Si

In one of my favorite David Sedaris stories he describes living in France without speaking the language and saying yes to whatever people say to him and just seeing where it leads him. Which I think is a good policy, second to actually understanding what people say to you, and I realized I’ve been doing that here. The general pattern is that someone such as my host sister will say something I don’t quite catch and then follow that with a question like Do you want to go? or Do you want to see? And I say si. The other day this lead to me watching my family put a ring in the nose of one of their bulls. And later that day it lead to me letting my mom “clean” me with an egg, which involves her taking an egg, in the shell, and rubbing it all over me to draw out whatever was making me sick (I’d been coughing all week). My cold wasn’t better the next day, but the massaging effect of my mom doing the cleaning did make me feel happier. That and how nice it was of her to be taking care of me.