Meeting the Host Family

There have been few weirder moments in my life than the one I enjoyed on Tuesday afternoon, when I met my host family. During orientation, the host family was a main topic of conversation, and it seemed each session that focused on it seemed to make everyone more anxious. Every person wanted to know exactly what it would be like and unsurprisingly the Volunteers and Staff weren't able to give specific answers. The learning was the easy part, the controllable, but the host family would involve the very important uncontrollables; what we ate, how we cleaned, how we went to the bathroom, whom we would interact with.

A fellow trainee, Gio, put it best when he exclaimed "I just want to get in there, fuck up, and get over it." It was the most reasonable statement I had heard regarding meeting the host family the entire orientation. Of course it was going to be awkward, and of course there would be nothing we could do, short of being born Azerbaijani, to prevent it from being so. We were going to mess up and make embarrassing mistakes. This was such a certainty that the Peace Corps actually holds orientation sessions with the Host Family to prep them for the amount of mistakes we would make and the cultural differences they would observe. And we would get over it.

The first person on our bus to meet their Host Family was a young man named Kevin. He was told by his LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator) "Kevin, this is your Host Mother and brother." Kevin exclaimed "I have a little brother!" and immediately introduced himself and asked his name. We watched his little brother beam as he obviously bragged to his friends about Kevin while he was unloading his bags. It was one of the most adorable things I've seen. Suddenly all the anxiety building during the Orientation sessions melted away. And this scene happened again and again and again as siblings came to pick up trainees.

My first introduction to my Host Mother was just like every other trainees'. Accompanied by extremely stuttered greeting statements and lots and lots of gestures. I said I was hungry even though I was completely full, I just didn't know how to say I wasn't-and its not like I had anything better to do. The Peace Corps prepped us with days of language training which basically gave me the capability to communicate in broken Azerbaijani a few phrases and the ability to say I want to eat, sleep, or wash. It shocks me how much they nailed it. I've made a ton of mistakes, but I'm also working more intensively, and progressing more rapidly, then any other point in my life.