Casa Romero

¡Hola Amigos!
I bet you’re all wondering what life is like in Casa Romero (my house), so I’ll try to explain. I live with 11 other American students, 2 bacarios (Salvadorian scholarship students), and one community coordinator (same thing as an RA). Houses in El Salvador are very open, so we have a patio in the middle of the house with a hammock. We have a small kitchen where the Casa cooks prepare our meals. On Friday nights and on the weekends we are responsible for finding our own food since the cooks don’t work weekends. We have a long dinning room table, but we prefer to eat in chair on the patio since the weather is so nice. We have a garage (but not one you park cars in), two social areas, and a front yard where we hang clothes to dry. Our bathroom consists of three toilets, three sinks, and three shower stalls. My house has hot water, but the students in the other houses only have cold water so our showers are quite popular. There is a laundry room with two big pilas (sinks) to wash clothes in. (See pictures)

I did laundry for the first time the other day. It took my two hours to clean all my clothes and towels. I soaked all my clothes in detergent over night, and then in the morning I had to scrub them. Scrubbing takes a while if your clothes are really dirty (which mine were from all the dirt and dust). The hardest part is rinsing the clothes. I thought I rinsed thoroughly, but after my clothes had dried so shirts were sticky. After that washing experience I really appreciate washers and dryers.

On Tuesdays we all spend an hour having a cleaning party. This way the house chores are done quickly and everyone helps out. Tuesday is also spirituality night, where we reflect on our praxis sites and life in general. Thursday nights are community nights, where we all get together as a house and discuss house rules and then have fun by playing games or watching movies. As a house we decided to speak only Spanish until 8pm everyday except Mondays and Wednesdays (these are praxis days and since we’ll be speaking Spanish all day it’s a nice break to come back to the house and relax by speaking English). So far people are having trouble with this rule, but the bacarios are helping us out. They are very patient and teach us new Spanish words. It’s great to have native speakers in the house to help us learn. One of the bacarios in Casa Romero (Efrain) loves singing and playing the guitar, so he’s teaching us popular Salvadorian songs.

Paz,
Stephanie