Saying Goodbye

Living in the area I live, and working with the organization I work with has lead me to making many new friends from America. One such group of people was a wonderful family from Ohio.

I met Lisa when she came to Project Esperanza at the beginning of this month. She had her three children and a family friend in tow. They spent a week working with Project Esperanza and I was able to get to know them during the week while they lived in the house. We spent some evenings playing spades and gabbing while I gave them bad directions to 27 Charcos and ate all of their Twizzlers. I definitely got the best end of the deal. Lisa is an obvious mother, granting me much appreciated motherly advice about some of my future goals and planted in me a new reason to visit Ohio! The oldest, Camden, reminds me a lot of myself when I was his age. I rarely saw him without a book in his hand. Megan reminded me of my sister a bit. Typical teenage girl. One super cool thing about her: She is a pole vaulter! How cool is that. Lauren, the youngest, also reminded me of myself, but more of myself now. She likes to tell stories and you can see how anxious she gets to finish. We just want to be sure everybody knows how the story ends! She is a lot of fun and makes me realize how exciting it must be to have younger siblings. They are a fun family and are, in my opinion, an example of why homeschooling is a good example for some families. 

After they left the house and went out east to Samana I had hopes of seeing them again. As luck and mutual want would have it I was able to see all of them many times since then. They stopped back in a few times to drop things off and volunteer more of their time with the schools. I'm not very involved with the volunteer aspect of Project Esperanza, I just have the luck of spending time with the volunteers when they are here. 

For my part, I was just glad to have access to a wonderful family and exciting conversations.

Michelle and I went to visit them yesterday before they head back to “The Promised Land” tomorrow. We chatted, played spades and spent time in a clean pool. I am so grateful to Lisa for passing on her life advice and hope to cross paths with them again sooner rather than later. I am also glad that the main reason I decided to live in the volunteer house, access to meeting new and interesting volunteers, paid off. They are wonderful and I wish the time we had together were longer.

Have a great time back in America. Good luck with school pole vaulting and exploring this great big world we live in! I’ll miss you guys.