First week of training

This past week has been a whirlwind of emotions, learning experiences, and culture shocks. For some reason this weekend really hit me in terms of fully realizing what this Peace Corps experience will entail. I am not at summer camp! During pre PST training we were all located in the same town and were able to share ideas, thoughts and jokes every day, but then when we were dropped off at our individual houses for pre-service training (PST) I was alone. I hate being alone. Luckily, thank God, there are children at my new host family’s home and I was quickly able to play games with them instead of just reading or staying in my room. But I couldn’t help but think, okay, when can I talk to someone my own age, or when is dinner, or when will the time pass so that the weekend can end! I instantly started thinking of home, what my family and friends were doing, it was intense for me. When my new host family started asking me about home I kept tearing up and I’m sure they could tell that I was clearly home sick, they even bought me some corn candy that reminded me of fruit loops to cheer me up. That was Saturday, and even know when I start reminiscing about home or how hard it was to say goodbye (I tend to get these flashbacks of the exact moment of saying goodbye to various people and I instantly start to cry). But, of course, as time went on I’ve become more and more adjusted. We went to a family lunch on Sunday and it was nice to sit around with everyone and talk. Although I was super paranoid of getting sick from the food (PC has drilled in our heads how basically EVERYTHING must be sanitized or else we’ll get a horrible case of diarrhea so I kept thinking oh man, I bet that wasn’t sanitized, like a good ol’ paranoid American haha). At first I felt a little awkward just sitting in on people’s conversations and tended to stick with playing with the little kids, but then at lunch at sat at the “men’s table” and they were talking about starting businesses (my cup of tea!). I didn’t contribute to the convo b/c I wasn’t sure if it was kosher to speak when I wasn’t spoken to or whatever but my host padre brought up two interesting points:
1. A business cannot survive without the support of the wife, two heads are better than one and a married couple has to work together in order to support each other and their business, businesses that have both people working together will be sure to do better than the others
2. A husband must share his finances with his wife and they have to work together to achieve financial stability and transparency or else what’s the point of being married
Now this seems like sound advice, but I was taken aback and proud of my host padre for saying these things because I know that the Latino culture can be very machista and I saw these attitudes as pretty progressive, hell there are couples in the States that don’t do this. I also found out that my host padre cooks and cleans, which typically is a “oh hell no” for most men.
This all brings me to my last point for the blog post: the importance of family. I love how close families are here and it has really made me think and become excited about raising a family of my own someday. I love how at dinner time we all come together and talk about our days and laugh and none of the kids are whiney brats, they all genuinely love and respect their parents and enjoy being together. It’s amazing! Also, my host madre works a full time job in addition to teaching Mayan spiritual classes and the husband also works full time and actually spent 5 years in the States (more on that later). So each mother and father is also able to live their lives will still being able to come together with love. That’s what I want in life….really and truly.