Stay with a typical Mexican family and
experience Mexican culture firsthand
the school’s Web site advertised.
It sounded great so I signed up for three weeks.

The first evening with my Mexican family,
dinner was Hawaiian pizza from Costco.
Ana and I sat at the table and got acquainted
while her husband, Enrico, and the three kids
ate in front of the television in the other room
watching a dubbed version of Caspar.
It was a fairly revealing introduction.

Down the street, another student was getting acquainted
with her typical Mexican host family.
The cousin of Ana, divorced with two young children,
also had another student, a German boy, I think, living there,
doing her best to make ends meet.
When I finally met her, near the end of my stay,
she was wearing tight jeans, stiletto heels and a tee shirt that said
“Make love not war”
I later learned that her mother visited from time to time
and made derogatory remarks about the American student
thinking that she didn’t understand Spanish.

Another student paid the family directly and up front
as the school advised.
The only down side to that was that her Mexican mother
ran out of money before the end of the week and wouldn’t feed her.
so the student ended up eating in the restaurant down the street.

I don’t think the school was misrepresenting the situation
or promising something they couldn’t deliver.
I just made the mistake of focusing on the world “Mexican”
rather than the more important word in the description--
“typical”.