the c-word

During our first three months, our trainers used the word confianza, trust, so often that it began to lose meaning. It was used so often that it was put on our class t-shirt as an inside joke.
Our trainers always said, "It's important to gain confianza with your commmunity/host family/counterparts/etc". But it doesn't really mean much when they say it to you until you experience it, much like most things in life.

This week has been good to me. My host brothers told me that they have confianza (exact word) with me. So much so that I am now:

1. Allowed to play Nintendo with them. (yes!)
2. Supposed to let them look through all my stuff when they come into my room.
3. Subject to their jokes about my Spanish (but it's all in fun).
4. Victim to their practical jokes. (spiders left in my shoes, a fake tarantula left on my bed that had me scream like a maniac)
5. Locked in my room on a regular basis (the door locks from the outside)

But it's all good. This week has actually flown by and I really felt for the first time that I could learn to love small town life. I taught my brothers how to play Uno, which entertains them for hours...plus they get crazy competitive. They also asked me to teach them some English which made me realize that maybe I can't teach English because the way they pronounced some words was so cute that I couldn't help but laugh. I wasn't laughing at them and I hope that they don't think that. For example,

Nose (Nariz). My brother Brayan pronounced it as "no sé" as in "I don't know" and another brother, Luis, would say "Well, I don't know either", which had me laughing anytime I thought about it later.

Later, they asked me how to say gun, machine gun, molotov cocktail, pistol, and rocket launcher. Where could they have learned those words????

Thank you very much Jean Claude Van Damme and Sylvester Stallone!