Day 8: Julius

 






Our class isn’t the only group staying in our host community. Many people come here from many different places (so far I’ve heard at least Canada, Germany, and England). Every person has a unique experience, but what group you’re with has a pretty massive effect. Obviously friends and group activities and other such things matter, but something that surprised me was that not every group stays in homestays. This surprised me because one of the most important parts of this experience for me has been my family.

 

At home, I’m an only child. Here, I have 3 little brothers. They’re very little (my youngest is one month old!), making deep conversation rather impossible, but I certainly spend a lot of time with them. These siblings have completely changed how a day would go, but they aren’t the only ones.

 

The host families we live with are all part of their own much larger extended families. As if that wasn’t a lot of names to remember there are also certain community members acting as family members for us. Eliodoro acted as a grandfather to us all by teaching us about some medicinal plants. Generation after generation, whenever a new problem arises in the community, a cure is found and added to a wealth of medical knowledge. Elio showed us a variety of plants with an even wider variety of uses, from healing broken bones and dry eyes to an intimidatingly spiky plant that stops liars (I took a mental note to be my most honest self).

 

Even if we forget what all of these plants do, we’ll still remember how happy Elio was to share them with us. Much the same way, even as we readjust to society back in Seattle (though we still have two weeks before we even begin that process), we’ll all remember how it felt to be welcomed into a new family, even if it’s a bit bigger (that is, has a few more littler people) than what we’re used to.


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