Home Sweet Home

Yesterday we started Spanish classes, I started taking my malaria pills, we used the PC computers to communicate back home, we hung out again at the local basketball courts to unwind in Santa Lucia, we had a big extended family dinner as a going away supper with a few other volunteers’ families, and then finally Brent and I got back to our room and our host brothers will not leave us alone. They just stood in our doorway for what seemed to be eternity just kind of watching us. I think they are very curious about gringos and what we are like. We were so tired and just wanted to sleep, but they just would not leave. Eventually we just had to finally say we were going to sleep because we still had to pack and actually sleep! We felt bad because that family had never really hosted anyone, but we were so tired and had to get some sleep so we wouldn’t be tired meeting our new families today.
Alright, so for the first three days we lived with one host family in the town where headquarters is located, Santa Lucia. Today we moved to locations for training, where we will live, study, and work for the next three months, up until training is over and we are sworn in as volunteers. I feel like our group really lucked out! We live in Alotenango, which is nestled between several volcanoes and beautiful hillsides. The volcano Fuego is right outside my window and is still active… Muy loco! (see picture below)

My family consists of Dona Amalia or Dona Maya, Don Julio, and three sisters: Helen, Siomi, and Fluvia. Thankfully all I had to manage moving was my one bag because some PC employees moved all of our other luggage. My host father and I talked for a while when I first got here and really bonded. Then, I unpacked EVERYTHING! It felt so good to finally be settling somewhere and not trying to find everything among three bags. The whole family ate lunch together about 1:15pm. We had soup, tortillas, some sort of fish or meat (I think it was tuna), a kind of steamed pumpkin and carrots. It was pretty good. After lunch my host father and I talked more up on the roof/upstairs patio for a while about many different things. I can fortunately understand his Spanish pretty well. He also had me feed our dog, Brinkley, some fried chicken so that I would be on his good side and he would know I am part of the family. After that, my host dad and I went on a walk around the city, scoping out the school, the Catholic Church, the municipality and many other landmarks. We ended up running into Evan and Brianna, two of the other trainees here, who were walking with their host families. We walked with them to Patti’s, the other trainee here, house and hung out there for a while. When I got home, I took a little power nap for an hour and then watched some tv with the host parents. My host mom actually has a store that is kind of inside our house so along with whatever she is usually doing, she is also managing the store. We had tamales, bread, cookies, and tea for dinner. After dinner, I watched The Mafia in Spanish on TNT with my host dad.

The picture above is my room. A little about the bathroom here at my new home: I learned that houses in our city don’t have running water every day so I will alternate showers and bucket baths. Also, the toilet doesn’t flush on its own. You have to get a bucket of water and put it down it and flush at the same time. I expect to figure that out tomorrow. Tomorrow is Sunday and thankfully we don’t have much planned to do… Hasta luego.