life lessons. they're all over the place.

What does this handsome lad have to do with me being in Mexico? A lot, actually.

Long story short, I hit my head on the bottom of a swimming pool and screwed up my face. It hurt a lot, and I'm not sure if I had a concussion or not, but I was acting really weird afterwards. So here's the story...

So it was my host Grandma's birthday, and there was a big party for her at a park. I was really excited. My family said that we would be swimming and to bring my swimming suit, so I said, "OK." And I brought it.

So we (my family, my sister Mandy, and our friend April) get there. April and I got creeped out by some teenage boys, and then we went swimming. We played a lot of swimming games and it was way fun! There was a shallow end and a deep end, so it was a regular pool, right?

Wrong.

After a little while, we decided to have a cannonball contest. Mine won...naturally. Somehow, a teacher remembered that I was a diver in high school, so they told me to do the dive. I said no. I reminded them how I...was not very enthusiastic...about diving while in high school, and how I hadn't dove (dived? diven?) since State competition in 2007. So over three years. I figured that I would be a little rusty. But how bad could it be, right? I mean, I was literally just jumping off a seven foot platform into a pool. Standing front dive - easy.

Well, my arm is sore - it's not broken, but something is definitely up with it. I have the biggest goose egg on my face, (my little brother Luis says that there is a rock in my head). I am scaring small, Mexican children with the gashes on my face, and to top it all off, I have a scrape on my arm that feels like a rugburn, that probably hurts the worst - and it's not even that big. That is probably the worst part. Earlier that day, I bent down in the bathroom and hit my head on the metal handle, and I made everyone feel my "bump" on my forehead. If only I had known what was to come later...

Hopefully I won't be known as 'The Girl Who Hit Her Head On the Bottom Of the Pool', rather than 'The Girl Who Peed Her Pants' (story to come later...). I guess there are worse things. But not a ton.

So, if you have been paying attention, there were many a lesson to be learned here:
1- Don't learn how to dive correctly. If you are smart, you will just do a shallow dive and run the risk of a belly flop. Those hurt, but the pain wears off. Plus, you don't get scraped by water.
2- Actually, don't even learn to dive in general. Cannonballs are much more fun, and you get to look like "Ham" from The Sandlot.
3- Sugar soaks up liquid from bumps. Not actually something that you should have learned from this short story, but it's true. My host Mom put sugar on my forehead, I was very confused, but hey - how many people can say that they've gotten sugar put on their forehead IN MEXICO! Not a lot. Think about it. The only downside to that was that it kept on going down my shirt. No me gusta.
4- If you are in a foreign country and wanting to dive into a sketchy swimming pool, always go the extra mile and ask someone who knows English how deep the water is. It will save much pain, and as an added bonus, embarrassment.

You bet your burro there will be pictures a comin'!!! From various family member's reactions on Skype, I bet you, the reader, will enjoy them.