Tech Week in El Cope

I have officially survived tech week, I wasnt sure I could do it that first day. This week has been the first time I felt like complaining, so here it goes. First of all, although my family was nice enough they seemed pretty distant for the first few days and it was really hard for me to understand them. I had to ask them to repeat practically everything they said because they talk so fast and cut out half of the words. One good thing about working with those Ngobes, they speak nice and slow. Anyway, the bed was just a really thin piece of foam over some wooden slats, which was really uncomfortable and I only slept about 20 hours the whole week. Also, the food was sometimes good, but as a rule my meals with my host family were not very well cooked and the portion sizes were gynormous. There is no freaking way that I can eat a platter heaped with more dry spaghetti than my whole family could consume together. The portion sizes did decrease to a more managable size by the end of the week, but the quality was often poor. Twice yesterday they gave me some chicha called arroz con pina, which normally is really good but not this time. This was made from the pineapple peels that had been soaking in water for three days with the flies buzzing all over it. So I had to pretend twice that I was sitting by the door admiring the view of the patio while slyly dumping the stuff into the ground. Also, last night I had some pretty disgusting boxed mac and cheese, but at least there was lettuce and tomatoes as well since thats the only vegetables I got from them. And the bathroom was totally disgusting, I was afraid to touch anything in there and the roaches like to hang out there at night.
But all that said, they seemed fairly nice, although I mostly just spoke to about three of them in the whole house which has about 12 people living in it. The one couple was the nicest and easiest to understand. They seemed interested in what America is like and I had to give the whole spiel that no, not all americans are white and rich. The kids were pretty cute, and they have a cute little puppy named Pokey that really took to me while I was there. One of the little girls named Ashley was learning how to write her name and would practice for hours. She asked me last night what my parents names were, so I told her Jeff and Debbie, and then she asked about my novio, or boyfriend, and I said I dont have one. So she told me that her papa could be my novio, which I thought was funny slash awkward, Im not sure what he thought about it. But he and his wife were the nicest, and the other sister in law was fairly nice too, although she was always yelling at the kids to come and the dogs to go and kept popping her shirt open for the baby. I showed them the pictures I had taken and asked to take pictures of them and their house, and they got all excited to have their picture taken, and kept showing me around to different places I could take pictures, like the cow in the back yard.
Anyway, the tech part was not that fun either. We didnt do much all week and it felt like a waste of time sitting around in the school doing nothing for 7 hours a day after doing about 30 minutes of work. We observed and then taught an English class, which was really interesting although I had issues because it was raining at the time on those zinc roofs and the kids couldnt hear me. Also I was having issues with working with the other volunteers because I was sick of all the type A personalities that have to take control of everything and anyone elses ideas are wrong. But I felt a lot better after yesterday afternoon because after everthing we spoke with the tourism group called AGLAC, Aurelio, Belkis, and Elecia, and they really appreciated what we had done with them this week. In fact, Elecia started to cry because she was so touched, and it made me feel better about the whole week. And now, on to the Comarca for Culture Week.