Up and down

Last weekend was great. My host mom actually pulled the dining table out from against the wall and gathered enough chairs and stools for all of us. We all sat around the table for lunch and celebrated Mother's Day together with rice and tuna and potato chips and Coke. It was the first time we've ever eaten together.

My mood dropped during the week, though, mostly because I didn't like the food my host mom gave me. Ugh. I can't wait to get the United States just so I can eat a familiar meal. Rice and beans are fine, but I can't handle any more fried hot dogs.

And everyone is just so loud. I am homesick for my own place, I guess.

I think I felt an earthquake this morning. I was lying in bed waiting for my alarm clock to go off when my bed rocked ever so slightly from side to side. What else could it have been?

There is a popular song on the radio right now with the chorus in English. It says, "I want to love you, love you, all of the time..."

Some kid in my town has the CD with the unedited version, which says, "I want to f!@# you, f*^@ you, all of the time..."

The kids are constantly dancing to it, and it horrifies me, but when I try to explain that the words are really bad, no one seems to care. Yesterday, a kid ran by me singing the chorus, then turned to me and said, "Teacher, que significa 'I want to f^%& you?'"

Algo muy feo.

Which reminds me. There's been a gringo moreno (black guy from the U.S.) living for three months in one of the little hotel rooms my family owns. My host mom said he's from Arkansas, but I find it hard to believe there would be two Arkansans living in Potrero Grande. He's been climbing a nearby mountain, I think, but when he's not climbing, he mostly keeps to himself in his room.

The other day my host mom came in and asked if I would go talk to the moreno because he told her he was afraid and was leaving Potrero Grande. She didn't understand his Spanish enough to know why he was afraid. I went over and talked to him and learned that he was afraid of a lynching, basically. I guess some locals had been taunting him with the word, "Nigger," and he was afraid one or two or three of them might eventually come after him with a machete or something. I can't say I blame him for leaving, although I doubt anyone would’ve really threatened him physically.

I tried to explain all of this to my host family -- about how much violence the "N" word carries with it, but there's just no way for them to understand. In a place where the most popular hip-hop artist goes by the stage name "Nigga," it's almost a lost cause.