Sunday

It's a brilliant day with bright sunshine, occasional raindrops and a little wind. Despite all this beauty, I'm exhausted. Visiting Mark yesterday made for a long day. I cried myself to sleep Friday night, got about five hours of rest, drove round trip to Danvers, MA and back (six hours) and the whole time tried to figure out what to say, how to act, what am I feeling?

When we got back, I decided to go out for a drink with friends. We chose a bar down the street because it would be central for us all. Ryan picked me up, Jane and Justin met us there and the other guys from Dick's came after. They were red from a day of softball in CT - they won, yay for them! It was great to see Ryan. I can't remember the last time he and I hung out...so we caught up on a LOT of lost time. Jane and I have been running into each other a lot lately and it was good to finally hang out. I think we could both talk each other's ears off for days on end. A fun night, but another late one.

I slept in today...until 11 am! I guess my body needed the time. I tried helping mom with some cleaning and organizing, but we like things different. Somehow we got talking about family stuff and it led to deeper conversation. I am amazed to find out that there are so many secrets in my family. Secrets that might have never come out of the woodwork if my mother didn't trust me so much. I am thankful for the bond we have. Not to say that we don't fight like cats and dogs sometimes, but our relationship has truly grown over the past five years or so.

Spanish word of the day: descarado - saucy, impudent, fresh.

Example: Fue una entrevista descarada. (It was a saucy interview.)

I used to write down the Spanish word of the day every day when I lived in RI and worked at the clinical lab. It helped a lot - my Spanish improved greatly while I was there. I keep forgetting to do it now. I am getting a bit nervous about my Spanish-speaking abilities. Even though I've taken five and a half years and spoken Spanish with my Latino friends (from many countries, thus many dialects), I worry that I won't be able to keep up in Peru next month. My friends keep telling me not to worry, that I will be better than I think. Deep down I agree, and I hope that my obsession for Latino culture will return :)