Familia

At home, I have a wonderful family.  The best that anyone could ask for.  My mom is my best friend.  We talk all the time, and tell each other nearly everything.  My dad and I are quite similar, and enjoy driving mom crazy by quoting movies like Ice Age and Men in Black.  I'm a daddy's girl.  My brother and I have our conflicts, and annoy the hell out of each other, but we also have these great moments of being really great friends.  It's not perfect, as nothing ever is, but it's pretty damn close.  

When I came here, I was incredibly nervous about missing them, and once I was in my host house, I let the homesickness consume me for that first weekend.  My host family did very little to disturb me.  The first couple of weeks, I tried so hard not to impose, not realising that I needed to.  So, our relationshipthen formed into one between a traveller and the owners of a hostel.  Meanwhile, I created a great relationship with my best friend's host mom, and the more time that I spent with them, the more I realised I was missing.  

Before making my final decision to switch, I went to Pili and asked her if she was willing to try to make our relationship work.  No.  

So now I'm with a new family, a wonderful mother, Ana, and her 4 year old daughter, Clara.  Ana is the perfect host mother, and a good role model.  She's sweet, caring, warm and welcoming.  She is everything that my first host mother wasn't.  She gives me a hug every morning before school, and makes an effort to get to know the host parents of my friends.  She also corrects my grammar, which is something my other host mom never did.  I can feel my Spanish improving, but that also may be due to the fact that I'm talking a lot more.  Every night we have dinner together while Clara eats in front of the TV (she's addicted to Jetex, which airs a lot of Japanese cartoons, like Pokemon and Totally Spies), and Ana and I discuss everything; politics, friends, boys, its amazing.  She is divorced, but doesn't take child support money from her ex-husband.  She owns 2 soap shops, and works hard.  

This is a family that I will miss terribly when I go back to the States.