Once we arrived at Charo's house, we met her two daughters, Claudia and Fabiana. She served us some bread, jam, and coffee for breakfast. We visited for a little while about our trip and then she said that we must be tired and should rest. Oh, I was so thankful! We put the rest of our things in our room across the patio, and got the kids settled in the beds to sleep the rest of the morning away.
We met Nelson, Charo's husband, at lunch time and he seemed like a really nice fellow. Right after lunch, Charo walked us to the school for our class, while our kids stayed behind for the afternoon. We arrived at the school and met our teacher. Her name was Tuky and she seemed a bit shocked to meet us. Later on, she explained that she was told some Mennonites would be coming, and she figured we should at least be in overalls and a dress. Boy, we had an interesting conversation with her about all of us Mennonites!
The four hours went by pretty quickly as she talked with us, asked us a few questions about some of our language skills etc. She was assessing our level to figure out where to place us the next day. I was thankful that the 4 hours passed quickly (we had a 20 minute break in between), because I was imagining 4 grueling hours of classes, only to leave with an enormous headache.
After class, we returned home to relax before supper. We were still full from the large lunch, but we could see that Vasilia, the family's cook, was preparing another large meal. Well, I wasn't going to complain about the possibility of gaining weight if I didn't have to worry about preparing any food!
That evening, we visited more with Nelson and Charo and they told us a bit about their family. It was really nice that they were so open and asked us so many questions because they were genuinely interested in our life. For us, this was the first host family experience, we had nothing to compare it to, but it felt like it was going to be a very pleasant arrangement.
The next morning, we woke up and it was chilly! We quickly dressed and got the kids up, since we'd be taking them to class with us. The lady who normally takes care of the children of students, was not in town, the directors of the school were still gone, and Charo couldn't watch our kids. We had no choice but to take all three, with a few activities for them to do. We ate our bread and coffee and hot chocolate and raced to class for 8:15.
Most of the other students were singles from Austria or Switzerland. They had come for 2 weeks of classes in order to travel for a few months in South America. It was a nice little group of students. There was one fellow (and then later another joined) that was from the States. Other than us and the guys, everyone else spoke German during break.
Our kids, well, our kids were as expected for four hours waiting for their parents to finish their class. Joel and Kezia played well for the first 90 minutes, then started loudly arguing about who was going to read which book. Carl and I had to intervene a few times so that they wouldn't bother the other students. Asha, well, Asha was great for 5 minutes, awful the next 5, perfect the next, annoying the next....Tuky said that Asha kept coming in and bothering Carl (we at this point were with separate teachers) and he was getting quite exasperated. Well, we had no other option, except have them change the schedule on Monday for one of us to have morning classes and the other have afternoon classes until we could work something more permanent for child care.
The next day was a bit more bearable with the kids joining us for class. Thankfully it was Friday, and we knew that Monday would have different arrangements.
By this time, we could feel the effects of the dry air and strong sun of Cochabamba. The kids' faces were getting chapped from the air and I was a bit concerned about them getting burned (since I forgot hats). We drank lots of water and I lathered on 70 SPF lotion on my already brown kids, but still....so you can maybe imagine how strong the sun really was. No one there goes without a hat, and the children in the campo have chapped, red faces that everyone knows is characteristic of either Cochabamba, La Paz, or Potosi. We were also feeling the effects of eating really well and sleeping almost 9 hours every night. Oh, it was heavenly. I remember from my first Spanish teacher, Shirley, who said that it's almost impossible to study a language if you are sleep deprived. How true that is!
Our host family didn't have a washing machine, typical of most families, so I had to learn how to wash our clothes by hand. I had brought some laundry soap along, and that third day, tried to figure out the best way to clean the clothes without destroying my hands. I eventually figured it out and I had a great sense of accomplishment. I can wash my family's clothes without a washing machine!
It was finally Friday, we had spent 3 days in classes and with our host family. We were looking forward to our weekend when we could do some sightseeing around the area. Boy, we saw some very interesting things......
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