Saturday, September 6th

On Saturday my family woke up at 5:30 to see my brother off. We drove to the airport where we were met by about five of my brothers friends. It was really sad to see my brother leave, I cried. He was about to go through the same expiriences that I was, for two weeks we had shared the same room and had talked about what I was expiriencing and what he was about to go through. Exchange is really an exchange, your feelings, thoughts and beliefs are changed and warped. When you leave a place that you have lived for your whole life, everything that was and is you is only represented in you. It is a really interesting feeling. At the same time I was really happy for my brother, becuase he was going to have an epic adventure. I actually talked to him this morning and things are going well, he says that his German is about where my Spanish was after a week. Today is three weeks for him. He is in high school, which is even harder than high school here..., I gues I'm lucky in that sense. He told me that right now his Speaking in German is better than his comprehension, exactly the same as me for the first two weeks. It was bitter sweet but I'm glad that all is well for him right now. When I got home I slept until like 2 in the afternoon. Then later my sisters, Andrés, my older sisters boyfriend and I went to Los Toros, a festival in Sangolquí. Sangolquí is about another half an hour away from San Rafael in the same Valley, Valle de los Chillos. When we arived it was country fair status crouded except with a very different vibe. We got there around 4 so many people were beginning to drink. We walked through the many open air bars, restaurants and shops selling all sorts of hand made goods. At the far end of this festival was was a handmade colluseum. Inside the colluseum was a dirt ring about 100 meters wide. We paid to climb up into the second level of this colluseum to watch the spectacle. There were about 300 people in the ring and one bull. Probably about half the people were drunk. They people would bother and taunt the bull terying to get it to charge. And when it did they would try and dodge it. There werwe people with capes, too, they would try and play with the bull as it earnestly was trying to kill them. I have to admit that at first I wanted to enter, but after seeing people getting trampled, and thrown in the air I began to think about entering. The ring was probably dangerous too, at one piont one of the braces snapped in our platform, it was pretty scary because there was another level above us and people below. In the ring was a cadge for people to hide in and a raised platform. These were supposedly to be safe but with fifty people crammed into the cadge and another thirty on the platform it really wasn't. The bulls would be herded by people on horses out of the ring and new ones would enter. It seemed that every new bull was a little bigger and had more energy. The final bull that I saw caught a persopn as he was running around the raised platform, he was caught unaware and was trampled repeatedly. He was the only person who didn't move after being trampled. After seeing that I really was done watching. I told my family that I thought the man was dead. They disagreed and said he was only hurt. I tried to explain that there waere probably only two options, either he had a concusion or he was dead. It was frusturating because they didn't really listen to me. Two days later in the paper it had the death of a person in Los Toros, he was 16 years old.

Sunday I met my Aunt and Grandmother. It was also when I gave my family my gifts. They really liked the jam and they use the jar as a salt shaker. My sisters wear the necklaces too. It was a normal day and my last day of summer.