For the first month of my time with my homestay family I didn’t really
know what to do on the weekends.
In this new setting - complete with strangers, another culture, and a
language barrier – I was very shy.
Timida. Because there are no kids in the house,
just my two parents who are pretty busy, I didn’t get a ton of
interaction. Most days I would
read, do homework, draw, go for a walk on my own, or chat with my parents
during their descansos. I found myself spending at least one
day of every weekend up at the institute just because I had nothing else to
do.
One day, I got tired of this routine. I approached Marcos, my homestay dad, and told him that if
he ever needed help with a project in the finca
or in the community, I’d love to help sometime. He replied by saying, “I never asked you to help because I
thought you were too busy.”
Moral of the story is: if you want to do something, get up off your
butt and take the first step.
Don’t wait around for someone to approach you. Go approach them.
I’ve since reminded him of my ability to help and told him specific
times in which I was free. Two
weekends ago I offered to help and he gave me the task of washing a couple
dozen big, dirty rocks with some rolled up wire. I had no idea why I was doing this, but I did it
anyway. After they dried in the
sun, Marcos showed me how he wanted to put them in a circle around some small
trees in the yard so he doesn’t run them over with the lawn mower by
accident. He even took the time
afterward to paint all the rocks white so that they stand out against the
background. A seemingly menial
task suddenly turned into a beautiful addition to the yard.
Once again, this morning I offered up my services as
jack-of-all-trades. I left the
house fully equipped with my sun hat and water bottle, ready to brave the hot
sunny day and whatever assignment I was to be handed. This time, Marcos showed me how he wanted to clean up all
the trails on his property and make them look nice for a tour of students
coming in a few weeks. Using the
combination of a shovel, rake, machete, and pulling by hand we managed to turn
the trails from an overgrown mess into a walk through paradise. Seriously, this yard is paradise.
Before shot of the overgrown trail...
After shot of the cleaned-up trail
I had forgotten how much I love hard, manual labor. To take a piece of land, work on it for
a while, and at the end stop and know that I
did that. That’s a pretty cool
feeling. Another pretty cool
feeling is the soreness in my body that follows doing such work. After walking up La Trocha every day my legs are super strong, but on an average day
my arms do basically nothing.
Right now, the ache in my arm and shoulder muscles from shoveling and
raking feels so good. Not enough
to have injured myself, but just enough to feel that I’ve done something
productive.
Again, Moral of the story is: if you want to do something,
get up off your butt and take the first step. You tend to regret the things you didn’t do more than the
things that you did.
