mi familia !

so its been two weeks or so since i last wrote. I think yesterday is the first time that i truly felt like i was adjusting to my life here. Not to say that it has been bad...its just an adjustment and sometimes this adjustment feels easier than other times. I think it was a combination of getting a cell phone with service at my house (so i feel less cut off) and finishing out that my dad is coming to visit me in a few weeks and also last night was the first night that it wasnt raining and i could see the stars.
I am struck by how beautiful it is here and how fortunate i am to experience a different way of living. I really like my host family and the house. I love falling asleep to the sounds of the animals and the wind rustling the trees and then waking up to the sound of torillas being made and the gallo cantando. I love the smell of the mountain and how fresh the air is. My family doesnt talk as much as my family at home. Back home between me, my sister, my mom and myself there is barely a pause in conversation (my dad is usually silently listening and smiling). But here. There can be twenty minutes where no one talks and all we are listening to is the sound of the radio---how many times can they play lady gaga in one day!? But i think im adjusting to the silence and the way time moves at a different pace than i am used to. It is really beautiful and i would like to think i will be taking away a lot of ideas on how i communicate differently back home.
Today there was a workshop (i think that is the translation for ). It was basically a 2 hour long powerpoint presention given by a very passionate and enthusiastic man about the benefits of farming agroecologically--working with the plants and the myccorhizae instead of applying fertilizer. It was super interesting to me because i have learned this at school in washington and have basically gotten the same lecture in English. But to hear it in a spanish in a totally different environment---in the U.S it is always from the perspective of the consuming country. It made me feel really excited to be here getting to experience how the cooperatives all function with each other and realizing that it really is directly related to what ive been studying in school.
Anyways thats all for now. Im going to try to figure out if i can download a picture to put on the blog.
--kylie