Settling In

I’m FINALLY settled into my home for the next SIX MONTHS: Quetzaltenango/ Xela (pronounced Shay-la). I met my host family the day after our arrival. Since Xela is full of schools to learn Spanish, almost all of our families have hosted students before. I live with my host mom, Elena (38) and her two kids, my host brother Jarvis (18) and my host sister is Yulselfi (13). The dad passed away 7 months ago from liver cancer, and they seem to be taking really hard still. Also, they’ve been having host students for quite some time now as a sort of family since they don’t have any other family nearby. In addition to myself, there are two other students, Arika (upper 20’s) and Earle… who is, yes, 64 years old. The chick is pretty annoying but I think she’s leaving in 3 weeks, and the old Japanese dude is downright hysterical. He was planning on staying for 2 months, but he said it’s too cold here for him- it’s honestly like 70/80 degrees- my face got sunburnt today…but whatever. Willie (35) and Anjelica (33) live upstairs off of our roof. They are basically renting a space and they have a kitchen up there so they don’t eat with us and I don’t see them often. My family also has two birds that conveniently live outside my window and could NOT be any LOUDER at 5am. The house and the family are so nice though, and I can’t wait to live with them for 6 months.

The food is pretty good – we have a real wide variety of stuff to eat. Among my favorites so fare are: the fruits (especially the pineapple & mango), they have amazing vegetables, rice, and even steak!, and tamales- but Mandie, your mom’s are still AMAZING too. Of the things I do not like: COW LIVER … yea, that’s right- it was so disgusting and I almost threw up in my mouth..

Last but not least we took a couple tours and the town is HUGE. It turns out it is far more commercial than I thought. There is in fact a God because they have both McDonalds and Tbell. Other cool stuff they have is wireless internet, a huge soccer stadium (Xela just won the championship last year, a mall, and a movie theater. There are tons of cafes and bars and dance clubs all over too.

The trip itself has been pretty interesting. We went out the other night and were chillin in the bar when this drunken borrocho man stumbles in. He can’t even speak he’s so drunk, so they turn him away and kick him out. In the meantime he continues to linger outside the door for a while. I just so happened to be sitting directly in the window when I hear my friend yell, WATCH OUT! Turns out this drunk guy picked up a gigantic rock and was ready to throw it through the plate glass window and indirectly at my head. It wouldn’t surprise me if I got nailed in the head with a rock one of the first nights.

Our directors for the program are pretty young- like a year or two older than all of us. We’re the second kids to go through the 6 month thing, so they are pretty funny. All of us hiked up a mountain today. Unfortunately I got altitude sickness and threw up, but eventually made it to the top. I’m pretty sure the last 4 years of intense drinking at Umich didn’t help- my heart has to be in pretty bad shape. It was a beautiful view. We’ve also had some mad Spanish classes but my maestra is cool as hell. She told me if I smoke cigars here that people will think I’m a prostitute or a bruja… sweet, huh?

Well, I can’t think of more stuff… but this is just the beginning…the funny stories will definitely come later! Miss you guys so much!