My host family is great- they are super nice and I like spending time with them. I live with my host mom Sra Carmen, her 4 sons Walter (27), Felix (20), Polo (17) and Nelson (15), her daughter Yaji (23), and Yaji’s daughter Carmen, or Carmita (5). My host mom works milking cows and Walter and Yaji work at a flower plantation, which is a big industry around Cayambe. Felix is in college and Polo and Nelson are in high school. And Carmita is in kindergarten.
When they first came to meet me Carmen came with Carmita. When it was time to go Carmita took my hand and lead me out of the building and all the way to the bus. It was a great way to start out. I guess that was just over a week ago but I feel like I’ve been living here much longer. I am normally gone all day but when I come home in the evening I sit in the kitchen with Carmen and Yaji while they’re making dinner, and help out when they let me. Carmita follows me around all the time when I’m home, which is cute. She “helps” me help out in the kitchen by bringing me things and turning on the sink for me to wash my hands and instructing me on how to cut tomatoes haha. My host mom and Yaji are both very talkative and friendly. The boys are shy and don’t talk to me that much but they are nice. The other day when I was sitting in the kitchen Carmita wanted to sing a song for me and Polo played the guitar. She sang and danced and used a carrot for a microphone with Yaji and me watching. And I felt like part of the family.
The main industry here is milk production and most people grow vegetables and keep other animals besides cows. There are animals everywhere, when I walk down the road it’s common to see cows, horses, pigs, sheep, chickens, turkeys, dogs, and cats. My family has a dog, a couple horses, a pig, chickens, guinea pigs, and cows, but the cows are in a field in the hills, like most families’ cows. But there are two calves in our back yard. There is one family, a rich man from Quito so I hear, who has ostriches that we can see from Naim’s house. There are 2 baby sheep, about a week old, at Regan’s grandma’s house. Some families, like mine, Jessica’s and Regan’s, also have small stores off their houses.
My house is simple but comfortable and we have electricity and running water. And a hot shower which is great, not everyone in my group has that. My family washes their clothes on a stone table out front, which I did for the first time today (probably wrong, but I’ll learn). My bedroom and another bedroom are off the store and then the kitchen, dining room, and more bedrooms are in the building next to it, and the bathroom is off of that. The weather here is warm or cool during the day, either tshirt or sweatshirt weather depending on if it’s sunny or cloudy, and it’s cold at night. Not as cold as in DC right now, but we don’t have heat. I have a sheet and 3 thick blankets doubled over on my bed and I’m warm, although sometimes I sleep in my fleece jacket. It has only rained a couple times since I’ve been here, and not all day- they are in a drought right now.
Regan’s house, where we have class, is behind mine so it’s much faster to cut through our fields than to walk around on the road. So to get to class every day I walk through our back field past the pig and the calves and sometimes a horse and then step over a wire fence through some taller grass and then climb over the “live fence” which is a mound with plants growing on it. Then I’m in Regan’s fields, first I walk across what I think is a potato field but is all dirt and then past a compost/manure pile, and then between the cornfield and garden on one side and the chicken coops and guinea pig house on the other and into the driveway to the classroom in a building next to her house.
my house
the church
my backyard towards the house
my sister on her birthday
with my mom and Carmita
Regan with her grandma´s lamb
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