War

I walked into Mishel's room the other day to say hi, and I saw, stuck on the wall, the piece of hot pink duct tape I had given her when I saw her running around with pieces of electrical tape.  She had it stuck to her wall, surrounded by the little pieces of electrical tape and for some strange reason, it made me incredibly happy.  She's so shy around me all the time, with the exception of the two nights my host family got her drunk, and it was touching to see that she had coveted a little piece of duct tape.

Later that day, a woman with a surprisingly high pitched voice came to visit Celina, and she brought her son.  Mishel shyly asked if I wanted to play "Casino" with them, which is sort of a weird version of go fish but slightly more complicated.  I told them they would have to teach me, which involved them playing a round while I watched...which didn't really help.  Celina came in to play the second round and won it.  Then they asked me to teach them a game, which freaked me out a bit because giving instructions could be pretty difficult.  I decided to pick the easiest game to explain that I could think of - good ol' War, or "Guerra" in this case.  My host mom said, "no, a game with cards." I assured her that "Guerra" was a card game.  What did she think I was going to teach them?

They really liked the game.  It was simple, easy to explain, and takes up an unpredictable amount of time.  I ended up head to head with the boy and the game went on so long that I gave my cards to Mishel and let her continue playing for me.  I think I won the boy over at that point, and he came back a couple days later and played War with Mishel again.  I don't know why but I was pretty pleased.