Here we are again, a few weeks later. Sorry for the delay, but I haven’t stopped moving, and now that I have a moment, let’s get back to it. If I’m not mistaken, we left off just before we almost threw Marcos off a cliff (Sandra says that wouldn’t have been such a bad idea, and she’s 100% pacifist—but Marcos was a lot to handle). I recommend going back through the previous entries in case you’ve lost track of the story.

The thing is, before Marcos could even think about taking the exam or giving up the idea of becoming a soldier, he had to accomplish something very difficult—passing high school. It wasn’t so much that it was hard for him; it’s more accurate to say he bulldozed his way through everything to make it happen.

Let’s be clear: Marcos was a terrible student, and that was obvious to anyone who accompanied him to the library even once. (One day, I’ll tell you that story. Sandra’s telling me to get to the point, so I’ll move on.) In the previous entry, I already told you how he managed to pass—and that was challenging enough.

When Marcos found out he’d passed, he went completely overboard celebrating. And, being as impulsive as he is, he wanted to enroll in the academy immediately. In the end, though, he let the whole summer go by. You already know Marcos—he doesn’t let things stress him out. So, the summer turned out to be pretty uneventful.

After the summer, he finally signed up, and from then on, all he could think about was the exam. We were all sick of hearing about it because Marcos became completely fixated. His favorite phrase during that time was, “Everything for Spain.”

A big reason Marcos ended up taking the exam was his uncle, who I’ll talk about in the next entry. His uncle was quite the character. All I’ll say for now is that he was a huge patriot, and Marcos became his number-one fan. So, imagine the bar being set incredibly high for the next chapter!