Spending
a weekend, which to us consists of Thursday night to Sunday night, in a small
town at the mercy of most likely elderly host parents was not something I was
looking forward to doing. I wanted to be exploring and going out at night to
meet my future South African husband and eating unnecessary amounts of food at
Coacoa Wahwah and going where ever my legs (or more frequently, my growing
stomach/unnamed food child) decide to take me that day. This is how I was
picturing Ocean View, the town where we stayed for the weekend, and please
excuse my ignorance: a series of tiny shacks without amenities, no AC (which
was actually true), no TV, and a no-nonsense religious family with gobs of kids
running around like colonizing ants. And from my experience with elders,
especially with more traditional or religious ideals, “fun” consists of rambling
at you about that one time they lived on a dairy farm in unnecessary detail
(For ex: No grandpa, we don’t want to hear about how your GI problems flared up
while helping a cow give birth OR how you amended that situation) or going to a
sweltering, cramped church for 5 hours on a Sunday.
What
I found when I arrived at my host family’s home was so far from my bleak, overdramatic
premonition that I briefly questioned how I maintain a decent GPA with such
terrible, very un-Psych-major like assumptions dominating my thoughts in uncomfortable
situations. Aren’t Psych majors supposed to be good at crap like acting calmly
and accordingly to stressful circumstances? Well, as a testament to my skill
level in my future field, let me tell you how I reacted to meeting my host
family: They were so far from the stuffy, religious, stiff family I pictured
that I wanted to roll around on the floor with their sassy, fuzzy cat who is
probably (definitely) cooler than me and uncontrollably giggle until they said
“get this maniacal child off of my cat/living room floor” and kicked me out of
their house. Their names are Heidi and Rasheed (I’m not sure if I spelled that right) and
they are sarcastic, intuitive, laidback and genuine. They didn’t make us sit
through hours of farm talk and nostalgia or go to a hot, uncomfortable church
on Sunday, and the only children under their roof were three cats and a feisty
bird. In fact, Heidi didn’t even let us call her Auntie, which is a sign of
respect for an older person, sort of like “Mrs.” What they did is feed us
excess amounts of food (♥), let us sleep in until 10 am, chat with us about
everything and anything, let us relax and watch terrible shark movies, take us
whereever we wanted to go, pay for all of our food and joke with us when, in a
moment of true grace, we dropped ice cream all over our clothes/faces like small
children (ahem). We even exchanged numbers, and not in an obligatory “Sure…
I’ll talk to you soon (but not really I’m just being nice)” way; we were
forrealz. I plan on bringing Mother Dearest to meet them when she comes in two
weeks and even after that, Manuela and I are going out to a Karaoke bar with
Heidi before we go back to the States. Something about how she loves to sing
and also loves Tequila. Or maybe that last part was me and Manuela…?
Either
way, I had much more fun in Ocean View than I expected, clearly since it wasn’t
hard to beat my expectations. There’s a bunch more I would talk about, but I
already wrote a small novel so I’ll spare you the extensive details and sum it
up real quick: I hung out with kids at a crèche on Valentine’s Day, had a
valentine in the form of an adorable little girl who made me forget that I was
going to die a lonely haggard wench surrounded by 17 cats, got shown up at
ballroom dancing by some 12 year old boys who have more grace in their left
thumbs than I do in my entire body, was forced (but not really, let’s be real)
to eat an entire pizza in one sitting, was introduced to caramel dipped ice-cream,
although my shirt knows it much more intimately, and was woken up every morning
by an f-bomb-dropping bird who occasionally alternated between cussing out the
cat (Grey), “Who’s your Daddy?” and making kissing noises (not sure how that’s
even possible). It was a weekend of firsts (ballroom dancing, birds screaming
profanity, eating whole pizzas like a heifer, etc.) and hopefully the next time
I see Heidi and Rasheed there will be plenty more to add to the list. Ocean View
was pretty darn cool.
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| Val learning to dance in Ocean View |
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