I love my host family! My family's maid, Margarita, came to pick me up. I'm guessing she is in her 50's. She is indigenous, so she wears the typical clothing of the indigenous people. Margarita loves me and can't stand to be away from me for more than 15 minutes at a time. After talking with her and my host mother, Sandra, and giving them a sign photo of Elvis and Johnny Wilkinson, I came to my room to unpack and settle in. Not 10 minutes later I hear little feet pattering quickly down the hallway. It was Margarita. She had a huge, nearly toothless grin with her arms outstretched and gave me a bear hug while telling me how much she liked me. I asked her if she wanted to see pictures of my family…I've never seen someone so pumped about family photos in my life. She sat so close to me she was practically on my lap and hugged me after just about everything I said. It was adorable. She couldn't understand that my mom and dad were really my parents. "No, son demasiado jóvenes," she would say. Meaning they are too young, they can't be your parents. She also got really confused with Carsen's change in style through my pictures. I kept having to explain that I only have one sister and she would flip from one picture of Carsen to the next analyzing the face to see if I was telling the truth or not.
After picture time she started talking really fast and I only caught parts of what she was saying…something about orphans and trash. We then made my bed and she took me to the roof to see the view. This house is freaking gorgeous! It is three stories and looks like parts are newly remodeled. When I walk in the door, my room is directly on the right. There is a hallway right outside with beautiful birds in bird cages that sing and chirp constantly. At the end of the hallway is a roofless garden on the left and my bathroom on the right. Straight ahead is the door to the main house. the first room is a spacious dinning room with new tiled floors. At the edge of the dining room on the left is a door to the kitchen and on the right are the stairs to the second floor. there are 4 rooms on the second floor, two with televisions. then up the stairs again is the laundry room and the roof with clothes hanging out to dry. If you want to see all of the pictures of the house, then get on Facebook or find someone with a Facebook. It's worth it. You will also want to see the amazing view from the roof…wow.
After my trip to the roof, I came back to my room to write and study some words I may need to use at lunch. As I sat here I met my host father, Jorge, who lives here and was coming home for lunch. He was very kind and forgiving of my Spanish mistakes. Oh, and I have to go by Cassie because my family can't pronounce Cassidy for their lives. Jorge calls me Casty. I also met my two brothers, Andres and Jorge, and my sister, Elisa. All the kids are around my age. Jorge is the youngest and Elisa and Andres are probably around 23 or 24.I had lunch with just my mother. The food was fantastic (Margarita is a student at a cooking school) and we talked for about 45 minutes about the US, my family, and school. I made her laugh a lot. I really like her.
After lunch I went with my friends and climbed a mountain, well we hitch hiked part of the way up in the back of a truck. The view was phenomenal! I will post pictures tomorrow.
The feeling I have had this entire trip has been really strange. Ever since I left the US last Monday, I have not been anxious or upset. I have been in a strange state of calm. Everyone was talking about how scared they were for the home stay and I knew I had some worries about communication, but I wasn't scared. It's a feeling like, "I know this is going to happen anyway, so I'm going to be ok with it." I haven't gotten homesick or gone through much culture shock at all. I've never been so go with the flow in my life. It's awesome and I hope it stays this way. I just feel like this is where I'm supposed to be at this point in my life and I'm soaking it up as much as I can.
Tomorrow is my first day of school. I can't wait!
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