As the entire neighborhood walked back to their houses around 11pm we arrived at the house that we would be spending the night. Suddenly our friends started speaking a lot of Spanish while looking between us, the house where we were going to sleep and the house where our bags were. Apparently, it wasn’t a good idea at this point of the evening for us to be on the road carrying bags.
Our creative friends had a solution for this problem though, they would drive a moto to the house with our bags and bring them back to us. That seemed to be the safest way to work this. So Elizabeth and I were ushered inside the house and sat on the couch waiting for our bags to arrive.
As soon as they did, we were shown our bedroom…yes, bedroom! I thought we would be sleeping either in a large bedroom with several beds and most if not all of the family or on the ground. I can’t tell you how excited this made me.
To be honest, that night’s sleep was the best sleep I have had in this country up to this point! They way they put roofs on houses here is genius for this weather! It instantly creates a breeze!
The following morning, our hostess called us to breakfast. She served us cereal in pre-packaged bags so that we could eat as much or as little cereal as we wanted. No rice and beans!
So here’s some things that I’ve learned on this trip: people around the world are the same deep inside. Home is where your heart is. If your heart’s there then you’re home; it really is that simple. People realize that we aren’t used to certain things, even if we never say a word and in order to make us feel more comfortable they will go out of their way to provide the best they can. People want to be loved and accepted and are willing to go to extradinary lengths acheive it. People will go to extradinary lengths for you to like them.
Looking back on it, I feel so dumb being nervous about sleeping in the neighborhood. I thought we would be going ‘neck deep’ into the culture and have all these really wierd or scary things happen, but in reality we simply had a good evening. Nothing wierd or scary happened. It felt like going to a good friend’s house for a night.
Although we were ‘neck deep’ in this culture that evening, I didn’t feel like it. It felt comfortable and natural. It felt like home.
