Since arriving, I feel I’ve done a pretty good job immersing myself into this culture. I no longer feel weird pronouncing Spanish slightly incorrectly, saying hi to community members on my daily walks, or joking around with the people I meet. I think I got really lucky with the host family I was placed with, because they are such wonderful people. My host father and host mother are #relationshipgoals since they have been together since they were 20 and 17, so I wanna say it’s been almost 30 years of being together!
My schedule is pretty flexible and I can choose when I want to go out to walk around town, or just hang out at home with my host sister K and my host father. Turns out my host father is a jokester full of bromas/chistes (jokes). He loves to crack jokes and make people laugh, either by his poor choice of jokes or from us laughing because he’s laughing.
Today my host father, K, and I were hanging out around the kitchen and talking about perceptions of weight varying by culture, and talking about how some cultures value obesity as a sign of health, prosperity (for being able to afford abundant amounts of food), strength, and capacity for child-bearing when it comes to finding a partner to marry. K decided to share this story she heard about a man who married a dog in India because no woman wanted to marry him (isn’t that sad?!). My host father and I looked at her in disbelief, and she exclaimed “¡Pobre!” as a way to demonstrate her feeling sorry for this man’s predicament. But my host father, being the jokester and all, replies, “¡Pobre perrita!” and we all started cracking up. I’m sorry I can’t reenact this scene to you all because it’s actually quite funny if you were present for this conversation, and I’m a poor joke teller heh 😐
A Healthy Blueprint 