Host Family Adventures

I got moved in with my host family late the night I arrived. I was a bit nervous, I must admit, going to bed in a house where I didn't know anyone, I had no idea where I was, in relation to the City I was going to be living, and I was going to only get about 5 hours of sleep before I had to get up for my first day of class. The journey here took over 24 hours; it normally should only be about 7 hours in the air. I heard once I arrived that the Tegucigalpa airport had stopped allowing international planes to land because there was a crash a couple of weeks ago. So all flights are now going through San Pedro Sula, international flights that is... So that was supposed to explain the 9 hour layover I had there and why a group of 4 people from Mississippi landed with me in La Ceiba, our destination, without their luggage. The airport staff told them there wasn't enough room on the plane... I am not sure how much truth there is to this though, I mean about the crash in Tegucigalpa.

Nonetheless, I am here in La Ceiba. My host family consists of Senora Bertha, the abuela, or grandmother and her 5 kids. Her husband was a pilot and he passed away when he was 35, about 20 years ago. Bertha has 2 sons and 3 daughters. The 2 sons each have their own apartment room with a bathroom. One brother lives in his with his girlfriend and the other brother works on a cargo boat and lives in his room when he is in town. He is currently at sea so I am in his room. They have an extra room to house other students which is vacant as of this morning because Laura, a student from Finland just left to do some traveling. Then there are the 3 daughters. Jenny is the oldest and she works in a hospital as an office translator. She has the most adorable daughter named Valentina, she is almost 4 years old and they share one of the bedrooms. The father is in New Jersey supposedly. They don't speak about him much. Next is Marlen and she has 3 kids, Humberto who they call Betito and he is 13, Gretchen and she is 11 and Alexandra and she is 7. Humberto and Gretchen are of the same father, a German man and Alexandra has a different father. Again, neither of the men are around or spoken of. The mother and her 3 kids share a bedroom. Heidi is the youngest daughter and she is a teacher at the CASS school in Utila. Utila is an Island off of the coast of La Ceiba.

Basically the main house has 1 living room, 2 bedrooms, a very small bathroom and an even smaller kitchen. Bertha, the grandmother who owns the house and does all of the cooking sleeps on the couch while her daughters and their kids get the bedrooms and the sons get the apartments. The kids rarely thank her or comment on how the cooking is... What I find insane about the living situation is that the neighborhood we are in, el sauce, is a very rich part of La Ceiba. They house the students there because it is relatively safer. But I have never met anyone in the States that lives like this family... They have SUCH a simple life it insane. The house is made up of stone and there is no washer, everything is hand washed and dried outside, there is one mini TV that the family watches tela novelas on, Oh and the Euro Cup Finals! No one asks for more food than they are given, and no one thanks Bertha for her cooking. The family is fairly close, it seems they would do anything for each other, but the fathers of the kids are not discussed and never around... The showers are a pvc pipe running through a concrete wall. I don't know where the water comes from, but I know it brings in cockroaches. Especially when it rains! Oh and there is no warm water, which is fine with me because it is SO hot I wouldn't want to take a warm shower anyway.I am going on a tour of La Ceiba with some other students. When I return I will write about the food and about playing soccer with the kids yesterday.