New Traditions

    Tonight I experienced a new tradition that I'm going to have to bring back to the United States with me.      When college kids here are ready to graduate, they take a final test after they have completed all of their classes. As far as I understand, they can take this test whenever they want after they have completed their classes, so they have as much time to study as they want. My host brother has been studying to take his final engineering test for 2 months. I have no idea how he had the patience to wait for 2 months. So this morning he took his test and passed and is finally done with school! Him taking the test was a surprise because he all of a sudden decided to take it, so I came home from class and the family told me we were celebrating. We had a wonderful family lunch, and I thought this was the celebration, but we actually had a second celebration tonight for dinner. He had over a bunch of friends and I helped with cooking sandwiches and guacamole in the kitchen.
    There is a tradition here that when somebody finishes their last test, all of their friends get to attack them and throw food and all sorts of other concoctions on him. After our dinner, my host sisters started mixing up a nasty bowl of lettuce, bread crumbs, mouthwash, soap, mayo, tomato juice, raw eggs... pretty much anything they could find in the kitchen or that was left over from our dinner. Other people were making their own batches too, full of similar ingredients.
  






  




Then we hoaxed Agustin into the street and started the attack. He knew this was coming; we'd been shooing him out of the kitchen for a while.  His friends threw ink on him, his sister Marcela threw powdered soap on him. Within minutes he was covered in eggs, all of our concoctions, water, soda, mayonnaise, and a whole lot more. Agustin took it like a champ too. He ran away a little to avoid it, but pretty much let us do whatever we wanted.
    But the fun didn't stop after the food fight. His friends got out the scissors and started cutting his hair, and cutting his clothes.  They chopped off tufts of hair, leaving bald patches on his head! I couldn't believe that he was allowing this to happen. The food was fun, but they totally ruined his pants and shirt, even though they were already ruined from all the food. I felt a little guilty taking my turn to cut his hair and pour coke all over him, but did it anyway... Agustin retaliated a little in the end when he started whipping us with the pant leg that had been cut off. But even on our way back inside his friends were still throwing leaves and dirt on him. All the neighbors were out watching from afar to avoid getting in the mess.
    Hopefully taking my last test of this semester doesn't warrant this type of attack on me in December!