lloronas

My friend Cira, continues to be probably my best friend here in Ecuador. We are nothing alike, she is a 33 year old single mother supporting her 2 children on the basic Ecuadorian salary, $250 a month. Everyone who has met her agrees upon one thing: She crazy! She talks a mile a minute and is the worse gritona (a woman who screams loudly) I have met down here. When we began spending time together in early December I had to always ask her to repeat what she said or explain it in another way, but now our conversations can flow with little to no interruptions. That trully was a triumph.

Cira has told me before that I am her first "gringa" friend, and it is for that reason that I believe we have developed such a strong relationship. I am not "volunteer Mary" I am Mary the volunteer and those are two totally different things. She is not friends with me because she is friends with Rostro, or because she lives across the street and feels obligated to host me, she doesn't benefit from our foundation in anyway. We became friends because we are cowokers, we are neighbors and we found something within each other that we like. I am going to say that my friendship with Cira and her family is the most sincere relationship I have here in Ecuador.

Cira and I have one thing in common, we are lloronas, or women who cry a lot. Today as she was selling ice cream during recess I sat at the stand with her and talked about how I only have 54 days left in Ecuador. She told me to stop talking crazy because that is "altisimo tiempo," so much time, but then we talked about what would happen when I did go back. How often will we talk? When can either one of us come to visit the other? Getting a visa to the states is more difficult than prying a fat kid away from chocolate cake. And then I asked if she would come to say goodbye to me at the airport. She was almost offended that I would ask such a question because obviously she would be there. I told her that I will be "pura lagrimas" pure tears. She just shook her head and said "yo tambien" me too.

Then her eyes began to glisen and she said, "look, I'm already crying!" and began laughing. I told her I couldn't look at her because then I would start to cry and we would look like such fools sitting there at the ice cream stand sobbing. We then began to laugh so hard at ourselves that the sad tears tunred into happy ones. (wow, i can't believe i just wrote that cheesy ass line) It reminded me of crying at a Ruby Tuesdays with Kelly on our drive back to Chicago! Kelly you would love Cira.

I feel ready to leave Ecuador, but I am in no way ready to leave the realtionships I have made, especially Cira. But ya, no more sadness I'm going to focus on the positive and just live.

Love you all! Hope you enjoy the recent blog entries.