Nueva familia

I just spent my first weekend with my host family. Here is a long summary of their lives and mine for the last few days. The mother stays at home while the father is working in construction building houses, mostly in Cayambe. He also built their house. They have 4 kids – Marta 16, Angel 14, Flor 12, and Ruby 7. I have a separate entrance to my room – it has a cement floor and they put a chair, dresser, table and bed in here for me. They put 5 blankets on my bed which is good because its actually pretty cold, especially at night. I didn’t have a pillow though, maybe they just don’t use them here really, so I’m using my sleeping bag for a pillow. I am about the 14th volunteer that has stayed in their house; there is one each February to April, then June to August of each year and they had the first one 7 years ago. The community has about 1000 people, and they are mostly all farmers. My family has some land up on the hill about a 15 minute walk away where they keep their 7 cows. At 4:30 every morning they go milk them, and then again in the afternoon they walk up with their 2 dogs to move them to a different field for the night. They get 40 liters of milk each day that they sell. Besides these animals they have a cat and 2 kittens, chickens, 2 pigs, a horse (that is kept in the forest near the cows not in the yard) and I think that’s it. In the yard they grow sooo many fruits and vegetables that I can’t even list them all – I know they have “tomato of tree,” uvillas, 2 types of quinoa, blackberries, corn, cabbage, green onion, and lots of herbs including anise, chamomile, oregano… They also have a little store in the upper level of their house. They sell candy, pop, other snacks and stuff as well as rice, flour and other grains in bulk. There is a doorbell on the door to the store and when it rings – at any hour – one of the kids usually runs up the stairs outside to go sell something. Last night apparently someone rang at about 1 AM wanting to buy some alcohol so my dad didn’t get to sleep very well. The parents sleep in a room with the youngest daughter, which is also the room they all sit in to watch TV. The two girls share a room and a double size bed, and the boy has his own room, but only the parent’s room has a door. The bathroom also has a door, but no shower curtain for the shower. They do have hot water, but there are wires on the ceiling connected to the shower head that somehow heats the water. They only have one bath towel. Today was Father’s Day, so the mom made an orange cake, and we melted some of the chocolate chips I gave them and used it as frosting. We also had “consume de pollo” which is a soup they make for special occasions that has chicken feet and heads, as well as potatoes, carrots, peas, onions and another local vegetable in chicken broth. They also made it so I could try all these new foods while I’m here instead of getting out to my site and not knowing anything about the local food, so I’m interested to see what else they will make for me. The first day we had quinoa soup for lunch and a type of chicken noodle soup for dinner. We ate leftover soup for breakfast and had an egg sandwich too and oatmeal with guayaba in it. They feed the leftover soup to the cats, the bones and any meat scraps (basically nothing though because they pick the chicken up from the soup and suck the meat off the bones) to the dogs, and potato peels and banana peels etc to the pigs. I guess they buy corn or something for the chickens, but it’s cool how they have pretty much no trash. It’s also good because they only have a small refrigerator in the parent’s bedroom that they keep raw chicken in, and maybe some other things, but there usually are no leftovers. We spent this weekend playing lots of card games with the kids, watched some movies and soccer games on TV, went to Cayambe this morning to buy some stuff to sell in the store (they go to the market every Sunday) and played some games outside after walking up to the cows and taking the scenic route home. Tomorrow morning I start my Spanish classes in the house of another volunteer, and then we are all coming here for lunch. We are supposed to buy our own lunch, but there are no restaurants in the area so we might be doing that every day and give my mom some extra money. By the way, we pay our families from the money that the Peace Corps gives us, and I paid $96 for 2 weeks which covers breakfast, dinner, and my room and everything else they help me with. They are very nice, although at times Ruby is a little too nice and always wants to hang out with me. I really like living here and I think my Spanish will improve a lot just spending time with them because we seem to be talking all the time. I have a picture of them, but right now the internet connection isn´t working or something...