Ruth

Well, this is a post I've been meaning to write for awhile. Many folks back home have expressed curiosity about our host mother and host family in general. I was hesitant to write too much until I felt like I understood enough about them.

At the beginning there definitely was a language barrier, but slowly, ever so slowly we began to be able to understand Ruth's stories and even to tell her our own. Now I can say that I feel like I understand 95% of what she says. Of course, we speak with her at every meal.

Any time we have a question Ruth has great advice for us: what the best bus routes are, where to go to buy this or that, what food or vendors we should avoid, how much things should cost, what places are worth visiting. She points out our Spanish errors, teaches us new words and idioms. She's also prone to giving us plenty of unsolicited advice (see Viva los Homebodies). She definitely takes the mother role to heart.

Ruth, our host mother and her mother. Though we see her mother almost daily, she was only ever introduced to us as "my mother", so we just call her 'señora'.

If I'm doing my math right Ruth is in her mid to late fifties. She has told us that she started working in an office of the department of transportation when she was 14. She says this was in an unofficial capacity until she turned 16 and could legally work there (I just said ok and kept listening). It's still not totally clear to me what she did, but I think she was a dispatcher (we had this conversation early on). Whatever she did gave her a deathly fear of cars, roads and driving (she's never had a license and has never driven).

So she stayed in that job for 30 years until she qualified for a pension. By then she had 2 kids, Chantal and Luis Alberto. At the time they were in their early teens. Around the same time she separated from her husband and was sitting around going nuts at home, until one of her friends suggested she keep students. So she found an agency and has been hosting students for 9 years now. She had to learn to cook (something she never had time for when she worked). So she took some cooking courses and she's a great cook now. In fact she still takes courses occasionally when she has time.

Ruth and Sid

She has a lot of great stories about her hosting experiences. We got her on tape telling a few. We'll share them when we get home. I feel like listening to her will tell a lot more about her than I can say in a blog post. It's hard to condense someone's identity into words. All I can say is Ruth is kind, indirect, joyful, pushy, witty, anxious, concerned, curious, loves to tell stories, loves to learn, doesn't speak english but knows many unexpected words, like mop and hairspray. She's very fashionable. She likes having nice things but not to the extent of being shallow. She stays on top of the news and always has some event to discuss with us. She loves her dog, Sid. She plays hide-and-seek with him. She's short, maybe not even 5'. I don't know what else to say. She's our Mexican momma.