I might like it here.

After two days of traveling, two long plane rides, one super long layover, my first experience at a hostel, seeing the beauty of Panama City, going through customs over and over again, and being more tired than I ever thought I could be, I have finally arrived in Cordoba.  However, the feeling of relief did not last long.  Once I finished up with customs at the airport I headed for the exit assuming I would immediately be greeted by my host family.  No such luck.  I was stuck at the airport by myself at 2am with all of my luggage and a phone with 3% battery left (lesson learned: make sure I have life left in my phone in times like these).  I quickly went into my contacts and wrote down my host mother's phone number before my phone died in hopes that it would be of help if I found a phone I could use.  It was!!!!  Two super nice girls, also from the United States came up to me and asked who I was/what I was doing/who I was waiting for.  I explained to them that I had just arrived and was waiting for my host family.  As it turns out, they were as well!  These two girls are doing a different program than I am and are only staying for a month, but they were still in the same position as I was, and they made me feel so much better. 

One member of one of the girl's host family arrived to pick her up.  His name was Manuel; however, I soon named him 'mi salvador' because he did just that, he saved me from being lost in a foreign city for a night.  Manuel insisted that I call my host mother on his phone.  I did, and as it turns out my host mother thought I was arriving at the airport in the pm not the am.  I think I made a mistake on a paper I had to fill out and I most likely put pm rather than am. Ooops.  Great way to start, right?  Anyways, my host mother was super forgiving and worried about how I could get to her house.  She doesn't have a car and she said it would take her a while to get there by bus, so we decided that I should take a taxi.  As she was giving me the very, very, very specific directions that I was supposed to pass on to the taxi driver, Manuel asked for the address.  When I told him. he insisted that he take me home because it was kind of close to his house.  And air-go me declaring Manuel 'mi slavador."  Gracias Manuel, gracias.

 So I arrived at my host family's house at just before 3:00 in the morning.  I felt so bad, but mi mama, Florencia assured me it was fine, and she was very welcoming and loving.  First adventure over with and I had not even been in the city an hour.

Today, mi mama and mi abuela spent the day talking and getting to know each other. At around 5pm they had some friends over, and I began to feel overwhelmed.  Trying to listen to one Cordobesa talk and actually understand what they are saying is hard enough, but when there are five of them and they are all talking at the same time, not to mention at a pace that is unbelievably fast, I was done.  I started to wonder what in the world I'm doing here.  The Spanish they speak here is so different and half the time I know I look like a little lost puppy trying to find a home.  I was beginning to feel clueless, helpless, and even just sad for myself.  But then I forced myself to get out of the funk.

As I was sitting there at a table full of beautiful people who truly value relationships, knowledge, and the culture they come from, I realized how blessed I am to be able to be a part of this for a short period of time.  Is it hard?  Of course.  But I decided to do this because I love the language, I love the culture, and most of all because I love people, and having the ability to speak a second language is such an asset when building relationships with people from different backgrounds.  Therefore, the sense of helplessness quickly turned into overwhelming joy and that validated why I am here and more importantly that I should be here.

For the rest of the night we sat and talked, and I focused on key words and chimed in when possible.  These new friends were not looking for me to speak flawlessly or even for me to say something every second.  They were simply enjoying the presence of me as I was them.  We come from completely different places, completely different families, completely different cultures, completely different backgrounds, but what brought us together was the language.  Though I am far from perfect at it, that was all the validation I needed to keep on keeping on.