familia nueva

The García family is huge! I literally have drawn up several family trees to figure out all of the relatives in my new host family. Gloría, my “host mom” (who is 6 years older than me) is the youngest of 9 children. She is married to Daniel and they have a 6 year old daughter Gloria Marina and 1 year old son, Anderson. Gloria’s father Señor Andrés is one of my neighbors, along with two of Gloria’s brothers and their families and Gloria’s sister and her family. So, there are five houses, including mine clustered together in front of the family’s rice chakra (farm). In addition to a beautiful rice field, we are surrounded by mango trees, grapefruit trees, orange trees, lemon trees… just to name a few. Its great! Five of Gloria’s other brothers and sisters live in Pampa Elera, within 10 minutes. This means that there are ALWAYS cousins, aunts, uncles, second cousins, great grand children, etc coming to visit (I’m constantly referring to my family tree to get everyone straight). Even though I’m living in my house alone, I never feel lonely because there are always visitors. I’ve even had a few sleepovers with some of the little girls. The teenage cousins like to come over to hang out and listen to music, look at pictures, etc. The little cousins like to come over to play, draw, dance, sing, etc. And the aunts and uncles come over to see pictures, learn about life in the US, share about their life. I’ve only spent about 3 weeks in my new home with my new family, but I already feel like I am part of this family. Here are some pictures of us!