Wanderlust for All

The first time I looked at the host house I would be staying in for the next 6 weeks, I knew I would love it. My host father and brother had picked my partner and I up when our volunteer company, Amigos de las Americas had dropped us off. There was some awkward silence in the car as we packed our bags and said good bye to our American friends of the past 4 days. The little kid mantra of "stranger danger" kicked into my head, but I suppressed it because I knew everything was going to be okay. The father's name was José Carlo and his his son's name was Carlito. The four of us piled into a van and headed down a sandy road for a couple of miles away from the major highway. The father introduced himself and his son, who happened to be very shy at the time, and asked us about ourselves. We didn't really have much to say because my partner, Lucy, and I were in full-on culture shock mode because this sandy road was like being on a dune buggy it was so bizarre. We finally entered town and saw the tiny primary school and the soccer field and church. There were lots of homes along the way with big fields to raise cattle and the biggest commodity of the country, the yucca plant which is basically a more highly dense starchy version of a potato in an oblong form. It was amazing to see all the cattle roaming free in the sandy land with tall trees and lots of grasses. Lucy compared the town to Hawaii if it wasn't close to any water. But I was tingling with excitement, I couldn't stop thinking about how fun it would be walking by the houses each day, helping others, and playing with the children at the school each day, but honestly for the first day, I was excited and scared shitless about what was going to come our way on this short little trip. My hopes were to make this trip be amazing (which it was) and not have to force anything to happen but just wait and let things come and go and happen as they please (which was basically the vibe of the people in the town as well). We pulled up to a house with a tiny vegetable garden across the street. The house was blue and had a big window to sell things like a store front, the driveway was made of bricks that had been worn down by years of tires and cattle hooves' charging away. There were some trees and a huge fenced off area with cattle relaxing and eating and staring at the sky. I kept looking at the cattle, the garden, the bricks, and the woman that came out from the blue house to greet me and knew I was meant to be here.