Escoba y Kosquillo(sp?)

Yesterday I arrived in Dolores for my site visit. Basically it`s just a 6-day period where you have a chance to meet and hang out with your new host family, meet your counterparts, get to know the community and start getting comfortable. I decided to take my medium-sized suitcase, my saco (the big Nica market bag full of textbooks that PC gave us), and my backpack. Stuff I`m gonna leave here so I can bring the rest of my stuff after swearing in. I hopped on a bus from Niquinohomo to Dolores, took about 45 minutes, which means I am about a 2 hour bus ride from Managua.
I was incredibly spoiled by my Niquinohomo house. I knew it from the start but I let myself get comfortable anyway. This host family and this new house fits more the image I had before I got here. This time, my host mom is the abuelita, and she`s got a bunch of little grandkids running around the house, so I have a 5 year old girl that is attached to me always named Mayerli, and twins that are ridiculously sweet, who are 10 years old, named Karelie and Karelia. There is a baby of about 3 months named Naomi. These people don´t live in my house, they live next door, but they are around. It`s a lot more tranquilo than my other house, but they are friendly and experienced with volunteers because Dolores has been a training town for a while.
Anyway, I got off the bus, called my counterpart Tania who I had called the night before, and she walked over from the instituto to pick me up. The instituto is basically at the bus stop. She is awesome. She works in the morning teaching at this school and then in the evening teaches at a private university (I think) called Ave Maria. She introduced me to one of the other english teachers who is new, and then proceeded to take me to every single classroom to introduce me to the students, one of which, in each class, she had asked to prepare like a little welcome speech for me, which was cute and a little overwhelming. I hung out with her and the directora for a while, met some other teachers, then she helped me take my stuff to my host family`s house, and I ate lunch, and went for a walk, and this is where the title of the post comes in.
So I went for a walk with my mom, Mayerli, one of the twins, and we picked up my mom`s mom (abuela laura) on the way. We walked down a reparto and it was really pretty and fresca and green and there was this plant everywhere called escoba. It`s just a plant with leaves, but my mom was all excited and like man someone get me a machete so I can cut some of this escoba, and we finally found a machete, and man does she know how to use a machete. I tried and failed miserably. I was also a little scared. Then we made these little bundles of them, because I guess they use it to sweep. Anyway she`s going crazy over this escoba, and then she realizes that we left abuela laura far behind and she starts freakin out and then we hurry and each gather our bundle of escoba and head back home.

The rest of the day I was kind of just tired and bored, but then we had dinner and talked about India and watched part of a telenovela (Soy tu Dueña) and went to mass in Diriamba which was nice but a little long. Came home and crashed HARD but realized my cell phone reception isn`t too hot in Dolores =/.

Also I got serenaded on Sunday afternoon.

Today I observed a class of the new English teacher, and now I`m sitting in the computer lab (yes, my instituto has a computer lab) and my counterpart, who teaches all morning, sent a student with a pack of crackers for me to eat. I love her already.

Everything is good, it`s just scary all over again.