struck dumb

I got the address of my host homestay family in Ecuador, and suddenly The Terror has me wondering why, at 36, I suddenly need to speak Spanish?

I mean, I'm British: undergoing total immersion in a language isn't going to work, I should have learnt that at 14.
I'm simply going to revert to sign language and photographs, aren't I?

And there's three days of jetlag plus altitude sickness in which I have to communicate with the Benitez-Herrera family sufficiently to be fed, dried, ignored politely, and any stray insects calmly removed - the point of the escapade is that they don't speak any English, and I ... well, I studied a few phrases on a flight to Mumbai a while back, and learnt 'como dice' and 'buenos tardes'.

And I already know 'paella', 'salsa' and 'tortilla' type words.

'Cerveza'?

I know from stumbling, halting conversations in deutsch (with etiquette-challenged north germans in various konditorei this year) that simply speaking faster and louder in one's home language at someone struggling to follow, leads only to loud and angry altercations where I start shouting random german phrases.

This may not go down well in someone's family home.

Oh boy.

[They have two little girls, aged 14 and 8. I know any Brazilian would always bring a gift when visiting someone's home. Any suggestions on what gift to bring the Benitez Herrera family from the UK?]