belen, she's a babe

My cousin belen came to visit last week. unfortunately, i had to work most of the 2 days she was here. i came home from work thursday & she was already sitting there all cute and stuff on the living room couch. emma greeted me at the door because amy was over. so i squealed a little hello to emma first, then walked over to give belen a *huge* hug, obviously warning her with the professed broken-spanish disclaimer "i just came home from work so i probably smell bad".

I decided belen is part of the family....well, of course. but remember, she was practically a stranger to me. we'd only met once when i was 6 and she was 14. and trying to keep in touch in two separate countries, with a hovering language barrier should've made us strangers, right?

But she felt like my sister when she was here. she has a cute laugh --she laughs all the time-- very cute demeanor about her too. we had some great conversations. perhaps it was more chit-chat rather than really getting-to-know-about-your-life conversations, but we both understood that's the best we could do with words with my conversational spanish and her severely limited english.

But i think our behaviors and actions were able to communicate where words were lacking. every time we looked at each other, we had big genuine smiles on. there's something about the latino culture that can make any stranger seem familiar to you...like you've always been friends. in this case, more like sisters.

Thursday night we went to institutes. ---oh, and by the way, she knows OF the church, but her family is not active. the church is hard to stay in tune with in italy. so this was good that she went.--.

Friday while i was at work, they carved pumpkins. when i got home, we went to the pumpkin patch, then to the strip (duh! that's where us vegans hang out, right?;)).

paparazzi family.

*Sidenote* emma is walking now. it's new. it started probably only last week, which is why my whole family is gahh-ing over it/her right now. well. at least we're more obvious about our gahh-ing than before.

strawberries at the bellagio

this is the most expensive strawberry i've ever eaten...$3.75

she was like this off & on for 10 minutes. we had to drive 20 mph.
the other cars on the strip had to drive around us.
belen got some good pictures of the strip from it!! haha
isn't that what sunroof's are for??? :P

The good thing is....belen will be staying in the united states longer than she planned!!!! she's trying to get into school at the university of utah, but in order to increase her chances of getting accepted, she needs to stay in the united states. so her 16-day trip has turned into a 4-month trip. the good thing is she has family in utah, california, [las vegas!], north carolina, and hawaii (which currently has $99 flights to/from vegas to honolulu no less!). so i'll get to see her more in the next few months that she's here....until she finds out whether or not the school will accept her.

She's not worried about the minimal luggage she brought with her, or the lack of planning for such a big change of plans......what she IS nervous about is how things will go with the school. i don't blame her.

So yes. BELEN. love her. i decided i'm going to go back to school to minor in spanish. i wanna be able to communicate with my family just a little bit better. i think that'd be nice. [all the spanish-speaking practice i'm getting at umc is helpful though. my verbal spanish has gotten way better since being there.]

Are families great or what?