Entry 4

We're going swimming with my family. I can't seem to find what to wear, but finally I realize I'm wearing a really cool two piece, so I throw on a random dress, satisfied with what's underneath. There's supposed to be some cute boys where we're going.

We arrive at the area, and it's a lake or a pond or something like that. It's not a typical swimming pool. My siblings jump in but my Lil brother decides to fish. While he's fishing, he catches some snakes and throws them back in. To him, it's just other organisms living in the water. To me, it's the absolute nightmare. How can anyone go into this water? Don't they know they could get in contact with these snakes? A feeling of extreme fear washes over me. I can't swim! Not in this place! I stay with this numbing feeling for a while, then the place slowly dissolves out of memory.

We're at a picnic. We're couples, some older and some a little young. My partner and I are one of the youngest. I can't see clearly the female partners of our friends, because there's a weird battle going on with the men. Our men have waged war on some younger, single men, for an ununderstandable reason. The boys have gone on the next hill, and though we can see each other very clearly, there seems to be a gap in sound (which is longer than that of the images) and do we can't hear each other well.

At some point one of the guys runs out of water and is so thirsty he has to call the other side of the hill for extra water. He calls out but no one can hear what he's saying. One of the men on our hill speaks Spanish, so he repeats what he's saying in Spanish. The boys understand it and throw over a bottle of water. We're all surprised that they can hear Spanish but not whatever language the thirsty guy spoke. I also notice that the rest of us had water bottles (mine is still almost full and really cold) but for some reason the thirsty guy couldn't drink our water, he had to get his own bottle. Through the whole ordeal, I can sense that my partner is around but I don't actually see him. On some level, it feels like I'm here alone, among these men. Because I also don't actually see any other woman, even if in my mind, they should have been there. I have no proof that they were. I never saw them. And yet I could see clearly the men, even the boys across from us on the other hill.

We're back home, at my parents' house. We're going to the garden, and we're taking food. A number of people leave, and my sister and I go after them later, after hanging around the house for whatever reason. Finally we arrive at he garden and we're just looking for herbs. But it seems tedious because we have to cover a really big piece of ground. All the way across one hill and onto the next. The herb we're looking for is hidden among overgrown weeds.

After hours of looking, we're expecting food from my mom's sister but she's nowhere to be seen. We're so hungry and we keep looking over our shoulders to see if she shows up. After what seems like eternity, we find her on a different side of the hill, looking for herbs too. She's got a huge bundle under her arm; anybody would be proud. But what we expected was food and so we don't care what ground she has covered. My mom asks her about food, clearly cross. She says she hasn't tended to food; she was busy. Mom is very disappointed, and tells a proverb that's meant to insinuate that sometimes one buys a jar of water expecting it to contain water but finds it empty or containing some useless liquid. Auntie goes off with my sister to make food.

We're back in the house, getting ready for a community sports day. My youngest sister is going to run, so she's finding what to wear. She chooses a blue denim dress, which I think is a disaster for someone who is going to run in the sun but dad likes it so he asks her to keep it on. He also asks her to get rid of her underwear because it'll get in her way. He particularly wants her to get rid of the padded bra because it makes her boobs look too big and yet she's running in the category of really young girls.

When dad is out of the room, I tell her she can't run without underwear, that it would be a disaster. So we decide to find her a sports bra and some boy shorts to wear underneath her round blue denim...

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