You know your day is going to be great when you’re running on about an hour and a half of sleep (and the day before you slept for maybe five hours) and you lose your voice and can’t get a sentence out without coughing or having a voice crack. But of the last 41ish hours I have been awake, there has not been a boring moment. Yesterday (Saturday) was amazing. We went to the farm and tubed and rode horses (as you probably know from the other blogs), but my favorite part was riding horses. I practically rode the horses all day, so my thighs are chaffed, the muscles that I didn’t know existed are incredibly sore, and I still can’t walk straight. All of yesterday’s activities are hitting me hard today, so getting out of bed was such a struggle this morning.

I spent the night at Leah’s host’s house, so my host mom came to pick me up with Laurie (my 10 year old host sister) at about 9am. We went straight to La Boston, a coffee shop with amazing crescents, for breakfast. Then we went to their second apartment to prepare it for the people that are renting it. They asked me to help them paint one of their rooms, which, although it may seem odd, was probably one of my favorite moments of the entire trip. We had become close enough to the point that they could ask me to do tedious, albeit incredibly fun manual labor for them! Not only did this knock something off of my bucket list (you’re never too young to have one), but it also showed how close me and my host family have become in a matter of a few days.

After that we sped back to the house to change for lunch reservations. The reservation was for 1:30, but we left the house at 1:35. My host family has a little difficulty with being on time and is always rushing and running all over town, so I felt right at home. After I ate the best pasta of my entire life, we went back home at around 4. I’d been at my host family’s house for a total of 20 minutes since Friday, so I decided that I would stay at home and just relax instead of joining everyone at the beach. I got home and rested for about 30 seconds then realized how much homework I had. So I cracked down for a few hours and then took occasional breaks to skype my parents and catch up on my social media. For dinner we had pizza and after dinner I stayed up until around 1 typing an outline due the next morning.

– Avni Malik