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| the luggage made it...you can breathe now. | | |
| still no luggage for me! anyone want to place bets on whether or not it will even come while i'm here (i leave on sun., just so you know)? finished The Known World and i highly recommend it. | | |
| so here's a story: i'm in honduras...finally! a little over a week ago i decided that i would come with angela when she came back to honduras. we booked tickets, got ready, and at 6:15 a.m. last saturday we were on plane for Tegucigalpa. now, mind you, we knew we had a 2 hour layover in Houston, but no big deal, right? however, just as we were reaching Houston, our pilot announced that we were being diverted to Shreveport due to fog in Houston. we flew to Shreveport and sat on the runway there for 2 hours, which meant, of course, that we missed our flight to Honduras. Since there's only one flight a day to Honduras, we planned on rescheduling our flight for the next day, and just spending that first night with Angela's friend, Janae (who is wonderful, by the way). so, we waited for an hour in line at the bush international airport, at which point they told us that the flight for sunday was all full, but that we could be confirmed for monday. we figured there was really nothing we could do about that, but since our problem was weather related, they didn't even offer us hotel or food vouchers. gotta love that Continental. Then we headed down to baggage claim, so we could at least have our stuff for our two day mini-vacation in Houston. No such luck. down there they told us that if we wanted our bags, we would have to wait up to 4 hours (after talking to friends later, that wait was actually 4 hours, too). we asked if they could call if they found the bags, for for some reason that was totally out of the question. since Janae had already been waiting for us for an hour at that point, we gave up and left the airport. so, we got to spend 2 days in Houston! it was my first time there, and Janae took wonderful care of us. we got to see Fracture (really good) and ate at Star Pizza--yummm! so this morning we headed to the airport, eager to be on our way. upon checking in, we learned that we weren't assigned seats, and that the flight was overbooked. the agent told us to go to the gate and that hopefully they'd have a seat for us there. hopefully! our flight was supposed to board at 9, and at around 8:40 they let us know they'd found us some seats. we hopped on that plane and were off! oh, but that's not all. at the airport in Tegucigalpa we discovered that not only were we missing one bag, we were missing all three. we went to register the losses, and they had a list that showed all the bags that were still in Houston. both of Angela's bags were on the list, but as for mine, well, your guess is as good as mine. we're supposed to call tomorrow, so maybe we'll hear some good news then! can't say that i'm holding my breath, though. and so, 48 hours after starting our supposed 6 hour journey, we're here! the ranch is beautiful and the kids are so sweet. and there are kittens! three adorable little ones that live right outside my door. plus, we learned upon arrival that on friday there's a costume ball--bible themed! so that means angela and i get to scrounge up some costumes and party Honduran style on la noche de viernes. stay tuned for more to come.... | | |
| When you live overseas, there are certain cultural experiences that are kind of like urban legends within the foreign community. For example, when I first moved here, I heard the story of two girls who, just before they went home, decided they wanted to lose a little bit of weight. So, they went out to the street, took the teensy tiniest sip of gutter water, and waited for the parasite to take action. However, unable to fight off the massive dosage of filth consumed in that tiny drop of water, both girls died. Other legends have more to do with cultural idiosyncrasies, such as seeing someone shake a shoe in someone’s fact to shame them, or literally not being allowed to leave someone’s home when you are visiting. You hear these stories all the time, but it’s when they actually start to happen to you that you experience a sense of pride in truly having arrived. This summer I had my first of such experiences. I went to a slum area where some of my friends live to pay a visit. I hadn’t gotten very far, just to the first home of several I was planning to visit that day. The family invited me inside, and I sat down on the bed that was the only possible seating area in the room. Just then, I noticed a little boy cowering at the door. I asked him, very sweetly, and in his own language, how he was doing. He looked at me, ran and hid behind his big sister, and began yelling, “Bhut, bhut!”—pronouced “boot” and meaning “ghost.” I tried to explain that I wasn’t a bhut at all, but a girl, and a nice one at that. There was no convincing him. He continued screaming until I finally decided it was best just to go ahead and leave. Today I had my second of these experiences. I was walking down my street—my very own street!—when the man walking past me turned, and meowed very loudly—twice!—in my ear. Now, had I not recently been informed of what meowing means in this culture, I might have just mistaken this action for a bit of absurdity. However, a friend of mine had just explained, maybe a month or so ago, that here meowing is a form of sexual solicitation. Very literally a “cat call.” I think I would have been offended had I not felt, to some degree, that I was merely a participant in the greater urban legend collective. And who doesn’t appreciate acceptance into a global community of wonders? | | |
| i just posted a comment on angela's page, for which i was required to log in. and i thought, why not post? (this is mainly for you, shannon:)). i'm sitting here listening to the azan, drinking some lemon iced (but it's really barely cool) tea, freezing my fingers off. it's cold here! not cold in the regular standards of the world, of course, but for beth grossman, and for the tropics, it's cold! houses here just aren't made for temperatures anywhere below the 80's. i'm getting ready to go spend the night with some dear friends, one of whom's father recently died. this will be the first time i've seen her, and i feel like there are probably some things that would be culturally appropriate to do. problem is, i have no idea what they are. anyway, if you get a chance, please do lift up my friend Smrity and her family. what else is new? let's see...i'm deep into the Dune series, almost to the point that Paul, Chani, Stilgar and Alia are starting to feel real to me. i do love it when that happens. And i'm just trying to get my mind around almost being done here, and the reality of returning to the states. for those of you who might be reading this and have gone through that recently, feel free to post any comments or email any thoughts you might have on the subject. i hope y'all are loving being with family--and being Home! | | |
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