. That took a lot longer than I expected because the leaves are a lot smaller here. I make my pesto with basil, olive oil, parmesan cheese, walnuts (instead of pine nuts), salt and garlic. My mom and I don't use measuring cups and such because we make it by taste. I couldn't tell you the measurements even if I wanted to!
        My mom went for another run with my dad after he returned from his soccer game and we played bluff before bed.
Good Night!

        Today was cat central. Of course we woke up and watched the Olympics and had a breakfast which included most of the food groups except fruit!! We realized soon after that we had to quickly get ready for the final (or so we thought) memorial event for Jesus. We arrived at their house and we all proceeded to walk to the church that they got to for mass. Doña Lesvia's daughter had hurt her back and had trouble getting up and down things. The family band sang and the priest talked for a little while. Most everyone was crying and even I had tears in my eyes. It was just really sad. After mass we walked back to Doña Lesvia's house for some delicious food. We ate and upon saying good bye to everyone found out that there was a final ceremony at 7 o'clock tonight. We were all a little disappointed by the news because even though we wanted to be there for the family we had (selfishly) hoped that we would be able to have a quiet night at home. We walked home and my parents had their Spanish lessons while I caught up on my blog entries for the past few days.
      We later decided to make up an excuse about why we couldn't go to Doña Lesvia's tonight because my mom seemed really stressed with all the work she had been doing. My dad and I went out to go get some wine as a treat and ended up coming back with pastries, vegetables, chocolate, hot sauce and a sticker. We kept finding things that we wanted to get. We came back and watched some more Olympics and ate the brownie wood like biscottis with milk.
     Lately we have had the cats use a litter box, because of that we smell everything that goes on in there. I mean EVERYTHING! (My mom had to talk to Oscar about not spraying the cat's butt with Febreze no matter how bad it smells!) So when something started to stink REALLY bad we figured out it was Cowjie and after consulting our veterinarian, we got him some medicine and have had to administer Cowjie liquid medicine through a syringe. He is a big baby and he is really strong. My dad has to hold him between his legs and open his mouth and squirt the medicine into his resisting mouth. He sometimes foams a little out of his mouth and occasionally attempts to swat the air.
Good Night!!

        Yesterday was a very peaceful day for me. At 11 am on Sunday we drove to our friend Maria-Elena's house. In three cars we began our journey to Beatriz's (our Landlady's) property outside of San Cristobal. Once we arrived, we set up a picnic and started to grill some meat. We explored the place a little which is a bit of forest that has some corn planted throughout the uneven ground. It is a really beautiful place to be. After sitting around her artificial pond, I went back to the main area where we were staying. I lay down on our picnic blanket and closed my eyes. I wasn't sleeping, I just liked to feel the wind, listen to the people talking, hear the beautiful sound of the wind moving through the branches of the pine trees and just relax in the shade. My mom roused me from my resting to get me to eat. We had peanuts, meat, salad, bread and for dessert, brownie wood. Now some of you may be wondering "oh what new kind of treat is that?" In fact, brownie wood is just brownies that are very hard due to some sort of cooking problem. I had a bunch of mini ones even though they were slightly painful to eat. From eating all of those delicious-tasting but painful-eating brownies, my last baby tooth that I had yet to lose started to hurt. As we played a very animated game of paddle ball, tripping over random mounds and dips, I started to lose my tooth. After we finished playing I pulled out the rest of my tooth!
      After our lovely picnic we decided to accompany the rest of the group to Teopisca (a town nearby) to have a hot chocolate or coffee. We sat down inside of a restaurant on the city square and got some drinks. Maria-Elena walked me to the church also on the square. It is the oldest church in Chiapas and a three hundred year-old altar was shipped from another town to be installed in this church. It was really beautiful; around the walls there were saints in glass cases and in one we were surprised to see that there was a black saint! Of course when we got home we googled it and it turned out to be Saint with a name that I instantly forgot! Sorry about that!
    Upon arriving home and eating dinner we played the game called Bluff, BS or as some adults like to call it Bull S***. It was very fun and my mom won the game. Similar to other nights we moved over to the TV and tried to watch the Olympics.

        No matter how much I had eaten an hour earlier I ate a LOT !! On Saturday we got up and sat around watching the Olympics. We had a really nice breakfast of pancakes, bacon and the works! We had a nice morning with the exception of Oscar hitting his elbow on the coffee table after I tried to grab the blanket from him to tickle him. Well it was nice until we had to clean the house. Oscar and I were given the task of sweeping the driveway which is a lot harder to do than you might expect. Well it takes LONGER than you would expect I suppose.
          At seven o'clock we got ready to walk to Doña Lesvia's for another day of memorial service. We accidentally came an hour earlier than they decided to start that day so we sat around and played rock/paper/scissors for a while. My dad tried to teach us to additional things for rock/paper/scissor which are grandma and dynamite. Grandma blows out dynamite and crumples paper, rocks and scissors beat grandma, and scissors cut the wick of dynamite. (Nana and JoJo: this has nothing to do with you guys I did not make this up!!) At Doña Lesvia's, the family band sang, said the Rosary, sang some more and gave us food (which seems to help Doña Lesvia take her mind off Jesus, her son). The food was very good and we went home well fed.
        Even being well fed we ordered pizza and played Settlers of Catan over dinner. We then moved over to the couch and coffee table and ate caramel popcorn while watching some more Olympics!

Sorry for my tardiness in writing about Saturday and Sunday!

Today is all about sports (well mostly). Profe had promised us that we could scrimmage the whole time so after doing only a couple drills, we got on teams. It was a hard game and the time we were closest to winning was when Oscar scored the second goal (which was really awesome) making us tied. Even though we didn't win I felt like I played well. We decided to play on Profe's league so we would have practice four days a week our less if we choose. We would have games on Saturdays so it would be kind of like soccer in the US. I am excited and I feel that I will get a lot better!! Here is a picture of Oscar and I playing:

In the all red with the goalie gloves is Martine, Oscar is grimacing, Mario in the red shorts and white shirt, Victor the goalie on the ground, Toño in the green and black jersey and me in the back, prematurely cheering! It did go in by the way.

This is me trying to dribble around a boy named Jose.
    It started to dump as we were driving home and we all huddled indoors. We watched some funny animal videos and then read and hung out for a while. We then watched the opening ceremony for the London Olympics. I thought it was really cool! If I could watch three sports events I would watch the Olympics, the World Cup (men and women) and either the French Open or Wimbledon. I loved the way that they lit the torch this year. As all the countries walked in I tried to pronounce the names (most of them probably pretty poorly) and I cheered for England and all the countries I love and made comments about the countries such as: That's were Eddie's dad is from etc. I am listening to Adele and getting ready to eat dinner!
Good Night!