It’s not a question. She’s standing in the doorway with her notebook and stub of a pencil. Dad’s sick in bed with a cold, and Mom’s teaching his English class. I am going to have to do this.

“I came because I need help with my English homework.” she says.

“Come in. Um, sit down here,” I say, pushing my own schoolwork away, clearing some space on the dining room table.

“Welcome.” I say awkwardly. My Spanish grammar and pronunciation is horrible. Even I can know how awful I sound. But I’m going to have to make it work.

“So, you’re Christian’s sister,” I say.

She nods. Christian has been here for English help before. Except that was when Dad was doing the helping. I’m on my own this time.

“I’m Diana.” she says.

I take a deep breath. “Okay, Diana. So, let me see your homework problems.”

“This is the first part. I just don’t get it,” she sighs.

It’s: List three things you can do.

“So… what can you do?” I ask, when we’re done translating the question.

“I can swim.” she says without hesitation. Although it looks like she thinks it’s a pretty dumb question to start with.

“I… can… swim,” I read aloud. “See? Yo puedo nadar.”

Diana copies what I’ve written. After making sure it’s a C, not an O, and a M, not a N. (After I’m finished apologizing for my lack of handwriting skills.)

We finish that and move on to translating digits into English written numbers.

“Why?” she asks. “Why do you write o’clock? What does it mean?”

“I… it, uh, it doesn’t mean anything. Neither does the line between the 20 and the 5 in twenty-five. It’s just there.” I answer. Hey, that’s my take on it.

Diana isn’t too impressed.

We look at the words we drop in English that we need in Spanish. I learn a thing or two.

“I’ll come back if I need more help,” she says as she packs up.

“That’s fine. Sounds good. I have English class for girls on Tuesdays, if you want to come,” I offer.

“Thanks.”

I’m pretty sure I’m not a good teacher. But I don’t think Diana minded.

-Madeline Studebaker

Girls Bible Study.

Me in charge.

Not really a leader. And really not a Spanish-speaker.

But here I am, trucking on with my horrible language techniques and impeded social skills.

“And this is the best tea, I think, so–” my eyes search the table. “Uh, where is the sugar?”

Laugh erupts from all five girls.

“Where is the sugar?” I ask slowly. Maybe they aren’t understand me, you know, with my accent and all.

Or maybe they aren’t understanding how seriously important this brown-sugar-in-the-mint-tea thing is, either.

“Nagy had it.” Janina squeaks.

I notice the past tense on the word “have”. That worries me.

“Nagy?” I question.

She gravely hands me the sugar bowl. It is completely empty.

I shriek, grabbing her tea cup, expecting there to be a slush of brown sugar in the bottom. But there’s just tea.

“It, uh–” Nagy clears her throat. “It wasn’t for the snack?”

I can’t control myself. I burst out laughing. After about a five-minute episode, the girls finally get me to stop hyperventilating.

“There are going to be cookies in a minute.” I explain. “But I can’t believe you ate all that. How could you do that?”

She smiles shyly. “I guess I did it with a spoon.”

I stir my tea. “Okay. That works,”

-Madeline Studebaker

The beach is an awesome place. I was so glad our friends had invited us to go with them to the coast for a few days.

As soon as I possibly could, I changed into my bathing suit and charged straight into the ocean. I wasn’t the best swimmer, but I was determined to become the best boogie boarder out of everyone on the beach. And I knew it was going to take some serious work.

I had never been surfing (you probably could’ve figured that out), or even boogie boarding in the ocean. I almost got myself drowned the first couple of times that I tried to ride a wave on the boogie board, and then I made the discovery of going with the grain. I was making it my goal to not die when my dad and little sister joined me.

I was just getting the hang of it when Dad screamed something about a giant wave approaching. There it was, towering over me. It was scary, but I knew I had to keep swimming to where it would break. If I didn’t, it would hit me tsunami-style and I’d be a mile out from the shore, floating like flotsam for the rest of my life. (I wanted to be famous, but not if it meant I was the next “Castaway”.)

I turned around, jumped up, landed on the board, and shot off in my impression of a professional. I figured that’s about how it looked anyway. Thinking back on it now, in a more realistic way, I probably looked like an overweight walrus trying to get away from a polar bear. Oh well. Even I know you can’t win them all.

Still, I expected cheers from Abigail. She’s the most supportive person I know. She would probably cheer if I fell off the board and didn’t come up for an entire minute. She’s just that optimistic. I couldn’t hear anything other than the wave crashing down and my heart beating, but, I figured that it wasn’t a bad thing.

“This must be how it feels to be a dolphin or something,” I mused. “With your adrenaline pumping every time you start swimming,”

After a few seconds of that, I started thinking about how awfully cold I felt. “Well, it’s the ocean. It’s going to be windy sometimes.” I told myself. I knew it could just be the ocean breeze, but something was definitely fishy. I stifled a girlish scream as I realized my shorts had abandoned me and I was flying through the Pacific commando. I was stripped of my dignity, and quite ironically, the bottom half of my bathing suit. Obviously, Mother Nature had decided my buns were looking a little whiter than she would have preferred.

“This cannot be happening! They’re never going to let me forget this!” I shouted with self-pity. Salt water filled my mouth. I swallowed, because I knew it wouldn’t hurt. As soon as I got up on the sand, I’d puke my guts out anyway. From total embarrassment.

How on earth were we going to explain this to my mother? I would have rather seen a shark right there and then. And had a heart attack or something. I kept getting closer and closer to the shore. The beach was going to be humiliating. I changed my thought to: I would rather be right there in the water with a power cord wrapped around my body and all ten of my fingers in electrical sockets, and be staring a tiger shark in his beady eyes. Nothing happened that changed my course. So much for important (sometimes weird) wishes coming true. I was still moving forward.

I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes, and got an early start on erasing the memory. This was the worst thing that could possibly happen to me, Ms. Missionary. Blinding the Beaches of Canoa.

I was mortified. I might be hanging ten, but my backside was hanging out.

Everything I say is automatically the most hilarious thing to ever be spoken.

English, Spanish, it doesn’t matter.

In fact, some of the kids think they need to repeat me to remind me exactly how funny I am.

Copy cats.

“Run, don’t stop!” I yell from my position in the field. “The bases are loaded!”

“Fun, boat mop! De faces her bloated!” he screams, jumping up and down on 3^rd base.

I roll my eyes. “You’re out!”

“More bout!”

I put my hands on my hips. “You’re testing me,”

“More pesky knee,” he giggles.

Ah yes, the humorous English language.

-Madeline Studebaker

Alejo, Javier, and Aaron stick there heads up in the window. I hadn’t seen them, but I’m not startled. After all, how scary can 6-year-olds be?

They’re some of the kids who come Wednesdays through Fridays to the kids’ programs. Today’s Saturday. My day off. Sometimes.

“Hi. How’s everything?” I ask in Spanish.

“Fine.” Alejo answers. “And that’s pretty,” he comments on the song I’m playing.

“Yeah.” It’s not often I get the little keyboard out. I love music, and this thing got its handles hacked off with a saw so it could fit in my suitcase. I’m out of practice, and I don’t think it’s pretty at all. But I smile anyway.

“What do you want?” I ask. I like the way we talk here. You can say what you want to say. You ask questions bluntly with other kids. It’s not like it’s rude or anything. It’s the way I was spoken to when we started all of this, and now it’s the way I talk too.

“I want an orange.” He says. “Can I have one, miss?”

I try to keep myself from laughing. I’m not exactly one of the people I think should be called miss. I pretend to think for a while. “You can have one.” I say. “One.”

“Okay.” They disappear into the back yard where the fruit trees are. About 5 minutes later, they’re back.

I’m handed an orange through the window. “Peel this, can’t you?” Alejo says.

I go get a knife from the kitchen. I grab the orange out of his hands. The knife goes around and around the orange, cutting the peel off into a shape like a long curly snake. I cut the top off of one side and hand it back. “Here.”

“Thanks. We’re gonna go play marbles now.”

“Okay.” I sit back down and realize how different everything is here.

How much I’ve changed. The way I talk, the way I handle things, the way I live.

It’s not strange to me anymore. Because being here, every day, is just another normal day of my life.

Because I’m here, peeling oranges.

Rule Number One of Being in Misahualli During Carnival:

Don’t you even think about getting into Dona Gloria’s without getting soaked or sprayed or painted. Or all of the above.

“We are going to Dona Gloria’s. And we are going to get our soup.” Dad announced. I’m pretty sure and nothing is going to stop me was written all over his face in love-the-food language.

“Eric, honey,” Mom started. (She always uses honey when she knows he’s not going to want to hear something.) “You know it’s Carnival, right? So there are probably a lot of celebrations going on in town. The restaurants will be packed, and we’ll have to wait for a really long time.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Dad said. (See what I mean?) “We always eat there on Sundays, and we always get our bola de verde soup.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

We stepped outside and looked at the soccer field. It was now parking lot central. About a bazillion cars, trucks, and tour buses now covered the grass.

“Yay, soup!” Abigail cheered.

Oh, boy. I think to myself. I might need my war paint for this… woah.

We hustled through the street to town. Almost a mile through nothing but tourists, silly string, and red and gold dye.

“Where are we?” Elijah whispers to me.

“This is the way to town,” I said. To explain the whole we-don’t-recognize-our-own-street thing, I added, “It’s Carnival.”

He just said “Oh.”

We finally, finally got to the restaurant. It took us about an hour, which was because we’d been wading through all those people, but we were, at last, eating our lunch.

Never mind that it was already 2:00 pm. Nothing bad had happened.

No buckets of water dumped on our heads, no shaving cream squirted in our faces, and no red power thrown all over us. I was feeling pretty good about it all.

But then we left the restaurant.

Zzzquuiisssstt! And I can’t hear anything. I panic. What just happened? But then I wipe my face with the back of my arm. The entire left side is covered with fluffy white stuff. “Oh.”

Abigail starts laughing. “It isn’t funny.” I say.

Then, a few steps farther, out of the crowd comes another zzzquuiisssstt! And both Abigail’s and Mom’s faces are completely frosted with white foam. “Ha, ha!” I triumph. “So I guess it’s every man for himse–” and then comes the sound of something shooting out of an aerosol can. I look up, and then it hits me. Literally.

I’m choking. I’m blind. All that’s running through my head is this tastes like soap; what is it? And, whoever did that is in for it. My mouth was open.

“Gracias!” yells Mom.

“Wow, look at you!” Elijah shrieks.

“That’s…”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” I sputter. “Get him back!”

“With what?” Dad asks.

I yank a bunch of quarters out of my pocket. “How much for a can of silly string?”

And a bucketful of water comes splashing down on me.

A palm covered in red dye smacks my wrist.

Ah, yes. Carnival.

I plop down on my bed after an intensive cramming session before a test. I let out a sigh. Not exactly the happy kind, more like the can-you-believe-this kind.

I hear humming. “Hush.” I tell the noise.

More humming. “Hush. I need quiet.”

A giggle escapes from somewhere in the room. I look around, but I don’t see anything.

Oh, perfect, I think. Now on top of a science test, I’ve got hallucinations to worry about!

Shuffling noises come from behind the bed. I get off the bed and approach the shuffle.

“Hola!”

“Aahh!” I yell.

Another giggle. It’s Andy.

(If you don’t remember Andy, read “Elijah, Andy, Moo-Chella, and Me”, a blog about the day I babysat him. (https://soallmayknow.org/elijah-andy-moo-chella-and-me/.)

“Le dijo, hola!” he says.

“Oh, uh, um,” I fumble.

I think I just had a heart attack at 13 years old.

Andy? In my house? In my room? For how long? And why?

There he was, playing with Legos, talking to himself, and scaring me to death.

The rest of the conversation was in Spanish, but I’ll write it here in English.

“You are in my house!” I accuse.

“I know that,” he replies calmly.

“Yeah, but why are you in my house?”

“I’m playing hide-and-seek,” He explains.

“Oh,” Relief flows into me. “Then where’s Elijah?”

“I’m not playing with Elijah, I’m playing with my sister,”

“You are? Then where’s she?” I ask. How many preschoolers are there, lurking in my home?

“She’s at my house. She’ll never find me here!” He brags.

I give a short yelp and pick him up.

I jog to Ms. Cecilia’s house. Oh, no…

She’s going to be mad. “–And I thought, what a great hiding spot!–”

She’s going to be mad. “–And, she’ll never, ever find me!–”

She’s going to be mad. “–Oh, look, my house!–”

We come to a halt in front of his house.

“Andy– I found you! You’re it!” says his sister, as she tags him.

“Andy! Where were you?” says Ms. Cecilia.

Rapid Spanish scoldings address Andy.

“Your house is a great hiding spot!” he shouts.

I smile.

-Madeline