Mi Nuevo Familia!

Sunday I met my first host family. I will be staying with this family for my first 3 months of the Peace Corps, while I am in training. Meeting them was very nerve racking and exciting. We were waiting outside our training center and one by one the families would arrive and we would be called over to greet them. This country is very affectionate and everyone you meet gets hugs and the one cheek kiss.

My new mama and brother and sister arrived to pick me up. My new mama is Sonya and my papa is Julio, the children are Cesar who is 9 and Camilla who is 7. They do not speak any english at all. Julio drives a moto taxi for a living, which is a carriage driven by a scooter. So we all piled into that with my gigantic luggage off the back and we came to my new house. The neighborhood that we left where the training center is was very beautiful, however the closer and closer we got to my new house the rougher the neighborhood appearance would get. I will admit when we arrived at my new house it was very intimidating. The neighborhood is not very colorful, lots of dilapiated brick and cement buildings. The area looks very poor.

My house is an upstairs apartment. There is a small kitchen, a bedroom that the parents and the children share, and a bathroom that has running water and a toliet. My room is separate from the inside of the house. It's basically a room located on a rooftop deck.

My family is wonderful, the are working really well with me and the language barrier and i think they are going to be so helpful in trying to help me better my english. Apparently it is very rude to turn down food or not finish what you are given, and due to this, I am eating foods I never though I'd like because I can't say no. The portions are a little ridiculous, but it's healthy stuff and my challenge now is how to decline polietly.

This morning I was awoken by rooster perched outside my very thin bedroom wall around 4:45am. That is going to take some getting used to. This morning my new mama walked me to my first day of training. I discovered this morning that many of the volunteers live in my neighborhood, one of the guys directly across the street. It is very comforting to have so many of the volunteer in such close proximity. Tomorrow we are all going to walk to the center together.

Each day is getting more and more exciting as we find out more of what we are about to do. The other volunteers are a lot of fun and it's going to be great to be going through this with them. We did lose one volunteer last night, it was too much for her.

I will have some pictures posted soon hopefully!!