Beginning FBT

This week, we moved into our new host families. Like we said before, Nicki is now in Ojojona, a small mountain town south of Tegus. She has a bigger family this time, with a host father and mother, and 2 sisters. One of the sister's is adopted, which is very strange for a country like this, but it could be because they are Evangelical. Evangelical's in this country are much stricter, they think drinking and smoking are horrible.

Catholics on the other hand, or at least in the case of my new host family, are very different. I'm in El Paraiso, which is less than an hour from the Nicaraguan border. My host family is very similar to our last one, with the exception of not having a 4 year old running around. I have a 62 year old host mother, and a 24 year old host sister. My host mom has told me that I could drink in the house if I wanted, and yesterday, when we went to lunch, she even had a beer with me.

Both my family and Nicki's are very nice, and patient with us as we are learning more and more spanish. My host mom studied teaching, although she has never taught, so she is very good at breaking things down for me until I understand what she is trying to say.

Nicki's house is similar to what we had before. My house is different. In fact, all of the Wat/San trainees are kind of spoiled in El Paraiso. The 3 of us in my family live in a 5 bedroom house, with a bathroom in every bedroom. We have water all the time, although they are still careful with it because most of the water in the region goes to the fincas de cafe (coffee farms), and there isn't much left for the people. I even have an electroducha, so I can take hot showers. They aren't needed as much in El Paraiso though, as it is a bit hotter than Zarabanda.

This coming week is Semana Santa, a big deal in a highly religious country like this. Government employees get the whole week off, and everyone else gets Thursday and Friday, including us. Because we are married, the Peace Corps allows us 3 nights of visiting through this 7 weeks of training, which means that I am going to visit Nicki on Saturday and Sunday. We are both very excited about this.

That's all for now, I hope everything is going well back in the EEUU. We'll write again soon.