Sunday lunch

    Sundays are big family days in Mendoza. It involves big family reunions, a lot of food, and a full day of Spanish practice for me. Today 18 people came over for lunch. I woke up this morning to Carlina preparing for the big meal, and together we tried to fit a second table into the dining room through a doorway that was probably four inches too narrow to fit the table. We had to give up after taking it all apart and realizing that the frame of the table still wouldn't fit. Instead we fit 18 people around their dining room table and one other small plastic table from outside. Family members kept showing up, and I met so many new faces. Since it is customary to greet people with a kiss on the cheek, this is how I would meet the family, but introductions were often lost during the greetings as people go around the room and kiss every single person in the room upon arrival. So I only learned a couple names of the family members. There were cousins and aunts and uncles and sisters and brothers, but surprisingly, only one kid, Mia, who lives with my host mom's daughter and another student from my program, Jessie.
    I think it would have been very interesting living with a host family who has young kids. I worked with kids all summer at a preschool, but I've never lived with one since I'm the youngest in my family, and when Mia is over at our house, its very different than working with kids. I don't know my boundaries for how much I can tell Mia what and what not to do. There is less privacy, because she wants to look at my stuff all the time, use my bathroom, and eat my gum, but she also is helpful to learn Spanish because she corrects me a lot more than my family does.
    With everybody talking at once during lunch and multiple conversations going, I miss a lot of what is going on, but get the general idea of the conversations. If these events happen every Sunday, I hope within the next couple months I'll be able to contribute more to the discussions than what I did today. Today mostly involved me stuffing my face with food rather than speaking in broken Spanish. One of the cousins is a chef, and she brought over sandwhiches made of some type of beef or lamb, different salsas, and oregano bread. That was our main dish after having eaten four empenadas. Carlina made flan for dessert, which we put dulce de leche on, and was so delicious. I'm developing an addiction to dulce de lecho. It's good on fruit, bread, desserts. Today I put it in hot milk. You can't find peanut butter here, so it is kind of a replacement for peanut butter. My program here doesn't include dinner on Sunday nights, and now I know that it's because we normally eat so much for Sunday lunch that dinner is unnecessary.
    The family kept going in and out of the house today because it was election day in all of Argentina, and everybody over the age of 18 is required to vote. Everyone has to go to a school or designated voting place to fill out their ballet. You can't vote by mail like you can in the U.S. The lunch lasted until around 7, when everyone goes to church, or passes out from all the food.