Specifics

It’s Hannah! What a crazy couple of days it has been. Saturday was a whirlwind of emotions between watching my baby sister graduate college, saying goodbye to family, and leaving the U.S. for 10 weeks. It has been a great first few days though! Like Ben was saying, everyone here has been very accommodating to us. The amount of food we ate the first few days we were here was crazy.

The mosquitos haven’t been as bad as we thought they were going to be. I thought I would be getting bit 20 times a day and it has only been about 5 times a day. Since mosquitos seem to be more attracted to me than anyone else, I have been applying bug spray like it’s my perfume. We decided that Ben doesn’t get bit as much because he has so much hair on his legs it’s too difficult for the mosquitos to get to his skin. J [Upon further examination, this is false. –Ben]

We have enjoyed our host home very much. I have been very impressed with Ben’s ability to communicate with the family in Spanish. I’m normally more talkative than he is in these types of situations but his Spanish is better than mine so he is doing most of the talking. I told him the first day we were here I don’t think I’ve heard him talk this much in a long time. He is really enjoying learning Spanish and trying to communicate with the family. Our host’s mom is the main person we communicate with during the day. When we don’t understand something she does a great job of acting it out so we understand. She will also act things out for the fun of it. When we told her that Ben used to be shorter than me she stood on her tiptoes and said “Hannah, you,” and pretended to look down at Ben and wave. When you don’t speak the same language you do whatever you can to understand each other. One night Ben was trying to figure out the word for rooster but our host’s mom did not understand. So naturally Ben made the noise and asked what animal made that sound.

While it has been nice to have everything done for us, it is difficult to just sit back while someone else cooks all the meals, washes the dishes, washes the clothes, and takes care of the house. We needed to wash our clothes so we asked our host’s mom to teach us. She told us she would do it but on this particular day we didn’t have much going on so we told her we could help. She seemed hesitant at first, but eventually showed us. They wash all of their laundry by hand. That is hard work. You definitely don’t want to wait a week to wash your cloths when you have to wash them all by hand. We cannot thank our host family enough for all they have done for us, and we have only lived with them for 4 days 8 days!! I’ve attached a few pictures of our house and what we’ve seen in the first few days in Ahauchapan. Language school has started so hopefully my Spanish will be increasing in the next few weeks and I can begin to talk with our host family more!

[Corrections included.  We write blogs when we have time and post them when we have internet. –Ben]

-Ben Faus