Week With Host Family

A typical week spent with my homestay family starts with language until lunch, and resuming with a community activity with our village regarding the environment. I sometimes get a chance to get away and walk to my favorite spot under a tree at the mountain (jbel), where I can see my village and contemplate. Mostly my head is filled with new words, vocabulary and some 80 verbs that I am trying to memorize. This week’s experience like most come with fun, frustration and feeling very overwhelmed. I have noticed I am a lot more tired and don’t have much alone time or even time to rest. But know, I am taking great care of myself. The days are long between school and family/community integration. The meals are spread between prayers and mostly good. I mostly get up around 7am, have a few minutes to get ready for my day, go to school after breakfast around 8am and sometimes get yoga in with another volunteer or study a little. After school, I like to walk to the hill to watch the sunset before study time which starts somewhere around 7:30pm and dinner about 10:30 or later, and can study in-between. Everyone gets up early and go to bed late. They also eat throughout the day. As we pass locals in town we get invited in for tea/coffee and bread or pastries and sometimes nuts and olives which are harder to come by. I am generally reminded that I need to eat more as residents say, “coolie, coolie”. My bedroom is filled with post-its and note cards which helps push me to study. I was able to communicate my birthday and my host family and they made me a special dinner which I couldn’t determine at the time, but later found out it was cows face, gross! I couldn’t stomach more than 2 bites and I can honestly say that it wasn’t horrible but rather the texture was disturbing. I received a gift, (caddo) which is a framed picture drawn by someone in my village. My classmates made me a chocolate banana smoothie and we danced to, ‘The Beatles’, "Birthday”. .. It was a good time had by all.