Family and dance time

Supposedly the wireless internet at my house will work one day but who knows. Hope this explains why I haven’t been able to respond much to emails, googlevoice, facebook or skype; it’s not that I‘ve forgotten about you already!

My host family is so welcoming and fun, and I feel really comfortable with them. My papa, Ricardo, teaches 8^th grade math. My mama is Carolina. They have two boys Ricardo Andres, 13 years, and Carlos, 10 years. Ricardo has 8 other siblings and Carolina 9 others, so other family members are often at our house or we go to theirs. Jesus, 7 years, is their cousin who lives with us Mondays through Fridays. Family time includes playing soccer (me getting schooled by a 7 year old) and American football, watching TV (dubbed Disney channel programs and American Idol-esque takeoffs), making origami, coloring pictures, playing dominoes, sharing music (out of all my songs, Michael Jackson, Enrique Inglesias and Dandy Yankee are most in demand) and playing hours upon hours of card games (UNO been a big hit along with others I’ve taught them such BS (“Mentiroso” in Spanish, if you will) and Go Fish).

The hardest part so far has been the food. It’s not that Carolina is a bad cook but more that the Colombian diet is on the starchy, carbohydrate, have-you-ever-heard-of-a-vegetable side. Breakfast usually consists of a ground corn in some form with fried plantains or cheese and whole milk or juice. Lunch is always a heaping pile of rice, with a tiny bit of iceberg lettuce, meat, and juice. Dinner is usually the same, note the especially mountainous pile of rice. In retrospect, the Chinese rice bowl that I got in Panama City before arriving in Colombia may not have been such a great choice. All that being said, the fruit juice/fruit is amazing. I’ve also tried cow tong and cow stomach soup to my list of delicacies.

Although I insist that unlike Shakira, my hips can lie and furthermore I can’t gyrate as Colombians do thanks to my lack of culo, everyone is determined to teach this gringa to dance. Saturday was a neighbor’s birthday party and I danced one-on-one with what I assume was each and every person on my street well into the night. There is never a moment in my barrio (neighborhood) when I can’t hear music. People set up gigantic speakers in front of their houses and everyone, old and young, dance the night away. Furthermore, unlike our backyards, everyone has a front patio area, and it’s common for people to set up chairs outside their house or right in the middle of the sidewalk to people watch and talk for hours. I love it! There are sooo many different types of Colombian dance, each linked with unique music type. At this point though, they look and sound the same to me.

Our Peace Corps group remains an amazing ensemble of people. We’re together every weekday. Spanish classes are from 8am until noon. After lunch we have job training and other logistics from 1-5pm. It’s pretty exhausting, but the material is stimulating and working with such energetic people means never a dull moment. Time is flying by, and furthermore the plethora of Peanut M&Ms here makes the adjustment that much easier!