Moving Out

I think that it would be difficult to convey just how ready I am to live without a host-family. I'm oh so ready. It will be a welcome change after living with host-families for more than two and a half years. Currently I'm on host-family number 8, if you include when I studied abroad. I could probably write a book about living with host-families by now, not that I'm any kind of expert. It takes a certain personality to make it effortless. In my case, it has never been effortless.

My current host-family is great. But perfection is hard to come by in a host-family. My host-father, for example, likes to blare reggaeton right on the other side of my wall. He gets really enthusiastic about his favorite songs and turns the volume up several notches with each favorite song. He has a lot of favorite songs. Of course, he also never turns the volume down so that, after about three of his favorite songs have come on, the house is practically shaking. My host-mother is a great cook, but, like most Hondurans, she's a big fan of the manteca (congealed vegetable oil that comes in disconcertingly large tubes.) It says cholesterol free on the outside of the package but that's not fooling me. It seems to be reusable and any food product that's reusable can't be healthy.

Luckily, I found a house to rent in El Sauce, which was no easy feat given the general lack of houses. Someone recommended that I live in one of the two houses which were recently abandoned - abandoned because the men from my site who were murdered lived in them. Instead, I'll be living in the house of a young bachelor, who decided he would rent to me after I explained that I would only be renting it for 10 months. He chuckled and said that he didn't want to commit to renting for any longer than a year because, goodness, what would he do if he found a cute cipota (young girl) that he wanted to robar (steal/marry)?!

The house is certainly nice by my community's standards, nicer than most of the houses, with cement floors, a shower, doors and windows. However, it's basically the one of only two houses that meets the Peace Corps security standards. My host-family doesn't seem to care that it is a completely secure house and can't fathom a single female living by herself. Proudly, they seem to have resolved this issue by reassuring themselves that they will just send my 10 year-old host-sister to live with me when I move out. While this is a perfectly normal custom in Latin America, I find the prospect none too thrilling. I just hope they’ve forgotten within the next two weeks!