We have a new family!

Today we moved to a new host home.

La casa de Ines and Carlos was fine, we had no real complaints… but it was just the two of them living there and we didn’t get any interaction really. I guess more of their family used to live there, and the school didn’t realize that it was just the two of them oldies there now.
Ines and Carlos seemed to have a weird relationship with each other… after we had been there a couple of weeks, we realized that they lived in separate rooms, and they never really talked to each other at all… besides what was necessary… so we weren’t hearing any Spanish at home because they didn’t talk much… and whenever we would join them for some nightly TV, nothing would really be said to us all night… and we always ate our meals alone, so there was pretty much no conversation at all taking place at the house. (Which, I’m pretty sure is the reason why we’re picking things up so much slower… we haven’t really had an immersion.)
Anyways… the school moved us today to a larger family, and we love it.

We now live with Rosario and Rodolfo, who share the house with their daughter, son in law, and their three boys, ages 12, 10-ish, and 6. (The experience of having three little brothers running around the house will be interactive for sure…)
We’ve already had way more conversation at this house than we did in the entire three weeks at the other, and there is no guessing about the expectations for us here. Rosario pretty much just announced the protocall for our life here this afternoon, which is nice, because that alone will cut down on the millions of awkward moments just waiting to be had, as was the case with Ines. Bless her heart, the woman never communicated a thing.

Rodolfo and Rosario both were teachers in primary and high school, and Rodolfo was also a professor at a University. He studied Political Science and Math, and I can’t remember what she studied… but it’s cool being at a house with two teachers when our whole point of being here is to learn. Rodolfo seems like a pretty smart cookie… and I’m looking forward to picking his brain (when I have the vocabulary to do so…) on the political side if Nicaragua, and Central America.

In terms of this house itself… we have definitely taken a step up.
a. our room does not have any huge openings to the outside world, which is nice, because the mosquitos here are real beezies, and having a room with so much open to outside is a real monster for keeping bugs out. I have never had so many bug bites in my life. I’m glad to have a room that’s fully inside the house.
b. Our bathroom is also completely closed off from outside, which should cut down on the lizards, and spiders the size of my face living in a hole in the concrete that leads into the dirt outside, letting in God only knows how many giant spiders. Our shower is actually tile, and a real shower, instead of a concreted stall with a pipe running up the wall that got a shower head attatched to it and called it a shower. The one weird thing about our new bathroom, is that it is sans a sink. I’m not really sure why. Haha! But I’ll just perfect the art of brushing my teeth in the shower.
c. We have closets. No a pole wedged in the corner under one of said giant openings between the wall and ceiling to hang clothes on. Nicely placed so whenever a wind picked up with the nightly monsoon rain, random debris could come blowing in and land on our clothes in the ‘closet.’

Overall, this is a really nice house. (I still can’t get a good handle on economic levels here… I thought our other house was pretty much a middle class establishment, it definitely wasn’t poor, there were no dirt floors, we had running water, and everything was clean. Not a bad situation at all. But then we get here, and this place is down right ritzy compared to out last place… but I know these people aren’t rich, because we’ve seen a few of the ‘rich’ houses, and this isn’t rich. It’s a mystery… maybe when I have a better vocab I can tastefully ask some of my many questions so they aren’t an insult.

Anyways, that’ the update for now!