Well, I´ve been living with my host family for about a week now, and my through all the awkward and funny moments I can tell that my spanish is painfully improving. My host mom is great and cooks interesting meals, mainly fried chicken with rice and yucca or plantains. An interesting one was pancake-like things with American cheese melted on top.. I also have a host sister who´s 21 and goes to a university not too far, and a 12-yr old host brother who´s is adorable and likes to help me with my homework. Next door is another brother my age who has a wife and a chubby little 4 month old boy. I use a latrine out in the backyard and a bucket for my showers. You wouldn´t believe how much water is saved when using a bucket to shower!
It´s nice walking the streets to Spanish class and saying Buenas to everyone I see on the way, whether I know them or not. Everyone is town is related to each other in some way or another, so the community is very friendly and close.
My usual routine these days are 4 hours of Spanish classes in the morning and 4 hours of techincal classes at night. But even when the classes stop, I have to constatnly be talking and thinking in Spanish all day to get by. Again, a slow and painful progress.
In my tech classes we are doing lots of awesome things. Yesterday we built a raised seed bed out of whatever materials we could find in the jungle. Construscting it made me fel like a kid in the woods again. We used machetes to cut down everything. Did I mention we got our own machetes?? Very fun to use.. We planted awesome veggies in our seed bed like eggplant, jalapeno, broccoli, green peppers, watermelon, spinach, basil, etc. Can´t wait to eat them in a couple months! When they start to grow in a week or two we will tranplant them to a garden bed we prepared so they grow nice and healthy. While making the garden up, we saw a massive tarantula. Huge, hairy, fast little guy. It was horrible, but I didn´t freak out as much as I thought I would. I have a picture, but I can´t figure out how to import picures with this computer yet (i´m at an internet cafe), so maybe next time?
We also learned how to make an organic pesticide using common things like soap, lemons, onions, garlic, hot sauce, and a plant found here called bola (its slightly toxic). You just spray it right on the plants no problem. E-mail me if you want the recipe, it´s very cool. We used it on some termites we found on our seed bed, so I´ll have to see how well that works out.
Laslty, we´ve been taking care of some pollitos (little chickens). We gave them vaccinations, and feed and give them water everyday. Eventually when they grow up and get ugly we will eat them. :)
Speaking of chickens, there something we like to call the Rooster Roll. Starting at about 3am and lasting until a least 5.30am, a rooster will start to annoyingly (and loudly) sing, then another will sing, and slowly all the roosters start calling to each other back and forth all freaking night. Hard to get decent sleep around here, but hopefully I´ll get used to it.
Other fun things around here:
-The Simpsons in Spanish (put it on your bucket list)
-Guanabanas are the best fruit ever (I think there´s a Seasame St. song about it..look it up)
-My own machete (deserves a double-mention)
-I go to bed at like 8.30 or 9pm
Also, the mailing address for me has changed, so I will update the address on the side. I have a cell phone now too, so e-mail me or my mom to get the number if you wish. And I promise pictures next time!
