Ok, here’s the deal: I, Graham, took one Spanish class like five years ago. And I, Cory, also have only taken 101.01, and I took it a year ago. After being in Nicaragua for four days we went on a homestay.
It started out rough. When we first met Anielka (our host mother), neither of us could remember (or understand ) her name. The first time we met, none of us talked very much. This awkward first encounter inspired Graham and I to come up with some things to talk about with Anielka before our homestay officially began. We prepared some questions but we never ended up using them. This apparently-unnecessary preparation was kind of an indicator of the mood of our homestay experience. We both started the homestay with some amount of preconceived ideas lodged in our brains, thoughts about what we’d eat, how we’d act, how they’d act, what we’d do, etc. We were nervous but ready to get through the experience, ready to have our so-college rich gringo life-changing adventure. In many ways, this is what we had. We got to live with and share experiences with people that changed our lives. We were living in a poorer area in a developing country. We got to ride the public transit bus (really actually some dude who owned a bus and drove where he thought people would be, usually at a breakneck pace through impossibly crowded and narrow streets) through a city we didn’t understand and couldn’t navigate on our own. We laughed and cried and took photos and fell in love with people and a city and a country while speaking a language we didn’t know and learning about ourselves. Our homestay mas o menos fulfilled most of the clichés we had heard about and were anticipating.
Pero, at the same time, the homestay absolutely smashed to bits all of the clichés and preconceptions we had heard about and thought we would experience. We weren’t just the goofy clueless polite timid rich gringos. We were made fun of (pretty incessantly) by our host family (for our abysmal Spanish, our clothes, our eating habits, blushing when we were embarrassed, everything ever) and made fun of them in return. We had real conversations with our family about privilege, racism, and the economic situation in the United States, poverty in Nicaragua, life goals, difficulties of traveling to the U.S. as a Nicaraguan, love, microbes, trophic levels, and virtually everything else. The language barrier was a struggle, yes, but didn’t cause trouble in communication. Having to communicate in Spanish with our family was one of our favorite parts of the homestay. It lead to the deepest, most real, most hilarious and understanding relationship possible in such short time. We absolutely were rich goofy confused gringos, but we were their gringos.
We came to appreciate not only the differences, but also the similarities we shared with our host family, which we didn’t expect. We noticed that many of the differences we experienced were superficial differences. Superficial, in the sense that while our lifestyles appeared different, the differences were luxuries not basic fundamental needs. The similarities were in passions, interests, and even larger ideologies. While most people talk about the differences they experienced, it will also be the similarities we remember.
