Night One at Home Stay

(written on August 25, 2010)

My family is very welcoming. They cooked a very good meal – steak and sausage cooked out on the open fire (just like our grills at home), toasted bread and salad (which was boiled potatoes, canned corn and mayonnaise). I might be on carb overload these next two years! But it was all very good. The sausage I still have to get used to, but the steak was good and the salad was good too. They take turns doing dishes at night, and I get put in the rotation starting Monday, which I’m very glad to help out. I don’t feel too awkward right now, which is nice. I have a HUGE room to myself and the bathroom too. They have electricity and running water. In fact my bathroom has a tub and shower! I feel a little spoiled. But I’m not complaining.

Today at training we had our first lesson with our language. I learned to pronounce all the letters and letter combinations. I have to roll my R’s. This makes me nervous since I have never been able to roll my R’s. I have to practice my R’s and G’s a lot! My host family all speaks Afrikaans, so it will be very nice to be able to practice after training. Tonight after dinner, my host mom said, “You may now excuse yourself to your room”. I feel like I should be socializing, but for my first night, it’s nice to be able to close the door and have time to myself.

This past week has been so busy. It’s information overload! But it’s also been very nice. I can already feel the network of people I can lean on when I start missing life in the US. Right now, I’m not homesick – not to say I don’t miss people, I’m just doing okay with it all right now. Really, I haven’t had much time to think about being so far away from everyone. I’m ready to have a more reliable source of internet – I think that’s what has been the thing to adjust to the most so far. I’m able to get on the computers at the training center, but they are so slow that it takes 10 min. to send one email.

I feel like I might end up repeating myself a lot on this blog. I’m not going back to re-read entries, and I just type what comes to my head at the time. I’m trying to always write the date of when I write the post because I’m not able to upload the same day/night I write.