Family and Friends

This was more of a full week affair of several different people telling me how nice it's been to meet me, how much they're gonna miss me, blablabla.  At the beginning of the week, it didn't really affect me as i still had a few more days to enjoy but by the last day, it started to get to me.  Dona Blanca specifically was saying the nicest things...:-(  She started to cry daily about 3 days before my departure...And of course, seeing a 70 year old woman cry makes me cry.  But that was quickly cleared up by saying something inappropriate or showing her a funny pic of herself:-)  She's the sweetest teeniest cutest little old lady i know!  They don't have very much, but they gave me a tea towel and a throw for my coffee table as a leaving present:-) Even Els got a tea towel - in fact she got 2, whatda?!!

The day that I left, I hugged them goodbye and both Dona Blanca and her husband were crying...:-( If there's anything that gets to me MORE than seeing an old woman cry, it's seeing her even older husband cry - ugggggggggggggggggggggggggh!!! They called on me 3 times that day just to check that I got to my destination safely.  They really were like my parents!  Dona Blanca started to cry on the phone again saying that she loves me very much and can't wait for the day that she sees me again and that I will always always have a home in Guatemala with them...In a very short time, I shared a lot with them.  They saw me at some very low times and vice versa.  We ate a lot together (well, when i did actually eat, we drank some disinfectant together, and we had so so many laughs together.  Her hubby would wolf whistle at me in the streets just to test me, he'd pick up my washing from the laundrette, i'd pick up theirs, she'd kill my spiders, clean my room, pack me breakfast if I got up too late for school, pop the zits on my back that I couldnt get to - u get the idea, right?:-) It was just super comfortable and we went beyond the typical host/student relationship.  I'm very attached to them - i'm definitely gonna miss them...:-(

CONTINUED...

I met a lot of people in Guatemala - through the salsa scene (teaching and dancing) and then I became friends with their friends.  I hung out with them a lot and they became part of my day to day life very quickly - particularly in the last 3 weeks.  They really took me into their crowd and their homes and their lives - and gave me that feeling of belonging pretty fast.  And of course, that improved my spanish alot as they didn't necessarily all talk english so I was forced to communicate - although there were times that i just sat there like a mute and got to learn all the bad words:-)  By the end of my time here, I got to know about 10 people.  Folks even started to recognise me out on the streets - which is something i said i will miss about Cinti on my very first post! :-)So it's nice that i managed to recreate that a bit here - but that can also be a testament to how much of a creature of habit I am!!  With facebook I'm hoping to stay in touch and maybe even see some of these folks again one day... I have to say though, the people that I met seem to have a huge dislike for the US - probably cos of how difficult it is to get into the country and so they mainly wanna goto Europe.  So there may well be a chance that i see them again one day!  Or i may just go back for a quick visit...at the end of the day, it's just 2.5hours away from Miami - that's as close as Cinti is - so u never know!

Beautiful memories...