So instead of sleeping in as I had wanted to I woke up at 8:30 local time here with awkward aches and pains in my back and neck because I am sleeping on a bed that I may have grown out of in elementary school. So after crawling out of my kiddie bed I begin to put away my clothes and all of my things. For those of you that do not know, I overpack...always, so instead of doing what most people did, bringing one suitcase and one carry-on I brought two overweight oversized suitcases one heavy carry-on and another school bag on top of that. (By the way when I went to check in the lovely man at the front desk waved my fees because of my sparkling personality...so anyone who says charm and smiles don't work lied). So as I am unpacking my mountains of clothing I look in the closet to find only 3 hangers so of course after realizing there was no more room in any of the drawers I decided the lovely mod art looking chair in the corner would be the perfect home for the remaining mountain of clothing.
I recall my family making some half-hearted jokes about how out of the seven students they have hosted they have never seen so much stuff in their lives. On my behalf they also remarked about how they like my style and how I have been the best dressed of all their host students so I guess it worked to my advantage....somewhat. So as the rest of the family was still sleeping i attempted for about an hour to connect to the internet, which of course didn't work because the network was locked and I am computer stupid and didn't know how to work the darn thing. So good thing my phone had some connection to the internet so I could tell the fam that I had arrived alive and well and give them a mini update of my life thus far.
For lunch we went to my host aunt Beti's house for a feast unlike anything I had ever seen. To start a small meal of pan (bread) this incredible mayo/lemon/blended spread and homemade guac and three different types of salami (they had salami with CHEESE IN IT) which was incredible and of course my host grandfather kept giving me more and more and more. Its as if these people are under the false misconception that I don't eat....which clearly isn't the case seeing as how we went through 6 loaves of bread in only the first course.
After that we had different types of salad, tomato salad (they love their tomatoes), lettuce salad, potato salad, avocado and egg salad. So I tried most of these because my goal is to definitely not live up to the label of the picky American. I plan on trying almost everything. So after the salads came the mountainous servings of meat, literally mountains of fresh meat and seriously every single part so I decided to blindly try a little of everything and not ask what it was for fear that if I knew I would likely lose my appetite. After eating to the outer boundaries of what my stomach could hold I had to decline any further offers of more helpings.
It is at this point where all the members of the family split off into various age groups to play table games, I was privileged enough to be with Cristin and the elders of the family playing this number game that I think they called Rumy, it was a team game of two v. two and you had to get groupings of the same color numbers or the same number and whomever had the most complete groups won. It was fascinating to watch and I kind of started to pick up on the rules but I participated solely as a spectator in this game. Then the members of my host cousin's band started arriving for band practice and it was time to bring out dessert.
For dessert we had some type of flan (milk and eggs and sugar whipped together and chilled until solidifying) with dulce de leche which is just basically caramel. The dessert was incredible and then of course we had coffee and hard orange juice with vodka, a strange mixture of flavors to me but they seemed to love it. Afterwards of course we had music during which time they asked me to sing by myself, I did so with little reservation and sang one of my all time favorite songs Fairytale by Sara Bareilles. It was a little more nerve-racking because this family gathering had almost twice the audience as the last one but it was ok I didn't mind too much. And of course I loved the flattery afterwards and my cousin's band mates asked me to be the new singer telling their current lead vocalist he was kicked out. So I felt pretty darn good.
I left after that with Fanny and Enrique to go back to the house for my siesta, I said all of my goodbyes and we went on our merry way.
It was a lovely meal and great company and gave me such great perspective as to what family life in Argentina is like
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