My First Kiss... Almost!

I am still chuckling as I write... It happened this morning. Pedro is a guard outside of Sojourn, where I work. He sits in a telephone booth-ish building monitoring who goes into and out of the school, which is surrounded by a high wall and heavy metal gates. Each morning I wave and have a little conversation with him as I walk onto school property and head towards the office to clock in. Usually he's inside his little booth and peeks out to greet me with a "Good morning! How are you?" type comment in Spanish. And then I continue on towards the administration building. (Each building is small on campus and you walk outside to get from one to the next. Admin is one building. Secondary is a building. Spanish classes are in a building. Primary is one building. Preschool is a building. Upper elementary is a building. Picnic tables with a roof over them are the lunch room---like a pavillion. And there are little sidewalks with awnings over them that connect each building. The awnings are a new addition that I'm really thankful for because it rains a lot here, multiple times per day. But most of that is beside the point...) Back to Pedro...

So, for whatever reason, Pedro was outside his guard booth and walking towards it when I entered school property this morning. This means he was walking towards me. Now he's a darker skinned Costa Rican who loves to joke around and is really friendly... In friendliness, he moved towards me to kiss me on the cheek. It totally caught me off guard and I simultaneously backed up about four feet and assummed a "What are you thinking?" facial expression, complete with open mouth and bulging eyes. He did not advance, but explained matter of factly that he had been trying to greet me. "Oh yeah," I thought, "A kiss on the cheek is common here. This is not strange. He was not doing anything in appropriate." It took me a minute to process what just happened, during which he said (in spanish), "Well, a handshake then!" and grabbed my hand, pumping cheerfully. Glad he wasn't offended, I felt embarassed and apologized: "Tengo verguenza."

As I walked towards the admin building I reflected on the fact that I spend most of my time with people who are under the age of ten. And most teachers are girls (or they are American men over the age of 50 who don't do the typical Costa Rican greeting....thanks!). I have had women greet me with the brush your cheek with my cheek, kiss in the air... My tico dad doesn't do it. Neither does Fabian, the ten year old I live with. One of the other teachers said single people don't usually greet each other this way. She reminded me Pedro is single. (I think he might be 45.) He is very friendly, but he is not is not the one for me. For the record, I am not a fan of surprise physical touch in general. And I always fall for it when someone is behind me and taps me on the left shoulder and hides by my right side...while I look behind the left shoulder.

For whatever reason, it didn't surprise when/if other men in Costa Rica greeted me in a similar fashion, but it sure did today. Maybe I was in English thinking mode as I approached the school? The fact he wasn't in the guard booth and that was out of the normal routine/unexpected? Who knows... But it was my first kiss, and I almost ran away! Ha ha!

Other interesting happenings.... I went out of town for the first time last weekend to a Jaco, a small beach town, with my friend Mary. It was about two or three hours by bus. Two hours there. Three hours back. You curve around in the mountains/through the mountains to get there, and there was an accident, so we spent a chunk of time sitting and waiting on the way back. This was unfortunate because I really needed to use the restroom about a half hour before the hour delay... Yikes!

While in Jaco, I more or less recovered from my first sickness. Basically it was a bad cough, drainage, exhaustion, cold type of thing for a few days. It was pretty bad Thursday, and I stayed home from work Friday and my tico family took me to the pharmacy to get some medicine. I think I slept twelve hours on Saturday night! Yay! Sun, sleep, and fun involving water...that's a nice vacation! The waves were so big that I literally had to pull the bottom part of my swimmingsuit back up once...they just knocked it off! (Not all the way off, but there was significant movement. This may be too much information.) Isn't that crazy? I moved into shallower water after that.

Also in Jaco, my camera broke. Sad! I zoomed to capture the beauty of the beach, or maybe it was to get me and Mary in a shot? Either way, once I zoomed, it would not UNzoom. Zoom failure. What a way to go. This happened a few weeks ago, and I fixed it by recharging the battery, etc. But this time it was not a battery issue. It might be broken for good. We'll see. It's on my list of things to figure out, to ask people about. That list is kind of long right now.

Despite those things, Mary and I had a really nice time and plan to go back!!!

Other news... I got three new students in the last two weeks. One speaks Swiss and Spanish and German at home and does not know English. I am learning more words as I translate directions into Spanish for him. And I've started tutoring hime twice a week after school. The other two were in kindergarten and moved up. Their families are working towards deployment to Guatemala and Ecuador. One is pretty low and kind of rebellious, but he's coming around.

There is one hill in Parque La Paz that has a tree and a giant rock at the top of it and overlooks the city. I am planning to go there on Saturday for some alone time. Sometimes I miss being alone. General life can be tiring. If you read this before then, would you pray for rest, peace, that day? Thanks!