Kidsssss

3 weeks in the books. It seems odd to be speaking in weeks when I will be here for about 26 more months. However, those three weeks seem like a couple of months to me.

I’ve started to realize why parenting is so difficult. Not that I am a parent in my house but I do feel like one when I get home after training. My brothers and sisters get home from school at around 2PM because there are morning and afternoon shifts of school. So, when I return home at around 530PM, they are here unsupervised and reeking havoc. Let me breakdown my adventure from the front door to my room. I knock on our front door and usually my brother, Antonio, answers the door. He never actually opens the door straight away. There is usually some banter about what my name is and that he doesn’t know me. Once he finally opens the door, he hugs me for awhile and tries to pretend fight with me. Then I move gradually through to the TV room where everyone is. Everyone gets up and hugs/hangs onto me. This could take about 5 minutes depending on whether or not they decide to take anything of mine. Once I finally get to my door, I have to be careful with my keys so that no one takes them. Losing my keys could add another 5 minutes onto my travel time through the house. After opening my door, I have to keep all of the kids out of my room. If one slips through, it could be deadly to my cause. If they in fact do get into my room, I usually just pick them up and place them outside of the room haha. Then, I try to close my door. Closing the door is impossible b/c it is not something I can really control. They usually stick their feet in the way of the door so I can’t close it until they want to. The tickle tactic works out pretty well but you have to be quick enough to close it and lock it right away. Closing the door isn’t good enough and my sister likes to hold the knob so I can’t lock it. After a process of around 15-20 minutes EVERYDAY, I can get into my room alone. Woooo. I love my brothers and sisters but the everyday routine gets to me sometimes definitely.

That’s my little tantrum on that. As you can see, when living abroad some things start to get to you, but that is a part of living abroad. What have I been up to lately. Sunday I was really sick with diarrhea!!! I still have it but I’m not actually sick anymore. Monday my mom killed our guinea pigs b/c they were getting too rowdy? I think that’s what she said, but we will be eating cuyi (that’s guinea pig in Spanish) on Saturday or Sunday. I’m pretty excited b/c its supposed to be good and healthy at the same time. Tuesday, we went to a town called Callahuanca in the mountains. It had an elevation of about 1,600 meters. That’s pretty high for us people in Pennsylvania and dc. It was really beautiful. While we were there, we got to see a fish farm. Also, really cool. It was around a 20 minute trek down the mountain to the fish farm. We got some good pics. I’ll post them when I get them from people.

Some things looking forward. We’re going to “La Agraria” on Saturday. It’s an agricultural college sort of. It’s apparently REALLY competitive to get into (only 3% get in). At la agraria we get to learn about how to plant gardens, bee keeping, etc., should be really cool and interesting. Monday is our sex lecture from the country director which apparently is always a highlight. That’s about it. I definitely like the business program. They try to get us out and about as much as possible. Keep up emails and comments. Makes me feel good. Hasta pronto.