La casa nueva

Home…home is certainly different than advertised. The man with whom I was e-mailing is with his kids in the US, and his wife is here with the boarders and her mom. It’s a lot more…rough?..than was let on. For one thing, people here aren’t ‘professionals and students’, they’re mostly people who want to travel and end up getting jobs because they don’t have money anymore. (This may or may not be due to the excessive partying, I really can only guess). There are two other students, and I like them, but we’re busy actually working…


I don’t know, I was told that I would live with a communicative family, and with other people who were there to learn and work and didn’t do drugs, smoke or excessively drink. The second night I’m here, the mom is smoking in the house and one of the guys lights up a joint. Allllrighty, then, never believe what people tell you, that is the lesson. I’m also not really allowed to use the good kitchen, like I was told, and instead am confined to a tiny kitchen that five people share…plus the people from the other kitchen who randomly use our kitchen. Laundry is do-it-yourself, towels not included, and the place is downright dirty at times. I’ve made friends with all the cockroaches, at least, though the one that was walking towards the sound of my voice whenever I spoke (pointed out by my conversation partner) was pretty creepy.

I’m used to all this stuff now, and am more or less settled in, but at first I was really worried I had made a mistake. And then I thought about all the annoying tica mom micro-managing I wasn’t having to grin and bear, and figured things weren’t so bad. I’m still annoyed by the LOUD conversations people have down the hall, across the room, etc. really early in the morning (someone is always up watching TV super late, doesn’t that give you a little hint that at least one other person is trying to sleep?!). Seriously, I have to be out the door by 6:30 some days, so I know that I should take extra care not to announce to the world that I’m awake, but then the NEXT day I want a little extra sleep, and others don’t do me the same favor. Still, most things are good, and I can have friendly conversations with everyone, which is more socializing than was happening previously.

The week after the gira was my first test, and I was scared out of my mind for it. I don’t know how I did, because I couldn’t figure out how it would be graded, but I knew most of what I was being asked so hopefully that’s enough...When I went to talk to the professor about a few things I didn’t understand, he basically told me I must take the test in English. I had the option to take it in Spanish, but it wasn’t a Spanish class so I may as well take it in English (if my Spanish was a tiny bit unclear, he just wasn’t going to bother to read it). Well, that was a blow to my ego, but whatever, I took the silly thing in English.

After that, I just let myself completely crash. I hung around and did nothing besides experiment with cooking, sleep, yoga and mess around on the Internet. I figured I deserved the down time, as everything was new and stressful, and made plans for the weekend while trying to put myself back together. At the very least, I found out that I could feed myself, and that it was with healthy, creative foods.