First Weekend with my Family!

Yesterday, i met my host mom after the EAP orientation at the hotel. the program directors passed each of us half of a postcard and our host families had the other half. I found my host mom right away! Her name is Mary and she has been so nice! I live with her and her husband Robert and their 13 year old son Leo.

Their apartment is very cute, we live on the 15th floor a couple blocks away from acbeu ( UC center) which is wonderful because i don't have to walk very far to get to class! I have my own room and it faces the ocean, its super nice! the apartment is about 1 blockish from the water.. and then its about 20min walk to the beach! ahh its been amazing so far! its beautiful here.

I feel like all i have done so far is eat, my host family keeps giving me food! When I came home with Mary the first thing i did after unpack was eat! My host family has a maid? I dont really want to call her that.. but i dont really know another word, she lives in the house monday-saturday and does all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry and then on sundays she leaves and returns to her own family. her name is Zeleta ( probably spelled it wrong..), but she is super sweet and her cooking is amazing! the first thing i ate was a cake she made and fresh juice! she is amazing! Its definitely going to be hard to get used to someone in that kind of a position, i wanted to bring my dishes to the kitchen to wash them and my host brother stopped me and she took the dish from me! kinda i weird, i dont want her to have to clean up after me!

yesterday my host brother had a birthday party to go to, so i went with Mary to drop him and his friends off. After we dropped him off she took me to this restaurant on the beach and we drank "agua de coco"... water from a coconut! it was SOOO good, i always thought that drinking out of a coconut seemed kinda gross... but it was SO good! after she drove around town a bit to give me a tour!

This morning i woke up and i was like oh my gosh im in brazil. haha its a funny feeling that this will be my home for the next 3 months, but i am definitely looking forward to it!
for lunch today Mary and Robert took me to what i can only describe as a Texas BBQ brazilian style. i honestly think it was the best meal i have ever eaten in my life! I kept thinking, my family back home, especially my dad would LOVE this! the best was i had a pineapple that had been grilled over the fire with like cinnamon or something, it was fantastic! ahh so good, i hope they take me back sometime soon!

the only problem so far has been the enormous language barrier.... Mary speaks a little bit of spanish and a tiny bit or English, so ive been kinda talking to her in spanglish. Robert only speaks Portuguese... so i havent really talked to him much besides responding with "tudo bem" ( which means Im fine) when he asks how i am.

My host brother seems really cool, but hes 13 so i dont really think he wants to hang out with some older girl who cant speak his language haha. but he really likes the sims and we watched twilight together yesterday, it was in Portuguese but he put on english subtitles for me!!

Tomorrow is the first day of class! and then on tuesday we already have an assignment due... we have to read like 75 pages then write a quick write up about it. i cant remember the last time i ad to read for a class, so this will definitely be an experience for me! i started working on it tonight so i can hit the beach manana!

hugs from Brasil!!!!

Boa noite!!!!