Participants Blog

Week 1

Before meeting my actual host family that I was going to be living with for the next 3 months, I was dropped off at my host sister´s house in Tegucigalpa. Although the car ride from Tegucigalpa to El Guante was relatively short, there were vast differences in the environment, people, and the interaction between people. Tegucigalpa is a large city and El Guante is a small community. This became apparent to me, as we were getting closer to El Guante and further away from Tegucigalpa. The loud, overcrowded, and busy streets were slowly replaced with a green scenery, animals and only a few people that were seen walking along the side of the road. We arrived on the Saturday night before mother´s day and so much of the extended family were already at the house for their celebration of the day. I was briefly introduced to my host father along with his children, their spouses and their children. The only person I had not met yet was my host mother, whom I ended up meeting later on that night. She greeted me with a hug and made me feel right at home. My first impression of her was that she was a warm and welcoming individual. As the week progressed I began to notice seemingly irrelevant characteristics of the town. One major one being the way everyone says hello to each other, literally. There is never an incident where two people, cars, or what have you, cross each others paths and never exchange some kind of greeting. This characteristic summarizes my first impressions of this town. El Guante is a small, tightknit, traditional community.