elliottvaughn

Me kicking off

My first rugby game I kicked off and I had fun. I’ve had 3 practices so far and this was my first game. I didn’t get a touchdown. A touchdown in rugby is called a strike and there’s really no pause in the game. I play rugby because one of my friends invited me to go to one of his practices. His name is Santi. From then on I’ve been playing. We practice on Wednesdays and Fridays and I play games on Saturdays. I like it because it’s fun and the only rule is don’t talk back and have fun. The first game was really cold and after the game we ate hamburgers and Fanta. Everyone is asking me questions about America and Portland and Oregon. Only two kids on my team speak English, Santi and Ignacio. We’re going over to Ignacio’s house today to visit and they speak English because they lived in New Jersey for 3 years. The point of rugby is to pass the ball behind you and you can only tackle from waist to knees and you have to wear a mouthguard.

At the falls

This last weekend we went to the falls and got all of our shoes wet and it was lots of fun. Here’s a photo of me and Ben playing by the waterfall. We swam in a pool and played king of the mountain and built a dam. We saw lots of bugs and I think I got stung in the ear by a bee. My ear feels better now. We also saw a huge beehive way up in a tree. Our taxi driver said to watch out for snakes because if you annoy them they will bite and sometimes kill you, but we didn’t see any. Our driver pointed out a huge fly that looked like a huge bee. You could see its eyes. That’s my adventure at the falls on Saturday.

Playing in the pool on Sunday

On Sunday we went to our host family’s friend’s house for the day. They had 4 dogs, 3 were boxers and one I’m not sure the name. Two were nice, the others were not so nice. The boxer girl was buff and strong and the boxer boy wasn’t that buff. It sort of looked like a jungle. We saw a black cow and huge fish in their lake, we didn’t get to catch any but we got to feed them. Sonia (the owner of the ranchero) said maybe another day we could fish. Ariana is our friend, we call her Ari. She said we should make a chain with Ben holding my feet and me in a tube in the pool. They had two pools. One was freezing but the other was better. We ate tacos with chicken, pig and cow in the tortilla. It was good. I took some pictures of the plants we saw.

And that’s the journey of going to our host family’s friend’s house.