Host Family/Home Life

I think it's about time for me to write a little about my family and my life at the house I live at, since that's where I actually spend most of my time (though you wouldn't guess it, since all of my posts are about being on fun trips =]).

I think that Mikaela and I definitely hit the jackpot when it comes to the host family and the house we got. Our family consists of:

Dad: Romeo (waiter)

Mom: Beatriz (homemaker)

2 Daughters: Tiare (14) and Mariana (2 going on 3)

Dog: Camila (and now her 5 new puppies, born last week)

I only have pictures of Mariana and the dogs, but I'll try to get a picture of each family member soon.

Romeo is not around that much, because he works almost every day and gets home every night between 11 and 12. He has one or two days off a week, so he is around on those days, usually playing with Mariana or relaxing upstairs, where the family has their own private area. He occasionally eats meals with us, too. He (or at least his parents) are from Portugal, so his first language is Portuguese, but he speaks Spanish too, and some very choppy English.

Beatriz is around all the time, and she is amazing. She doesn't have a job, per say, but she works endlessly around the house. The family doesn't have a maid, which isn't very common here, so she does all of the housework, as well as taking care of her two kids, Mikaela and I, the dog and now the fives puppies, and four other students from Costa Rica and Guatemala who go to the same university as us. She works out on a regular basis, going to the nearby gym, and she cleans every day, sweeping, dusting, and making everyone's beds (even when I try to make my own, she just comes in and redoes it). She also does all of our laundry, and cooks everyone breakfast and dinner; keep in mind that everyone is on different schedules, so she usually has to reheat or cook a new meal if we all eat too far apart. She is with Mariana all day long, and has to keep an eye on her while she's doing everything else. She's 34, and has lots of advice to give, from clothes to where to go in Costa Rica, and she is very funny and flexible to anything we need to want to do. She is incredible. All of my friends comment on how cool she is after they meet her; I think most of the host parents are older, with older children (females, and sometimes males, live at home until they get married, so many of the "children" of the host families here are in their 20s or even their 30s).

Romeo and Beatriz used to work in kitchens/restaurants on different cruise ships, throughout an 8 year period. That's why they are both very good at cooking and serving and doing all sorts of things with food. The food is absolutely delicious. Breakfasts I have had are rice, beans, eggs, and some kind of meat with tomatoes (or any variation of that), which is a traditional Costa Rican breakfast known as "gallo pinto", fruit salad, toast with eggs and tomatoes, crepes, cereal, hot chocolate, pancakes, plates of fresh fruit, etc. We have to find our own lunch, mostly because everyone is scattered throughout the day and sometimes don't come home around lunchtime, so it'd be impossible for Beatriz to make us all lunch. For dinner there's almost always rice, combined with some kind of meats, vegetables, sometimes soups, salads, and bread. Yum yum yum.

All right, so now on to the house. Once again, when my friends come over they comment on how nice the house is, so I am thinking that we got lucky with the house we were given as well. I think I'll just give a picture tour of the whole thing, to try to give you an idea of what it looks like to live where I live (I apologize for the quality of the pictures; I took all of them with my smaller, much crappier camera):

This is the park/basketball court right across the street from our house. We walk through it to get to school, which is a few blocks up the hill behind it

A few down the street from our house. In the background you can see the mountains; they're kind of hidden by haze/clouds in this photo, but in the mornings they're clear

And this is our house! The family has their own private place upstairs, except for one student from Guatemala who lives up there. You probably wouldn't be able to tell from looking at it, but this house has 9 bedrooms. There is one empty room right now, and then us 6 students and the family. Looots of people, but oddly enough, it's usually pretty quiet around the house.

Front door

Entryway

Steps upstairs to the family's rooms - Mikaela's bedroom is directly to the right of these stairs

Main hallway, my bedroom door is on the far end on the left, you can kind of see it

Kitchen, which is right across from my room

My room! Nice and messy, in my usual style

If you take a left out of my room, you come to sliding glass doors, which you can kind of see at the back of the hallway picture. The doors lead out to a covered kind of hallway that connects with the eating area/living room, all wrapping around this courtyard. Sometimes I lay in a hammock, which is to the right of this picture, and read or take a nap.

This is where we eat our meals, and beyond that you can see the couches and the television. This is all open air (you can see the courtyard to the left), which is really nice, even when it's raining, because it's all protected by a roof, so only the things right next to the edge get damp. It's especially beautiful in the morning when the sun is shining. The television is almost always on, and is usually on some kind of kid's channel for Mariana to watch. I am now an expert on the Discovering Kids channel's programs, but in Spanish

At the back of that last picture you can see a doorway, and this is the room it leads into. This is where Beatriz does the laundry; it's handy because it's right by living room where Mariana plays and watches television, so she can keep an eye on her.

So that's a little glimpse into my house! My schedule used to be a lot more routine when I was in that monthlong class, but now with the internship it's all over the place. Sometimes I need to go in earlier in the morning, and sometimes I can go in later, and I generally stay until sometime in the afternoon...it's all very vague. So I eat breakfast whenever I get up - sometimes I warm it up in the microwave and other times I just have cereal - and then eat dinner usually around the same time, 6 or 7, unless I have plans and need to eat earlier or later. I'll write more about my internship some other time.

All right, that's all for now! Much love.