I have an amazing host family. They love showing me around the area and taking me to the next town over. In my house, I have a host mama, a host papa, una hermana (Ivanna), mi abuelita, y mi abuelo. My host parents are younger and very down to Earth people. We all giggle with and at each other, especially when we have to talk things out with grand gestures and charades. Things definitely get lost in translation and I'm sure fall through the cracks as I nod my head and smile. I do wish I had a more extensive vocabulary and could speak better because I know there is so much more we could share. Alas, with their constant help, my vocabulary is developing little by little each day. Poco a poco! Also a very popular phrase in my life :).
This morning was rather humorous and humiliating for me. This infamous "agua catastrophe" was quite ridiculous. My family bought a large box of water, much like boxed wine if you'd like a visual, and I asked where I could get more water from. My abuelita, the sweetest and most giving woman in the world, told me to help myself to the boxed water, which had not been opened. I attempted to push in the cardboard cutout around the foil bladder, but the damn thing couldn't budge. I read the instructions on the side and it said "Corta" so I figured "What the hell!" Man was I wrong! Luckily, I only cut a small hole in the bladder with the knife, but it began flowing out a little at a time and I was the only one around. I had no idea what to do. The bag was very large and rather heavy so I could not move it very easily. Plus, we do not have a sink in the kitchen. Our sink is out behind the bathroom which is not directly connected to the house. Finally, I looked at this thing and thought to myself how expensive it probably was and that I had to plug up that hole as quickly as possible.
With a spontaneous thought, I pushed a rag over the hole and ran into my room, scrambling through my hiking backpack to find my knife and Gorilla tape. To be honest, I have so much stuff and so many bags, I had no clue which bag it could possibly be in. Thank goodness it turned out that both items were in the first place I looked. I snatched them up, ran back into the kitchen (all of 15 feet away, maximum), and began cutting small slivers to put on top of the hole. About this time my grandmother, abuelita, came in from the bathroom/sink outside. I half-yell "Tengo un problema!!" and she comes to me with a quizzical look. I try to explain that I've put a hole in the bag, but it is not translating well and she is trying to stand the bag/box back upward after I had just laid it down and placed tape over the hole. The hole was covered, so I ran into my room, shuffled through my backpack, and came up with my dicionario to try and find a way to convey what had happened. I looked up "hole" and tried to act out the whole scene. It was pretty much complete chaos and a lot of misunderstanding. After what felt like ages, we were on the same page and my abuelo was called in to help displace some of the water so that the bag would not have too much to spill out. My family keeps their clean water, at least the water they boil, in a couple of pitchers in the kitchen area so we used those and a bucket to hold some of this clean water. I felt terrible and kept repeating "Lo siento!" while giggling because that is my natural and inappropriate reaction to awkward/uncomfortable situations. They probably thought I was stark mad. It was more or less cleared up when I looked down and realized I needed to leave the house for training (escuela as I call it because my vocab is so limited, and it in many ways is similar to school).
I stuffed my dicionario back into my backpack, threw it onto my back, and ran out the door yelling over my shoulder "Necesito ir! Nos Vemos! Chao! Lo siento!!" It was quite the experience. My host parents came home this weekend and asked what the bag was and then why it was laying out on the counter. I felt another wave of anxiety while awaiting their reaction, but I am grateful that they simply laughed with/at me while I tried to explain what happened. The charades made it very funny. Thank goodness for Google translate and somewhat working Internet! It was quite ridiculous and became very humorous. I am lucky to have such good sports. They truly are great people who help me so much with my cultural understanding and are very patient with the language barrier. Thanks to them, I feel my Spanish and cultural knowledge are growing even faster than I can imagine.
I will work on providing you all with more stories of this crazy time. It truly has been the most interesting experience I've been through to date. My orientation and understanding of life as a collective have been completely turned upside-down. I think my brain has been doing a pretty good job of reevaluating itself constantly. Plus, we are incredibly busy without much time at all to really think about all of the changes we're experiencing - though Lima and the coast are really rather progressive compared to la sierra. Going to site will really be a trip! The countdown is already here!
I hope you're doing well! Que tengas/tenga un buen dia! :)
-Allie
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