Reflecting on a New Host Family

Today is Thursday, and I moved into this house on Saturday. I don’t regret my decision to move in the slightest. This house has life in it. I am the proud host sister of three younger brothers (sound familiar?). They are rambunctious. They squabble. They play Guitar Hero and watch Cartoon Network. I love it.

            I revel in the family rituals. Sunday, we (Mamá, Papá, 13-year-old brother, and I) went to the nearby supermarket, SuperMaxi. It’s a Sunday tradition. I enjoyed the lazy strolling up and down the aisles, as if we were window shopping. My brother and I spent quite a while in the fruit section. I marveled at the sheer number of fruits I had never seen before in my life. There were at least eight. Each discovery was accompanied by a shocked, delighted giggle from my host brother.

            Well, it’s now Friday afternoon. I’m sitting in a living room-styled nook, surrounded by guitars and sheet music. At least 2 of the 3 boys play guitar, as well as the father. I can hear music coming from the kitchen where the empleada is cooking and cleaning with her teenage daughter, as well as my brothers’ conversation filtering down the stairs. I began writing this entry last night with all intentions of finishing it then, but as I was comfortably ensconced on the living room couch, the parody spy film with Anne Hathaway and my host brothers’ company soon distracted me. I set my computer on the floor and began a musical adventure on the oldest’s Ipod. He has so much music in English! Lady Gaga, Metallica, All American Rejects, My Chemical Romance, The Strokes….Before they knew it, I was coercing them into singing Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” and “The Cave” by Mumford and Sons with me. Lo pasamos chévere, as they would say here.

            I like that about this house—I get interrupted. I’m taken out of my routine and swept into another. In my last house, I had too much time to myself. I’m sure I’m going to learn a lot about myself through being in a foreign country, and the past month drilled into me that I like being around people. I can be by myself, but I don’t relish more than an hour or two. Other people provide the spice of my life and take me places I never would have gone otherwise (like Lumbisí, the indigenous village 20 minutes outside of Cumbayá, or Cueva de la Rafa, a restaurant in a pitch-black cave with blind waiters). They celebrate my triumphs with me, like successfully getting a haircut in Quito (I’m deeming a non-drastic, hardly noticeable trim successful) and being the first girl to rappel down from the gym’s rafters. It’s you wonderful people who are reading this now and celebrating my experiences with me, you who I am glad I can return to. I couldn’t have lived for four more months in a quiet house with a solitary host-mother. No, thank you. I much prefer being woken up before 7 every morning by the frantic, pre-departure conversations whose urgency always necessitates a wall-penetrating volume. Instead of lying in bed waiting for my brothers to leave, I throw on a sweater, stumble into the hallway, blearily greet them and wait for them to kiss me on the cheek before they troop out the door. I have the luxury of crawling back into bed, while their classes start at 7:30 am, poor things.

            I’m reading a book left behind by a former exchange student (this is the advantage of being the 17^th host daughter in this family—I have inherited a library of guide books and a large, hiking backpack). It’s called On Beauty, by Zadie Smith, and I can’t really articulate what it’s “about” yet. My brothers have queried, and when I shrug, they conclude, “Ah, no entiendes.” I hope it’s not that I don’t understand it, but more that I just have yet to have the ability to explain it. I’ll try.

It’s one of those books with a complex plot following an entire family. At one point, the eldest son is heartbroken over a week-long, whirlwind romance that terminated in a broken engagement. His mother finds him scribbling in his journal, as he is wont to do, even 9 months after the fact. “Where Kiki had felt her way instinctively through her problem, Jerome had written his out, words and words and words. Not for the first time, Kiki felt grateful she was not an intellectual. From here she could see the strangely melancholic format of Jerome’s text, italics and ellipses everywhere. Slanted sails blowing about on perforated seas….

‘You just going to sit in all day, write your diary?’

‘Not a diary. Journal.’

Kiki made a noise of defeat, stood up. She walked casually around the back of  him and then bellyflopped suddenly towards him, hugging him from behind, reading over his shoulder: ‘It is easy to mistake a woman for a philosophy…The mistake is to be attached to the world at all. It will not thank you for your attachments. Love is the extremely difficult realization-‘

Kiki kissed the back of his head and stood up. ‘Too much recording—try living,’ she suggested softly.”

I surprised myself by writing four blog entries in January. I love telling you all stories (which is how I think of writing these), but I think you’ll understand if they are less frequent. I’m so grateful to be taken out of my isolation and offered instead the hustle and bustle of a family, friends, and a huge city. From here on out, I’ll try to balance the recording with the living…and you’ll here all my stories when I get back.