Día del Amor y la Amistad

That is one of the titles of Valentine’s Day here; it means “Day of Love and Friendship.” I really like that. It’s also called “Día de los Enamorados,” which means “Day of Lovers” or “Day of Sweethearts.” And of course, it’s also called “Día de San Valentín.” However, the one that I heard the most is the first one, and that is my favorite.

I suppose I sort of expected Valentine’s Day to be a bust. I didn’t think I was going to be too thrilled about the day in general, especially since this, as the second Valentine’s Day of our relationship, is also the second Valentine’s Day that we have spent on separate continents. Well, there are worse things in life. (Anna, that one was for you.)

The day turned out to be quite an interesting and fun day after all. Let me take you through it. We’ll begin with me getting ready for school in the morning. My cell phone rings with a number that I don’t recognize, and I answer to hear a strange voice say my name. My physiology professor, Dr. Toral, was calling me to let me know that our class was cancelled for the day because he had a patient he had to attend to (he is a physician). Unsure of what to do, I awkwardly knocked on my host parents’ closed door. I happened to be interrupting my host dad while he was dressing, and my host mom was still sleeping. (Oops.) They simply told me to have everyone come to the Family Health Foundation for the morning. Thus it was my responsibility to explain the situation to our bus driver, Wilson. (Actually, that wasn’t really that big of a deal.)

I was in a group of three students who were sent to the in-patient area of the Foundation, but there wasn’t a lot of action (read: there was nothing to see), so we sat and talked from 8-9:30 a.m., when our physiology class is normally over. The rest of the group proceeded with their pre-formed plans for the day (such as going to the mall to purchase needed items for the upcoming holiday weekend), and I stayed at the Foundation. I considered sitting around for about 3 hours with reading and homework. After checking my e-mail (and seeing an absolutely hilarious Valentine’s Day e-card that my sister sent me), I decided instead to observe a surgery. I think the woman had a tumor on her thyroid, but I’m not really sure because the doctors didn’t let me know what was going on. I think that they believed that I didn’t understand Spanish, so they acted as if I was not in the room. That was kind of weird… and boring (especially since surgery really doesn’t interest me). I stood there for about 2 ½ hours, then I had to go. My family had a lunch date.

We had been invited to lunch at the house of Jason’s host mom from when he was here in Cuenca during the month of January. She has a lovely home and is one of the gentlest women I think I’ve ever met. Her quiet and kind-hearted nature almost elicited pity from me, though I’m not exactly sure why. I went with my host parents and host brother, Fernando José, and together we learned a very fun way of playing dominoes from our hostess. I thoroughly enjoyed the game!

Our time was cut short by my need to attend Spanish class at 3 p.m., which was also quite enjoyable. As of now, my Spanish class consists of one classmate, Becky, our professor, Jorge, and me. Simply fantastic.

After class, Braxton (the only male student in our group of 7 from Taylor) gave each of us a yellow rose in celebration of the “Day of Love and Friendship.” That was such a nice surprise. Braxton lives only about two blocks from where we have our Spanish class, so Karen and I walked to his house with him to wait for our host families to pick us up. While we waited, we played ping-pong with Braxton and his host brother. We played Round Robin, which is called “mosca” here (that means fly… as in the insect). In this game, you have to run to the other side of the table after you hit the ball. That’s quite a task for only 4 people! We decided to play teams (I was with Braxton’s host brother), and we played to 11, winning points when the other team made a mistake. What a hoot it was!

Once I arrived home, the other fun I had in the evening was with my host family. I showed them a program I have on my computer that takes pictures of you with your face distorted all sorts of ways. I was laughing myself to tears…it was amazing. Then I played Nintendo Wii with my host dad – he beat me in tennis, baseball, and bowling, but I loved every minute of it! It is so amazing the play a tennis video game by swinging the controller as if you are swinging a racket!! My night concluded with a long conversation with Jason, which was really nice.

Well, that was kind of a long description of my day. I guess that’s what happens when I’m typing as I’m sitting on my bed, with my computer in my lap, and listening to The Decemberists (thanks Bethany!). Basically what I wanted to say is the following: I laughed a lot during el Día del Amor y la Amistad. That is something I would recommend for everyone on a regular basis. It is quite refreshing.