"If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time. But if you have come here because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us work together" -Lilla Watson, Aboriginal Activist

Thursday, May 6, 2010

A new friend

I made a friend! I was feeling much better yesterday so I decided to go sit in el centro after class, on the stone steps in front of the basketball courts. As I was sitting there reading my book, Cynthia, my new friend, approached me and asked me why I was wearing such ugly sandals (not in those words, of course, but I'm quickly learning how to translate the Guatemalan tendency towards indirectness). She asked me about the book I was reading and told me a little bit about her family. I gave her some of my Gatorade (or Gator, here).
...Cynthia is four years old. My only friend is a four-year-old.
Teenagers (younger ones especially) laugh at me in the streets--I don't really take offense to it but it is a bit strange to be so clearly funny-looking. Adults generally avoid me unless they're relatives of my host family (which luckily is quite likely in this town). Only four-year-olds have the curiosity plus the lack of inhibition to approach the gringa with the weird sandals. But hey, poco a poco...

3 comments:

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  2. I literally laughed out loud at your post. "Cynthia is four years old. My only friend is a four-year-old." But who cares!! I love little kids...they would be some of my only friends
    too, but I would probably be arrested.

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  3. LOL that is really cute...I love how blunt people are there. Like when I was in Spain, my senora called my roomate "gordita". Ouch. But HILARIOUS. Glad ur making friends!!!!

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