Home is where you feel comfortable, safe and loved. It is where you are surrounded by the people and things that bring you joy. Sometimes, home is a physical place, like your family house or your childhood neighborhood. Other times, home is not a place, but a feeling. It is especially important for a traveler to think of home as a feeling instead of a physical place. In order for them to enjoy exploring abroad, travelers should feel at home in a strange land. Thankfully, my study abroad program considered the challenge of being away from home and placed me with a host family.
A host family is a family native to the city who brings you into their home while you are traveling in their city. They give you a bedroom and provide you with three cooked meals each day. Usually, you have access to everything in the house. Your clothes are washed. You can watch T.V. You can use the wireless Internet. Basically, your host family's house is your house. You will need to live by their house rules. In the first few weeks living with my host family, my host mom would say, "Minha casa é sua casa" to assure me that her home was mine for my time in Salvador.
My host family, as well as most of the other host families in my program, live in a neighborhood called Barra.
