So today we met our host families! We woke up early and took a lancha over to San Juan la Laguna through a pretty messy Lake Atitlan. Due to the heavy rains there were a lot of mudslides and a ton of stuff washed into the lake. There was a refrigerator just floating around in the water along with a ton of plastic bottles, household items, and pieces of wood. The locals were all on the edge of the lake gathering stuff and cleaning.
When we got to our dock at San Juan, our families were waiting for us. There are three of us in the social work program who live in San Juan...Liza, Katina, and I. My tia, Elena, and brother, Tito, were at the dock to meet me and take me home. I will be living with Nora and Fransisco, the mom and dad, and their three boys, Tito (15), Kevin (12), and Alberto (1 month old). Nora's three sisters also live with us...Margarita, Maximina, and Elena.
The house I'm in is right on a main street. It is white and has two pieces of pizza and a chef painted in black right in front. My family does not make pizza. You would think that this distinct and unique adornment on the front of my home would have helped me to find my way back there after a morning of exploring. But no... the only landmark I had considered when leaving my house was the tigo store (not actually a tigo store..just a store that has a tigo sign, advertising the availability of cell phone saldo/minutes...) Needless to say, just about every single tienda in San Juan la Laguna sells tigo saldo, and advertises it with the same blue sign...so getting home took a little longer than expected!
The house is more of a compound of a few rectangular room-buildings. My room was the living room and is the one right on the street. I have a big bed, a couch, and a filing cabinet for my clothes. It is much more than I expected....I did not think I would have so much space to myself!
After meeting my family, Liza, Katina, and I went to San Pedro to visit our language school, Corazon Maya, for the first time. It is only a 10 minute tuk-tuk ride away. The tuk-tuks here are kind of a cross between the tricycles in the Philippines and tuk-tuks in Thailand. Anyway....today was just an orientation day at language school, and we walked around a disaster zone...there have been many problems caused by the rains and the derrumbe from one of the huge mudslides that happened because of the rain was right next to the school. Hundreds of houses were lost and they can't find one little girl who got pulled away. It was insane to be walking through the destruction and experiencing it first hand.
