Wednesday, August 22, 2007 Stay awake Kayla, you can do it!

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

I barely woke up around 9:30 and realized 1. I still had no idea how Christian was doing. 2. I only slept about 5.5 hours, which isn’t nearly enough to function in Spanish let alone for my 6 hours of intense lectures for the day 3. I hadn’t done any of the readings for my classes and 4. I hadn’t eaten since 1:30 the day before.

At breakfast, which ended up being a double breakfast when Olga discovered I hadn’t eaten, I explained everything to Olga. She told me that she hadn’t been able to sleep last night and had been very concerned. She told me she knew I was ok but that something else had happened. Of course she had practically fallen in love with Christian on Sunday, so she was very upset.

I headed to campus and called Emilio to finally hear what was going on with Christian. Thank God, Emilio told me that they finally did some kind of a scan on his brain and didn’t find anything serious. Unfortunately I don’t understand exactly what happened because I have yet to learn the medical terms in Spanish, but basically he got hit hard enough to effect his short term memory. There was no really damage, but he has to stay in bed for two days. Much more relaxed with the good news, I went to class.

Between my classes I went to Mass, where I saw Felipe. He hadn’t talked to Emilio so when I told him the news his whole body relaxed. He told me he had been praying all night and that he knew he would see me at mass today. We hadn’t even talked about being Catholic or anything last night, but I wasn’t surprised to see him there either.

Around 4, Christian called my cell phone to tell me he had just woken up, didn’t really remember anything, but that he wanted to see me. I agreed to visit him after I finished class at 8:30. I had Biblia class, then my Pobreza class and at that point I was exhausted. There are only Estadounidenses (United State-eans) in my Pobreza class, so I was a nice break to finally speak English. I’d hadn’t spoken any since Saturday evening, except when I talked on the phone with Trevor a little on Monday.

After class I took the metro and Christian’s dad and brother Emanuel picked me up. At their house, Emanuel, Emilio and I sat around Christian’s bed with him for the next two hours. Christian was doing quite well: still a little groggy, but very animated and happy to see me. We had a great time recounting the fight and the hours leading up to it. Christian doesn’t remember anything from about 7 in the evening on and only bits and pieces of Tuesday. He said things are slowly coming back to him and while we were talking he would very excitedly interject if he remembered some random detail. At about
11:15 their mom asked if we wanted to have an once and I realized that I again hadn’t eaten dinner. We left Christian to rest and we ate our once while speaking Spanglish and teaching each other funny sayings. All the brothers speak some English and Emilio is practically fluent. Their dad also knows a lot of English. It has been a while since I laughed that hard and it was great to relax. Their family reminds me a lot of my own: They tease each other and have petty spats, but are incredibly caring and really enjoy each others company.

Emilio drove me home and I got in at about midnight. Olga insisted on feeding me when I told her I had only had an once, so we sat around and I updated her on Christian’s status. When I told her that I was going to the beach for Paseo a la Playa, she just laughed. I went to bed around 1 am and called my family, hoping for some reason they were still up. I hadn’t talked to them in a few days and after the emotional rollercoaster I’d been on, I was ready for a familiar voice. Unfortunately I’d woken them up and knew that this wasn’t the time to go into the story. I went to sleep looking forward to doing nothing while I hung out on the beach the next day.