Living with a host family is much different than living on campus. My house is fairly quiet because my Ecuadorian brothers have already moved out of the house and I don’t have a host father. I live with one host mother. She is a short, beautiful lady who loves to cook. When she was younger she was a caterer for weddings, large fiestas, and family gatherings.
Every evening Maritza, my host-mother, cooks up a delicious hot meal for me to eat. In Ecuador, people eat soup with every meal after breakfast. It’s similar to an appetizer before the main course, preparing your stomach for the climax of dinner. Instead of eating crackers with soup like in the states, we eat popcorn with soup. Popcorn in soup tastes amazingly good. It may be my new favorite food combination besides chocolate and peanut butter. Anyway, I love eating everything my host mother prepares. My favorite meal of the day is breakfast. Every morning I eat a plate of fresh fruit, eggs, fresh bread, and a batido, which consists of milk, fruit, and sugar. In the evenings rice is a staple food at almost every meal. Some meals I eat rice and potatoes and fried plantain. Ecuadorians love their starches. But the food is amazing. I don’t know what I’ll do when I’ll have to eat in the cafeteria again. Even though there are less people living around me than when I live on campus, the noise level here is definitely higher than at Bethel. I live near the airport, so when planes fly over the house it’s very loud, and sometimes car alarms sound because of vibration of the loud airplane. And always at least five dogs are barking relatively close to my house. Half the time my dog, Luna, is barking along with the other host of dogs. I get slightly annoyed sometimes, but my mother adores animals, and she enjoys telling me stories about Luna and her previous poodle she had. I have found that talking about pets is a great way to pass the time and engage in conversation with my host mother.