Disunited with One Friend, Reunited with Another *Week 19*
The start of this week was kind of dull because Leah was getting ready to leave on Tuesday and everyone was feeling it, even a good portion of the kids. Since I had been taking teams back and forth from Comayagua, Leah asked me if I could go with her on the taxi ride to make the transition easier for her. I assured her that I would travel with her, I just needed a plan…
The taxi driver for the orphanage(Luis) charges 120 dollars from Comayagua(where the airport is) to Guaimaca(where the orphanage), and the same the other way around of course. So I asked Danielle where Luis lives and she told me that he lives in the capital city of Tegucigalpa. So that threw out the idea of being able to tag along with him back to Guaimaca for free since Tegucigalpa is in between the two cities. Then I thought about how my sponsor kid, Gibran, left the orphanage 2 weeks before I arrived and how I promised myself that I’d visit him at least once during my trip. Gibran also lives in Tegucigalpa with his brother’s and his sister, however I only know Gibran(16) and his older brother Cristopher(18). So I tried calling Cristopher, since I got his number back in February, but he didn’t pick up and he wasn’t receiving any of my messages either. So I asked Danielle if she had Zelenes’(the boys’ older sister) phone number. Danielle told me that she didn’t, but that Lourdes ‘Mary’ Avila would. So I tracked down Mary and asked for Zelenes’ phone number. Fortunately enough for me, she had it. Since Cristopher wasn’t answering his texts I had to find a different place to stay so that I knew I’d have a place to spend the night before leaving the orphanage. So I texted Joe Mclellend, the man, the myth, the Mclegend. Since Joe comes down every three weeks to visit his sponsor kids for one day, he needs a place to stay at night in Tegucigalpa, because he doesn’t stay at the orphanage. So I texted him and he gave me the number of the family he stays with and I was able to get in contact with them and they assured me they would have a room for me. This is a really good thing because Andreas and Dulce(the owners of the house) live in a gated community with many guards patrolling the neighborhood. So now, everything was all set for me to visit my sponsor kids!
As my Monday went on I decided to order Bigos for Maestro and Ed Pandi(the new helper in the wood shop). I got myself my typical burritos, and Maestro and Pandi ordered themselves a burger each. I paid for the meal and my reward was being able to watch Pandi eat his first ‘fast food’ meal ever. At night, the team hosted a basketball game that I showed up late to, but early enough to watch John lose a fight with a pole(cinematically). I got to play for a while and did decent enough to get a couple “so how long have you been playing basketball”’s. After basketball, us volunteem members made our way up to the girls house for some Ice Cream to commemorate Leah’s last night at Orphanage Emmanuel. It was a good night filled with good conversation and naturally a lot of laughter.
Tuesday morning was a quiet morning. Leah leaving felt just as bad as Tori leaving, but fortunately enough for me, I was going to get a bit of extra time with Leah. After everyone else said their goodbyes to Leah, Leah and I were off to Comayagua. Leah and I have been on and off begging one another for a real “since I was 11 years old” conversation and since we had a 3 hour car ride ahead of us, it was just about that time. Leah and I had a super lovely time in the car and shared a tear or two about ‘restaurant evidence’(joke for none other than Leah). About an hour from the airport, we stopped at a gas station where I grabbed a hot dog and an energy drink. After a long, but very fun journey, we made it to the airport. Luis waited outside for me while Leah and I waited for her flight. While waiting for her flight, Leah offered to buy me a drink and some food. Of course I obliged and we ended up making our way to ‘Espresso Americano’ where I bought a ‘yogurr’ lachino. Then we headed over to ‘Cinnabon’ and bought a gorgeous cinnamon roll to share. Leah insisted on paying so of course I let her. Leah and I ended up finding a nice spot to sit and still with so much to talk about, so never a dull moment. When we were done eating, we walked around a bit more and saw some shirts(3 shirts) that we eventually decided to “peruse” through. From our 3 options, we found ourselves matching shirts in our respective sizes and decided to capture the moment and just buy them. Leah offered to pay again, but I refused and had the cashier put both shirts on my card as a thank you for the meal Leah bought me. After we bought the shirts, we immediately changed into them and took a couple pictures together. After that, we went to one more store where I found a cute hat for Rosario that Leah ended up paying for as a thank you for the shirts😂. After we checked out, Leah and I said our goodbyes and I called Luis to meet me at the door. After I got in the car we were off to Tegucigalpa.
During the car ride, I was texting Andreas to figure out when I’d be able to get into his house. Neither he nor his wife get home until around 5:00ish, so Andreas told me to text his wife Dulce and meet her at her job. Once I got there, Dulce came out and told me that she was going to have a colleague of hers come pick me up in her truck, and that I would sit in the truck, in a parking garage, for about two hours, by myself. I was totally fine with that idea because I had some blogging to do and I decided this would be the perfect opportunity. But after about 15 minutes of waiting in the car, Dulce came out and told me that she was just going to drive me to their house and I would sit there alone for about two hours instead. And so that’s what I did. Dulce and Andreas have a beautiful apartment style house that is very spacious. Luckily enough for me, in that spaciousness, Dulce has a piano. So I sat down and played for about the whole two hours I was alone. Once Andreas got home from work he showed me to my room, which I came to find out was a hostel room. So I had my own little private house for a night… for free. I am so incredibly thankful for Andreas and Dulce’s help, it seriously means so much to me that they were willing to help me when I needed it most, even though they only briefly met me one time prior.
Later that night I started to plan my dinner with my brothers Gibran and Cristopher. They still weren’t answering their texts, so I texted their older sister Zelenes about the whole ordeal and eventually she got me on the phone with them. None of them have a car, and Luis was with a different client at the time so I couldn’t rely on him to drive me around. However, Luis told me that he would get one of his buddies to pick my brothers and I up. Eventually a car came for me and I hopped in and we drove about 10 minutes to get my boys. When we got to their street, Cristopher saw the car and came up to us. I rolled down my window and asked him where Gibran was, and he told me that Gibran was in the house waiting for me. I told Cristopher to go get him because I had planned to go to a restaurant, not sit with them in their house. So Cristopher went to get Gibran quick and I stepped out of the car to wait for them. When Cristopher came back I gave him a hug then I gave Gibran a hug and we all got in the car and made our way to Little Caesars! My biggest fear about meeting up with the boys was that there was a big chance that it would be super awkwardly silent and that we would just kind of sit there with each other and not say anything. However, I was so overwhelmingly happy when the reunion immediately sparked conversation, and the conversation never dulled out either! Our entire car ride was filled with conversation and a lot of catching up. And speaking of the car ride, the driver that Luis had sent for us was so helpful, because when we got to Little Caesars, he assured me that he’d wait for me in the parking lot since my phone was at 3% and he was the only one that had directions to where I was staying. After telling him I was very thankful for that, I took the boys inside, ordered a pizza and some breadsticks, then we found a spot to sit. The conversation continued and the boys eventually got to tell me why they weren’t answering their phones. Apparently both of them had been robbed at gunpoint a few weeks back and were forced to hand over their phones. This kind of stuff is really tough because the boys grew up in the orphanage, and they made sure I knew that they believed it to be more like a prison, then, those boys got out into the ‘real world’ which for them is much harder than it is for us Americans, because now they live in a really dangerous, slummy place, and don't have as many options to get themselves out of that kind of a situation as an American might. As we started to wrap up our dinner, I pulled my hat out of my backpack with a Sharpie and asked the boys to sign it for me so that I could take a piece of them back to the states with me when I leave. After my brothers were done signing the hat, I gave them two rubber bracelets that look exactly like mine so that they could have a piece of me when I leave. They took the bracelets and put them on, then we went to the gas station next door where I bought them a quick drink. Then we went back to the car. We had some leftover dessert from Little Caesars so I gave it to the driver as a thank you for waiting since I didn’t have Honduran cash on me. Then the driver took us to Gibran and Cristopher's place where I said goodbye one last time and handed them each $100. I gave Cristopher a hug and then gave Gibran a hug and told him not to cry this time(because he cries every time), to which he started fake crying and fell into my arms. After that whole charade, we parted ways, and the driver took me back to Andreas and Dulce’s house. When I left the taxi, I told the driver that Luis would bring him his money in a couple days and he told me that all was good and he drove off.
That whole Tuesday night was so beautiful and I am so incredibly thankful to all the small pieces that made the big picture happen. On top of that, my phone didn’t die until the literal second I stepped into my room, which was such a blessing because according to WorldPopulationReview.com, Tegucigalpa is ranked as the 40th most dangerous city in all of the world(I am NOT going to MLA format that) so if something were to have happened to me, I wouldn’t have been in the greatest conditions, especially as a foreigner…
But praise the Lord, everything went swimmingly, and I headed off to bed immediately after getting back. Luis wasn’t going to pick me up until about noon the next day so I tried to sleep in as much as possible. I made it to about 9:30am then couldn’t keep myself asleep anymore, so I got out of bed and watched some Netflix. After a couple episodes of my show, I went downstairs to play some piano while Luis was en route. Once he got to my street, I hopped in and we made our way to the airport where we should’ve been able to pick up my mom almost right away. However, my mom’s flight to Honduras was delayed about 2-3 hours, so Luis and I waited in the airport for a really long time before she finally came. While I was in the airport I got myself a really nice spaghetti meal with a smoothie and walked around a lot, reminiscing over what I had done just one day prior with my BFSTEBNABWJMEOACMA(Best Friend Since Technically Eleven But Not Actually Because We Just Met Each Other A Couple Months Ago). It wasn’t a fantastic feeling to walk the airport alone, which made me feel a trillion times better about going with Leah so that she didn’t have to sit there alone while waiting for her flights. Eventually my mom got to baggage claim and I met up with her on the ground level of the airport. I helped bring her bags to Luis’ car and then we started to make our way back to the orphanage. Once we got to the orphanage, Luis dropped my mom off at her house and my mom payed for the ride from the airport to the orphanage. Then, the most outrageous scandal happened when Luis dropped me off at my house. He pulled up in front of my house and I hopped out to go get him a 50 dollar bill(which was already more than enough to pay him and the other taxi driver) but when I came out he was dissatisfied and told me that he expected me to pay for the trip from the airport to Tegucigalpa(which he was going to have to drive anyways) and then from Tegucigalpa back to the airport in the morning(which, again, was a drive he was going to make anyways). I went inside again to grab him my last 50 dollar bill and I gave it to him just for him to tell me that I was missing $80 more. So I told him I didn’t have any more cash and he told me it was fine, I could just pay him later. After I went back inside, I immediately texted Danielle about the situation, and she told me that she would try to handle it.
The next day, I passed by Rosario’s sister, Valeria, on my way to work and she basically begged me for a hug. That took me by surprise quite a bit, because Valeria acts very timid around me(foreshadowing to a couple weeks from now, she won't even eat in the same room as me) so I kind of gave her a weird look and then I gave her a hug. She didn’t have to say it, but I knew she just needed a hug from me because I knew she knew her house’s most recent volunteer, Leah, hadn’t come back with me. Then right after I turned my back to Valeria I heard some screaming and shouting from the gym, so I headed over there to see what was up. The orphanage was celebrating “Student Day” and there was a party for the highschoolers in the gym. I got there quite a bit after it started, however, it looked like they had been playing a bunch of different sports and tallying up wins and losses, and I got there just in time for volleyball. For those of you that don’t know, I have been known to sometimes maybe play volleyball on occasion. So I ended up asking what team I could play on and the professors snatched me up right away(the kids weren’t very happy about that). I got to play two games and my team won both of them, and though we didn’t really have a ‘pass, set, hit’ flow going, I still got to let loose and swing a little. After the games were done, JJ Weeks came up to me and said “that was ruthless man,” and then he asked me how long I had been playing and I gave him the whole run down. After volleyball they moved onto soccer, which I didn’t want to stick around for because then the kids would’ve been able to get payback, and I didn’t want that. So, I went to the elementary school where the elementary kids had a pool and a bouncy house set up for their celebration. I wanted to find my daughters to say ‘hi’ to them before I finally made my way to work, but I only bumped into Lorena before getting splashed with water by the teachers. So I left before I got any more wet and went back to work.
At dinner on Thursday I gave Jimmy a hat that I bought him while waiting for my mom in Comayagua. I’ve been trying to buy this man a hat that looks exactly like mine for months now, because once upon a time he told me he liked my hat. I’ve never really been a hat wearer, but when I got to Honduras back in February, I bought myself a hat at the airport because my hair was really messy after all of my travels. Ever since then I started gradually wearing the hat more and more and now I’m having my Honduran family here sign it. Also at dinner, I gave Hector(man in charge of the big boys house) a laptop that my mom brought down for him. It was a $450 laptop but he only had $350, so I told him that he didn’t have to worry about the last $100, and to consider it a gift from me. After dinner, the team hosted a game of dodgeball with the staff in the gym with pizza, brownies, and tea. Once everyone was in the gym, we all agreed that we would play Hondurans vs. Americans. For whatever reason, Raleigh joined the Honduran team so in our first match I targeted him and got him out right off the bat. Then, a little later, I hit Hector straight in the face which was pretty funny honestly. In the end, the Hondurans ended up “winning” because Milton big time cheated(3 balls hit him[one being mine] and he refused to leave the court, and then proceeded to knock out our entire team). I wasn’t happy about that so I made sure he got a bunch of noogies after the game.
On Friday I did a lot of blog writing to try to catch up on posts and then started rewatching movies with the Mayores at night. I had decided to download some more movies for them, consisting of two horror movies and two sad movies. We started by watching ‘A Dog’s Purpose’. They said they had already seen it, but for such a soft movie, and having seen it already, I was surprised by how invested in it the young men were. On Saturday I went to town with John, and as everyone should expect by now, we went to Bigos. Then after shopping a little, we went back to the orphanage. That night I went back up to the Mayores’ house where I found them playing volleyball outside their house. Of course I joined them, but it was drizzling and the ground was very muddy, so I just rolled my pants up and took my socks and shoes off and had a fantastic time playing with the guys. After the Tia told the boys to get in their house, I started playing the next movie I had for them, ‘The Green Mile’. I have never seen The Green Mile, but I came to find out it’s a 3 hour long movie and the boys had already seen it and thought it was boring. But I still sat there and watched it with the few boys that wanted to watch it with me. Sunday of week 19 won't be in this post as it's contents are more related to next week's topic👍! To be continued...
Comments
Post a Comment