Jess and Stacey’s Travels

A little about our host family for those of you following at home.

Our host father, Guillermo Gomez (55ish) works with his mother in the market. We haven’t pieced together everything yet but so far we understand that they were affected by the war but were subsequently able to regain some of their property. He has the house that we stay in with them, another bigger house where his mother and sister live, a beach house with his siblings, and a house that he rents out. He worked in California for several years and has a house there as well. He also has some siblings and at least one child who are in the states. His wife, Lucila (34), is a lawyer specializing in domestic abuse, divorce and property laws. She works in Managua but also works for free for people who cannot afford a lawyer. (i.e. she is a do-gooder). She cooks for us, does our laundry in the washing machine, and tries to understand our terrible Spanish. She has been at home the whole week we have been here because they are getting ready for holy week next week. Normally, she would be in Managua for part of the week. Their daughter, Maria Auxiliadora, is seven. Don’t know much about her except that she loves sweets and dancing.

We also have a man named Julio who lives at the house, who is kind of like the resident handyman or jack of all trades. He is 53. He is always ensuring that we’re doing ok. He took Jess to get his hair cut, he runs errands, makes sure the fan is always pointed at us at all times, helps Jess with his Spanish, etc.

The sister of Guillermo is late 40’s or early 50’s. She is a pediatrician – neo-natal specialist. (Yvonne/Steve-if you come visit, the Muenchkin will be in good hands). She isn’t maried and works all the time. She also runs several miles every morning at 5am (Betsy, a partner for you). She looks like she is in great shape and is evidently picky about eating healthy and taking care of herself. We’re not sure how she gets around the rice and beans here.

There is another young woman who lives with us from Australia. She’s only here for two weeks with the family. She is also learning Spanish. We don’t see much of her. She has been traveling through South and Central America for seven months now. She has two more to go.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 30th, 2007 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.