Sunday was the day that we learned about our host families and eventually moved in. In the morning, we each got a brief profile of each family that included each member's name, age, and relation, some local information about crime and local bus stops, preferences by the family about expected volunteer behavior, and whether they had pets. They also had a big map of Barranquilla that showed where each person was going to be living. During my interview the day before about housing, I told the staff that I loved kids and pets, so naturally they put me in a house without either. At first I was a bit worried that I wouldn't get along with them because the paper said they were a mother and father that were in their fifties and sixties and a wife in her twenties. I didn't really understand the family dynamic. But when the family got there I didn't really recognize them from the paper.I recognize the older man as the dad but there was also a man in his late twenties/early thirties. Turns out he is married to the younger woman and he must not have put himself on the form. His name was Alberto and he could speak English, but the Peace Corps wants the families to speak Spanish all the time so that the volunteers learn it better. However, I was glad he spoke English because that way if I don't know a certain word in Spanish, he can help me out. The three of us took a tiny taxi with a waiter named Johnathan from the hotel that many of us have gotten to know because he speaks good English and he's very nice. Apparently he is a good friend of Alberto.
We get to the house and, like every other house in the city, it has bars on its doors and windows. Inside, it's a bit nicer than some of the houses in the area. I'm shown my room and I was pleasantly surprised. Although it's on the small side, which I would have expected, it has a closet, mirror, and a TV with cable. But the best part is that the family has wi-fi that's actually pretty fast. The first thing that we did once I put all my thing in my room was look at some of Alberto and his wife Milly's wedding photos. These were great to look at because they both look so serious in many of them. They told me it was because they were very nervous and I don't blame them.
Soon after, Alberto took me on a walk around the barrio. The name of the barrio that we live in is called Los Andes. He showed me all the little shops, the supermarket, etc. He told me of the old mayor of Barranquilla, I think it was, that stole a lot of money that was supposed to go for improving the city, and that is one reason the park and the roads are in such poor shape. We visited a friend of his when it started to rain.
One phenomena that happens in Barranquilla when it rains is that there are many streets that do not drain well, so there are quick flowing rivers of water that form. They are called arroyos, which means stream in Spanish, but they are basically rivers. They are very dangerous and many people get swept up in them every year. We were shown pictures of piles of cars swept away by huge arroyos. So as we were walking back from Alberto's friend's house, we encountered a few arroyos. We were told never to cross one, but we ran into one that blocked our path and we couldn't go around. It was a really small one, but they didn't want to cross it on foot and get their shoes wet. Normally, one waits for a bus to come by and asks to cross, but there wasn't one coming. So Alberto came up with the genius idea of throwing bricks from a nearby pile of rubble into the arroyo. It wasn't working out so well, so Teresa, Milly's sister, decided to just wade in and fix them so we can walk across. Right as she walked in, a bus came by and we crossed to safety while she was all wet.
For dinner, the family cooked me a pretty traditional dish of beef (on the bone. I have no idea what part of the cow it was), rice, fried plantains, and this strange drink that consisted of a soda very similar to Big Red but they added chunks of watermelon. It was tasty, but very hard to drink because I had to keep sifting the contents of my mouth to pick out the black seeds. The strange thing was, though, as I was eating this huge dish of food, everyone else was eating just bread. I was a bit uncomfortable and I was wondering if I was basically forcing them to eat bread in order to afford to feed me this. The said that many families like themselves eat a big lunch and usually just bread or something small for dinner. They say it's healthier that way. Perhaps.
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