Host Families

The bus stops, the sky is dark. It is late in the evening. I get off the bus, which brought us from David to Boquete. We all grab our backpacks and go to a place in front of the language school (which is named “¡EPA!”). There are already many people: Our host parents, sisters and brothers.

Lia, a lady from the language school, welcomed us and read out a list with our families. We were one to four students in one host family; Johannes L. and I stayed together with one family. With their car we went to their home. During the ride our host mother asked us what we liked to eat and what not. When we arrived at their house, I was a little bit surprised. On the one hand I was surprised because it was huge and very modern and on the other hand I was surprised that we had a host sister, two host dogs and also two host turtles. While our host mother, her name is Fanny, prepared the dinner, Johannes and I watched a movie (Sonic) together with our host sister. The name of our host sister is Fernanda, our host father is named Fernando (I think this is funny – the whole family has similar names). The first dinner with our host family was very nice and interesting. We ate together with our host parents; our host sister ate later. We asked a lot of questions, but sometimes it was difficult in Spanish. I’ve been learning Spanish at school since the seventh grade, but the problem was that I’ve never spoken it outside of school. For me, the day was very long and so I was happy when I could relax on the couch while we watched the rest of Sonic – in Spanish, of course.

We stayed with our families from Thursday evening to Tuesday morning. On Friday we did an excursion. First we visited the “Los Ladrillos”-rocks. These rocks are famous because of their square form. Next, we went by car over an interesting bridge to a waterfall. The waterfall was very big and beautiful. On our way back to our host family we stopped at a small strawberry shop. There we ate strawberry ice cream with fresh strawberries from Boquete: Very delicious. After the excursion we watched Sonic 2, which was again very nice. We went on another excursion the day before we had to leave. This time we visited the “Flowers and Coffee” festival. The festival is very famous and many people come to visit it every year. I liked it too, it’s very colourful there. Our host parents gave us two bracelets as a gift. One is red with an eye in the middle, which symbolises protection. The other one is blue with a “T” in the middle. I was allowed to choose this bracelet – the letter stands for my dog Thilo. Before we drove back home, we visited a small amusement park. Our host sister, Johannes and I went on two roller coaster rides, which was very cool. Back at home I handed over my presents: A board, a bag and a postcard of Kassel, my home town (thanks to my mum for helping me preparing the presents). The family was very happy. Our farewell the next day was short but nice.

After this experience of staying with Fanny, Fernando and Fernanda I can imagine living longer with a host family – I liked it very much.

PS: When I was writing this blog, it was sometimes very confusing: I had a lot of Spanish (instead of English) words in my head.