I finally met my host brother last weekend! Santiago arrived on Thursday morning and stayed till Sunday night. He is a student in Bahía Blanca about 8 hours south of La Plata along the coast. He studies there as a mechanical engineering student. Bahía Blanca is close to Tornquist, the small town where the family is from (everyone else moved up here about four years ago, but he had already started school there so he stayed.)
He was very nice, I am glad I met him. I am kind of sad he doesn’t live here all the time, because I think we would get along well. He is not as shy as his sister, our conversations weren’t quite as strained as my conversations with Flor. Flor is shy as am I, so our conversations are always difficult…and most of the time her boyfriend and friends are around, so she has other things to do. With Santiago, he doesn’t live her full time, so he doesn’t have friends to go out with. I did ask him and Flor to go out with my and the other interns several time over the weekend and he never went…it’s probably weird to go out with a bunch of foreigners anyway.
Two of the interns, Samiron and Kristen only have two weeks left. I can’t believe the time has gone by so quickly! I on the other hand only have four weeks left. Everyday I struggle with should I stay or go? I miss everyone of course (especially Colton and Clayton….no offense to anyone else J ). But I also feel like I could still use to improve my Spanish. I also wouldn’t mind traveling around more. I guess we will see what happens!
GREAT ACCOMPLISHMENT AT THE COMEDOR!!!
On Friday, Claudio (my host dad) made Santiago go with him to the comedor to install all the electricity. We went about 9:30 (shortly after the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics, we saw a small part of it). Claudio thought it would take about 2 hours to install the electricity…we were there until 3:30, that is six hours for those of you who don’t want to calculate it! However, he did an awesome job! In the comedor/cooking side of the building, the electricity consists of the wiring strung around the room to whatever location it needs to reach, not necessarily following a hard surface, so in several places there are hanging wires. Claudio brought his own materials and used plastic tubing that he affixed to the walls and then strung the wires through so that they were not exposed.
Anyway I was pretty impressed. He also brought some of his own light fixtures, some heavy duty ones with a “turtle” shell covering to prevent it form breaking easily (in the comedor side, the outside light is a bulb with a cut off top of a pop bottle surrounding it). Claudio also told my supervisor that he would come back this week to rewire the comedor so that the wires are not exposed. Hopefully he has time to do it…who knows I might become an electrician expert by the time I leave. I need to figure out how to repay him. Not only did he give his time, most of the supplies he used were his and not the ones that had been previously bought by the comedor, mainly because his way of doing things was better. Unfortunately I do not think it is as easy as asking him to write me a bill, I think I will have to convince him to write a bill.
