Our Family

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Our host parents Marcio and Alejandra are both incredibly sweet and they are always smiling. They have three children, Marcel Antonio (13), Jeni (12), and Harold (10). They are all incredibly loving and really go out of their way to make us feel welcome. Alejandra is a great cook, and Susan said she is the most adverturous of the moms in the village. We have been very satisfied so far with the assortment of ways she serves the eggs, beans, fried bananas, fruit juice, rice, and tortillas. Pretty much every meal contains those six things, but they are all very different and tastey. She also gets quite a kick out of our lack of Spanish skills, and C.J.’s humorous antics. Marcio takes really good care of us as well. He is our main man for getting rid of critters - always with a smile on his face and a very sweet disposition. He is also a very talented carpenter and the whole house is basically and extension of his workshop. You can see the fine doors and windows he makes on our cute little casa.

The children are unbelievably adorable and well behaved. When Jeny and Marcel helped us carry our bags home from Marco’s the first night, Marcel took two trips back and forth on his bike AND carried one of the heaviest bags up the hill on his back. And of course he smiled the whole time, showing off his adorable dimples. Jeni helps out her mom a ton around the house, especially with the laundry. When she saw me struggling with ours, she offered her services, but I’m not sure I’m ready to give up my personal items to be hand washed by someone else. Susan says I’ll break down eventually, because it is a lot of hard work. Jeni also keeps us stalked with water for “showering”. She carried two five gallon buckets up the hill on her head yesterday! She didn’t even give us a chance to do it ourselves. We felt kind of bad having a 12 year old girl carry our water for us, but she is eager to please. Little Harold, who’s name we didn’t know for our first three or so days is also adorable, but the shyest of the children, who are all pretty shy. C.J. taught them Yatzee! last night, which gave us a chance to interact with them a little more. They caught on really fast and we all had a lot of fun.