Day Two

Saturday, October 3rd:

Yesterday, I met my family. My mom came to CIMAS and picked me up and brought me really pretty flowers. But it is only now that I am with a woman who does not speak English at all (her son does) that I realize how terrible my Spanish is. I can usually tell her what I want to say in my broken Spanish with the aid of the dictionary (thanks again Profe ). My room is really big and I have my own bathroom. The house is actually a condo and it is relatively small, but overall it is really nice and clean so I cannot complain. In the house is my mom Patricia, my brother David (whose English is probably better than mine!) and my sister Crestina (CIMAS spelled it wrong on the info sheet that I got). But I haven’t met Crestina yet because she is currently in Panama. She either gets back tomorrow or the 15^th, I don’t know because I only understand about half of the things that are said to me. We also have two dogs, Kimmi and Esees, I have no idea the breed because again, I don’t understand very much, but they both look like the dog from “Fox and the Hound”. Esees (E –seas) is a puppy and is really cute and the family is good about gating my room so they don’t go in-so even though I am not really an animal fan, I think they’re alright.

In other news, my mom told me that she thought I was only staying until the 11^th of December, so it looks like I will be moving to another house for the next program.

Today we got up and had breakfast (papaya and more bread and gross white cheese, not good) and then we took the dog to the vet. The actual vet part was not that fun but the drive through the city was cool. When we came back I thought we were going to have lunch (I heard the word almuerzo in the car) but so far there has been no cooking to speak of so we’ll see. Which sucks because I am STARVING. Later my mom and I are (from what I gather) going to go on a walk and look at the places that all the other people in the program live (and she refers to them as my friends, which I think is funny since I’ve known them for all of two days).

So overall this is MUCH harder than I thought because I constantly don’t know what is going on or if people are talking to me. And even if they are I rarely know what they are saying and even if I do I usually have no idea how to form a response. Oh and when they tell you that random men will cat-call you on the street, they are not joking. I have been told I was “sooo beautiful” and wolf whistled and then some other things that I think I am glad I don’t understand so many times already that I am sick of it and it has only been a few days.