Family

Having a loving family is a gift. You can imagine, then, what a veritable wonder it is to have three or even four! It is in the home that we develop our first understanding of love, responsibility, and reciprocity. It is there that we construct a foundation of values, principles and habits that facilitate our relationship with society, other individuals, ourselves, and our own health. We go to college and we question all of these principles and lifelong assumptions –or perhaps we begin to examine them upon leaving home and entering the workplace. But wherever our learning environment, we all come to a point when we take those childhood lessons and reincorporate them into a coherent whole: Ourselves. It is quite an experience, then, to return to the seat of childhood at this age by being placed -plop!- into the middle of a new family and a novel pool of values and ideas. And yet, one retains that former lifetime of learning, using this new environment as a means of reflecting upon the former.

But more than serving as a point of comparison, this familial nucleus bestows its own lessons, its own valuable ideas, its own handy habits. Through my integration into my loving Chilean family, my host parents have exposed me to a number of wonderful characteristics that build upon and strengthen my personal foundation. Through their patience and open-mindedness, they have communicated that which they hold dear.

For one, I may have had a wonderful example of a loving, committed pair in the form of my own parents, but my host parents have reinforced my understanding of what makes up a long-lasting, caring relationship. Patterns emerge; ah, yes! Both couples of parents are always there for each other, ready to share time and energy, and, above all, always looking to keep the other at their side in their many life pursuits. Now I know to look for this continual giving, sharing, and accompanying in my own relationships.

My own parents may have pointed me towards an acceptance of those who are different from me, but my host parents show me how this can be done through their own learning experiences; hosting a Jewish-American student as a Chilean of Palestinian heritage can provide a massive stereotype overhaul for everyone involved, for example. My host parents have shown me how to maintain a pristine house and a instructed me in a new, exceptional way of preparing an egg. My host mother has exemplified a profound love of cooking that I never grew up with and my host father has taught me new was of debating ideas.

The entire family has given me the tremendous gift of showing me just how close-knit a family can be and exactly what this life-long intimacy requires at a logistical level. My Senegalese host family and host culture may have opened my eyes to a valuing of family that I discovered I shared, but my Chilean family has helped that appreciation sink in more deeply, maturing with understanding and growing more committed as I see that is it, in fact, possible to maintain a unified extended family. I come from a family that, for the most part, unites around holidays and seldomly communes with the uncles and aunts otherwise. I view my parents, Grandmother, and siblings as paramount within my life, so the knowledge that we can build such a beautiful commitment to one another as that which I see here in my Chilean family is heartwarming. Ours is a culture of loving and leaving and making our way in life –intrepid travelers scattered around the states and pulled around my economic strings. Now I see with clarity that that is not the only way.