First full day with homestays

Wow, what did I get myself into?!

Let's just say things have been exciting, but harder than I imagined I guess.  Today is Sunday, my first full day with my homestay family.  Yesterday morning all the trainees gathered their belongings (which took up 1/2 our bus, for just one town!) and they drove us all out to our respective barrios, or neighborhoods.  My barrio is El Recreo, in the town of Diriamba, in the region of Carazo, Nicaragua, if that helps anyone get an idea on a map where I am.  I originally thought all the aggies would be training near the town of Esteli, but that's apparently not the case.  Because we will most likely be working together with business volunteers, both programs are training near each other.  So the aggies all went to Carazo and the business trainees near and around Masaya.   We each got dropped off one at a time at our new homes for the next 11 weeks, with Martha, my group's language facilitator, walking us to our doorstep.  It was so exciting seeing the others before me get off the bus, but so nerve-wracking at the same time!  I was coming up next!  The two other trainees in my group, Paige and Ryan, live a few houses away from me, so Paige got dropped off first, then me, then Ryan.  I recognized my new mom's face as soon as we drove up, because we had photos and a brief info sheet about our new family.  Turns out I have a mom, dad, grandma, sister, and brother.  They didn't list him on the sheet I received, so that was something new when I sat down in my new living room and saw everyone for the first time.  My dad introduced everyone (I'll leave their names out for privacy sake) one at a time, very formally, and then I introduced myself.  My mom's 51 years old (I guess the info they gave us is a little dated), my dad's 50, my grandma's 70, and my sister and brother are 14 and 18, respectively.  My sister's in 9th grade at the local high school in Diriamba, my brother goes to college in Managua, my dad works as an instructor of technical sciences, I believe, and my mom's a docent at his work.

After an awkward pause in the living room, my brother suggested my dad take me on a tour of the house.  So I followed him around, everyone following me, and saw where my room was to be, which is a lone room across the patio in the back, with my own bathroom.  It has a shower, but the water is off almost all the time during the day.  It comes on at night, anywhere between 8pm and 7am, but the times vary.  So they have a huge water tank that fills at night, and that water is available to all the faucets in the house during the day.  So basically, bathing during the hours of no water require a bucket bath since the shower head won't work.  But the spigot in the bathroom and the sink work from the tank.  So last night was my first official bucket bath here in Nicaragua.  It'll take some getting used to.  I did bucket bathe here and there in Tanzania, but it's not like I excelled at it!  My grandma kept telling me to let her know when I wanted hot water to bathe, but it was so hot and I was so sweaty all day that I was looking forward to a cool wash-down.  But by the time I actually bathed, it was dark out and had cooled down.  So it was a little chilly, but felt good nontheless.

So. . .Spanish.  Hmmm.  Well, let's just say it's a lot harder than I thought!  I can definitely get by, but I am definitely struggling.  To the point that I feel totally stupid sometimes in class.  Let me back up a bit.  After settling in a bit in my new home yesterday, like starting to unpack some of my things in my room, I had lunch with my sister at the table, which was a warm cooked banana, some white rice, and a piece of fried fish.  But it was really short and I had to scarf because I only had 10 minutes to get to my first "survival Spanish" class Ryan's house (for 3 weeks at a time we have our language classes at one of our 3 houses, so first we're starting out at Ryan's).  I didn't realize that he literally lives like 5 doors down from me.  It was the job of my mom to walk me over there so I knew where I was going.  It started to lightly rain while we were eating lunch (and by the way, my sister is really quiet and shy, so it's sometimes hard to engage her in some kind of conversation.  Plus I just usually don't know how to say what I want to say.  I did ask her if she thought I needed my umbrella since it was starting to rain).  By the time we got to Ryan's house, like a minute later, it was a complete downpour!  I forgot to mention earlier that this is the very beginning of the wet season, which is usually May-November, the wettest months being Sept/Oct.  So all 3 of us met at Ryan's with Martha, and sat on his enclosed patio for our first lesson/discussion.  Honestly, I've never seen it rain so hard, so suddenly, as I did yesterday.  Plus, all the roofs here are metal, so it was impossible to hear each other talk until the rain slowed down a bit.  Which was like 5 solid minutes of complete noise while all 4 of us just kind of sat there laughing at how loud it was.  Martha said she'd try to keep it real informal at first until we could hear each other better.  Our lesson lasted from 1 until about 3 or so.  We practiced greetings ("saludos"), and she brought out Ryan's brother to practice with us.  We kept forgetting what to say, it was rediculous.  I felt so dumb!  This should be so simple, but they're new phrases I've never used before, like "Le presente mi amiga, le conoce? No, no le conozco, mucho gusto, me llamo Sarah.  El gusto es mio.  Es un placer conocerla."  After our lessons we had to walk around to each of our houses and introduce our fellow trainees to our moms.  So funny!  We kinda ended up doing the short-and-sweet versions of what we learned since we forgot all the details.  We also had to leave with the 'goodbyes' that we learned, like "Nos vemos.  Que le vaya bien."  I'm telling you, these things are so basic, but so scary when you have to go out and actually do them!  Even if it's just with our families, cause I feel so silly when I mess up.

Yesterday I actually sat down and talked quite a bit with my dad.  I'm finding he's the easiest one to talk to because he speaks slower than everyone else and will repeat himself without trouble because he senses this is hard for me.  We sat down at the chalkboard they have in the house and wrote down random things we discussed so I could see the spelling of certain things.  I told him the names of my family members back home and tried to explain what they do for a living (mom, I tried to explain ultrasounds, as you can imagine how weird that is.  "Fotos del corazon en una computadora").  Both my parents said they thought I spoke pretty well, I guess considering.  Oh, and get this, I'm the first PC trainee to live with them!  Actually, El Recreo has never hosted trainees before, so all three of us are new to our families.  So we're both experiencing some changes to our lives.  But so far everyone's been really nice.  I feel kinda bad for my siblings.  It seems like I'm just something their parents signed up for, like they got dragged into it.  Especially for my brother.  He's 18 and tends to speak quicker than I can follow.  I feel bad asking him to slow down, but this is hard for me! Imagine a college aged American kid that had to deal with a new person in their house who could barely speak his language.  I can imagine how frustrating that would be, I mean, I'm living proof right here!  It's a learning process for all of us.

So today I have free time.  I went with my mom to the market to see where she buys groceries.  Plus, one of my assignments is to buy and carry around with me a roll of toilet paper ("papel higienico"), since you never know when you're gonna need to use the bathroom, and whether or not it'll be stocked).  So we took a mototaxi into Diriamba.  First we stopped at a pet food store!  Huh!  Apparently some people actually feed their dogs Purina brand pet food.  Nice!  I forgot to mention that they have two dogs: Bruno, a small scrappy-type mutt that resembles Benji, and Susie (or Suzi, not sure), who's quite possibly the cutest little puppy I've ever seen in my LIFE!!  I took pics and I'll try to load them soon.  She's only a month and a half, this little curly-eared something.  I don't know what she is, but she doesn't look real, she's so cute.  Like some little doe-eyed stuffed animal I just wanna squeeze to death.  Unfortunately they're typically not allowed in the house, so Bruno spends all day sitting on the front porch or patio, keeping watch.  And, yeah, he barks a lot when I come to the door, so I'm hoping he'll get to know me soon enough, cause I sure as hell don't want to be bit by a dog when I'm here.

Anyways, we first stopped at the pet food store for some kibble, then walked the rest of the street to buy various fruits and vegetables from vendors out on the curb.  Then there was the bigger market with permanent stalls, like gigantic pig heads hanging in the meat stalls, shoes, shoe repair, papel higienico, (yay! which cost me 14 cordobas, or less than 50 cents), clothes, food, and all sorts of other stuff.  I just basically followed her around with my notebook, taking notes on new words I needed to learn.

This post is already so long, but I feel I've just barely scratched the surface.  Right now my bro just asked if I want to go out and walk around, and my battery is dying, so I'll add more later.

Bye for now!