13 septiembre

13 septiembre

Okay, end of first day of classes and meeting people. Am a bit disappointed that I am the only one traveling alone this week. Or at least, beginning this week. I did meet two guys traveling together who speak better Spanish than me. We hung out tonight.

My "familia" is very nice, but somewhat intimidating. There are six of them. Grandmother and grandfather. Two daughters. And one grand child. The other daughter is pregnant, although grandmother (Irma) explained that there is no espozo (husband). My first night she asked me if I was catolica. I probably should have lied and said yes,but instead I said no and then had to answer that I had no religion. I tried to save myself by explaining that mi madre y mis abuelos son catolicas, but in retrospect that probably just made things worse. As two of my friends from school joked, I speak spanish so poorly that I probably also told them that god is the devil or something.

Oh well, they're nice to me anyway.

The house is strange. Like nothing I've ever seen before. It's half outside, As in, the hallway is outside, and then you use individual entrances to go inside different rooms. So, I must go "outside" to go to the bathroom.

Indeed, the bathroom is my biggest complaint. The floors of both bathrooms are cement, and quite cold. So far I have learned that washing my hair every day is a bad thing. You switch on a switch to get hot water. There are only two choices of temperature: freezing and scalding. So you often end up turning it on and off when it gets too hot. I'm pretty sure this is going to end with me electrocuting myself. In addition, and not surprisingly, the water pressure is terrible, and it is so hard to wash my long hair. I think I'm going to try to get it cut shorter.

School starts at 8 am every day, which is incredibly early. I keep trying to remind myself that it's 10 my time, so it's okay.

My teacher is interesting. Very pretty and very nice, if somewhat frustrated by me. She got married at 16, and now has a 14 yr old, so she's probably 30 or 31, but she looks much younger. She was asking me about my brothers, and whether they were married, and exclaimed that they got married so young! I said, you got married at 16! she said, 'I was pregnant.' So that pretty much ended that!