Leaving Cantarranas

So, I finally had to leave Cantarranas and go to my site. It was really sad to leave, because I really loved it there and I really felt like part of the community. I was okay packing and everything on Thursday, but everything hit me on the way to classes on Friday. When I was walking to classes a lot of the people in the community came out of their houses to talk to me. They said things like, “All of the volunteers are leaving tomorrow, but you’re staying, right?” It just broke my heart. I had to explain to everyone that I would love to stay, but I that I couldn’t because the Peace Corps was sending me somewhere else. Everyone looked disappointed when I said that, but asked with a little hope, “Then who’s staying here?” It broke my heart to tell them that no one was staying there. The Peace Corps was not going to have a volunteer there this cycle, (although they could definitely use one). I told them that the Peace Corps was sending me to Morazan, Yoro and they gave me a look of disbelief and a comment about how far away it was. Then they would ask me when I would come back to Cantarranas. I would say maybe for Christmas and I would assure them that I would definitely come back sometime in the next year. And that’s when the tears would start coming and I’d get all choked up.

Then, when a couple families gave me names and numbers of family members in Morazan, I almost cried because they were just so nice. One guy even called his sister, who is a teacher in Morazan, to tell her that I was coming. This conversation continued from house to house.

So basically, since I had to stop and stay goodbye to ½ of the community on my way to Spanish class, I was ½ an hour late. But I definitely didn’t care. They shouldn’t have had Spanish classes that morning anyway, as we were leaving the town right after lunch. That lunch hour is definitely not enough time to eat and say goodbye to people.

Honestly, I don’t like Spanish classes, anyway. They take away from time I could be spending with community members. It doesn’t help that the rest of my Spanish class (including my teacher) hate Cantarranas and roll their eyes or at least act annoyed whenever I talk about how much I love it. It’s like I can’t say anything in class without sounding like I’m bragging or appearing to diminish their situation of all around suckiness.

So,after the teacher gave me an impossible assignment of writing my resume in Spanish for my Honduran counterparts in my site in 1 1/2 hours or less when I didn´t have access to my resume in English and I spent about 10 minutes and realized that that was just impossible (it took me a week to write the thing in English and there was really no reason for me to write a bad resume now when I could look at my English resume later and translate it.) After all, the only reason my teacher wanted it was so that she could correct it. So I got up and said, "This is my last day in Cantarranas. I'm not going to see my host family for at least 3 months. If you wanted me to turn in my resume today, you should have told me at least yesterday, if not a week ago. I'd rather turn in a resume with grammatical errors in it, than turn in a resume that is missing 1/2 of the stuff that it should contain and is badly written." And then I left and went home and spent time with my host family. On my last interview, I got a Spanish level of "Advanced-Medium Plus" which is only 2 levels down from "Superior" which means your a native speaker. So it's not like they can kick my out.

So I spent the last day playing with my sisters and brother, cousins, neighbors and pets. My host mom made me pupusas (really good El Salvadorean thick tortillas filled with cheese) and chismol (pico de gallo)to take with me on my trip. And then of course we all cried. My host mom and a group of 12 children went to the park with me to wait for the bus. We played games until they made me get on the bus.