¨What have I always said was the most important thing?...

...family.¨ Let me tell you what, my family here exemplifies this statement to a t. They are doing so much for me all the time, including tending to my injuries. Vice versa too, just yesterday I found myself eating fruit bread with mineral water, mmm... (laced with sarcasm) a snack obviously worth writing home about, literally. To be honest, on my first day I thought I had made a mistake regarding the length of my stay here but by my second nap my nerves had calmed and I haven´t felt any reservations since. It´s funny to notice the idiosyncracies that I share with them even though we live a hemisphere apart, they´re always laughing and no matter where we are we´re the source of a majority of the noise in the place. This is a picture of the front of their apartment and my Tia Ximenia standing at the doorway. She´s the youngest of my dad´s siblings and the funniest, she is always telling jokes (that I don´t understand sometimes, but everyone else is laughing). If you can believe it, my aunts and some of my older cousins are shorter than me. I´ll have to get a picture to prove it. I´ve reunited with a lot of family members and met some new ones during my couple of days here, so I can´t recount everything but here are some highlights:
- When my 88 year old grandmother interrupted a story I was telling to tell me that I looked sick and my cousin couldn´t stop laughing.
-The laugh of said cousin´s husband. It´s hilarious.
-Staying up until 4:30 this morning talking to my aunts, uncle and g-ma about astronomy, conspiracy theories, U.S. and Chilean politics (there´s an election here in January with a woman on the ticket), Chile´s history and our family.
-Every morning/afternoon I wake up the bruises on my face have gotten worse and one of my aunts always makes a big deal about it. not so much a highlight as inevitably funny.
I´m sure there are more but this is getting hard to write. Hopefully I´ll hear from you soon and that everyone remains safe. I listen to my mp3 player at night and the song ´New Slang´by the Shins takes me back home so if you´re missing me, play that song and maybe you´ll see me there.
love, b.
p.s. I passed physics 321!!