I survived my week in the woods and I feel pretty good. It ended up raining almost the entire time we were there which meant that everyone was stuck indoors. Thankfully I had the wisdom to bring a Gamecube and a PS2. Much of my time at the lake was actually spent inside playing Warioware, Karaoke Revolution and Tales of Symphonia. Pretty much everyone in Kara’s family is an incredibly talented singer. Each and every one of them was born with the ability to hear a song once and then reproduce it almost perfectly. This is not something I can do. It’s not even something I can comprehend. They all got hooked on Karaoke Revolution and battled it out tournament style each night. Kara ended up winning the whole thing by nailing a 100% perfect score on a Nora Jones song. I did a rendition of “I hate everything about you” that I would describe as emotionally charged. It certainly got a laugh out of everyone present and I was asked to repeat it at various points during the week for the benefit of family members who had not heard it yet. This became my signature song and out of respect it was never performed by anyone else again.
Plenty of funny things happened during the week but out of respect for Kara and her very nice family I won’t go into any details here. I will say that I have a brother in law from Chile who speaks very little English and whose favorite movie is Little Orphan Annie. Watching him dance in front of the television, while belting out “Hard Knock Life” in his heavy Chilean accent was a real treat. At one point he lost the tape and spent a few hours franticly searching for it since he had rented it from the library. Someone asked him when it was due back and I suggested that perhaps it was due TOMORROW, TOMORROW! They just love me.
-Gabe out
