Una Familia Nueva

So later on today we will all move out of our nice hotel and into our homestays with Bolivian families. We will spend an incredible amount of time here and this will be our main opportunity to integrate ourselves into Bolivian culture. Not only will we sleep and have our meals at these homes, but we will also have our language classes there. We are placed in groups dependent on our spanish level and then placed in homes near the other students in our spanish class. Each morning we´ll walk to another persons house (or stay at our own) for class for four hours. We then go home for the big meal of the day, almuerzo (lunch). Then, most days starting at 2pm we will have training sessions pertaining to our project, which is also 4 hours. The fact of the matter is, the next 11 weeks are going to be incredibly demanding and frustrating. All of the current volunteers with whom we´ve interacted have said that training is without a doubt the hardest part of Peace Corps. At no other time do we have such a strongly regimented schedule and so little free time.

It should be interesting though, some of the questions they asked us when placing us in families were "do you like children?", "could you handle showering in a barrel?" "would you be ok with lots of farm animals running around?" We all are trying to be as flexible as possible, so we´ll see how it turns out.

Since we are leaving the hotel, I don´t think I´ll have access to the internet nearly as often...perhaps once a week or so. I will do my best to update this thing as often as possible though. And next time I have my bag with me, I´ll send out my address so you guys can all send me stuff!

Hasta luego,

Ben