The first morning I arrived in Santiago, my host mom came running out the door yelling ¨where is my daughter??¨ She embraced me in a big bear hug and offered the whole group breakfast. I knew right at that moment that I was going to fit right into my new Chilean family.
My host family is so fantastic that words really don´t seem to do them justice. I have three sisters, two grandmas a nanny and a dog (and a mom and dad of course) and they are all so loving and give so many hugs and kisses (just like me). It´s like they were made for me to live with them. They all call me ¨mihijta¨ and the dad says ¨mi amor¨ and ¨donde esta mi gringita¨ and they have soooo many relatives so people are in and out of the house constantly and little cousins are always running around. It really makes me want a big family.
Last Saturday my dad and mom took me on all their errands. We literally drove around the entire city and they explained Santiago to me and told stories: stories of how different barrios were formed, stories of hard times when my dad lost his business, stories of my family emigrating from Spain to Chile. Then we went to this HUGE market. There were thousands of people there, definitely all locals, and everyone was buying food for the whole week so the market was filled with pushy vendors and old ladies screaming for vegetables. It was chaos in the most poetic sense of the word. And then that night my family and I went to this huge Bingo fundraiser that my family was hosting for the church and victims of the volcano. All my aunts and uncles and family were there and I chopped nearly 200 tomatoes and talked with some priests and played Bingo with my little sister (who is also my Spanish translator when I am struggling to understand something).
Being here reminds me of my family in the US a lot because they are all so warm and loving. The similarities between my Chilean and US family´s are uncanny: the mom is very healthy and takes natural medicines and the dad is always joking and making fun of me and the older sister and I are always laughing together because we are both so sarcastic. If I could choose any family I wanted to live with in Santiago I really can´t imagine a more perfect fit than the Chilean family I was placed into.