Berhane,

I was going to immediately begin this letter by writing to you in Swahili for practice—but then I remembered that I can’t even write in Swahili, so that plan fell through before it even began. Oh well, we’ll have plenty of time for all of that. I have to give you time to pretend you’ve been practicing, since I certainly have been speaking in Swahili for the past couple months. Speaking of which, I should not have to go back to Kenya until the beginning of July, so please try to act sufficiently excited about that for my own selfish benefit.

How were your exams, so that I can say that I got my one responsible question out of the way? I’m sure you scraped by at the very least, and the world does need more ice cream scoopers, after all. Before you make that face, you know I’m kidding. I’m glad you got a job, it’ll probably do you some good, and I’m not just saying that because you happened to get a job that has ice cream involved and you know how much I love ice cream. Not that I would ever condone you giving your aunt free ice cream. Out loud, at least.

All right, on to the purpose of this letter… not that I didn’t just want to say hello, obviously. I wanted to tell you to expect a bit of a crowd picking you up, I believe, so warn that boyfriend of yours accordingly so that he can brave the masses or slip past undetected. I promise to not judge him for whatever option he chooses.

See you in less than forty-eight hours, beautiful!

Lia

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@isabella

Auntie Lia,

I won’t judge you right now, but I expect the next letter to be in fluent Swahili. High expectations? Perhaps. Will I change it? Absolutely not. I may or may not have been practicing the Swahili you have taught me…….but I’m so sufficiently excited about you being around more this summer! Was that good enough? I mean…it’s in July when I don’t have school…so if you’d like me to tag along for practicing my Swahili…I wouldn’t say no. Well, I might. I probably shouldn’t be taking a vacation during my only couple of months of working, should I? I guess that looks bad or something.

Exams were great…got Trolls on all of them, clearly. I’ll be the best ice cream scooper in the world…and I’ll test out all of the flavors and give you the nastiest. I figure I’ll get to work a lot…because who doesn’t want ice cream during the summer? I’ll charge you extra, and keep the extra as my tip. Thanks in advance. A bit of a crowd? I’ll warn Evan and see if he wants to pretend we aren’t dating for that day. I’d say please try not to embarrass me, but somehow I doubt what I say matters. Miss you, and see you soon!

Berhane