The Goodbyes Begin...

Here in Nicaragua, goodbye parties are called despedidas, and they are muy popular. I’ve been planning one such party for this weekend with my friends in Managua, but I got a little surprise in Cusmapa yesterday because the administrator and a few others had an impromptu goodbye party for me as well.

On Tuesday, when I was talking to her (Sabrina) on Skype about the meeting in Cusmapa yesterday, I mentioned that I was sad because it would be my last visit. She said “Oh no, we have to throw you a going away party.” I told her that wouldn’t be necessary, but then we kept teasing about it yesterday.

At one point yesterday afternoon, I had been working in a different part of the office and walked back into administration unexpectedly. When I did, a girl was carrying a vase with some fake flowers in it, and when I looked at it, everyone in the room made a face at me like I wasn’t supposed to see. I covered my eyes, laughed, and then promptly turned bright red. Over the course of the rest of the afternoon, I saw people occasionally bringing in treats and sodas, so it was pretty apparent some sort of party was going down.

At the end of the day a huge herd of people (about 50% of whom I’d never met, humorously enough) came into the office for a ‘meeting’ and, of course, when I went in I found, instead, a going away party for me.

The director gave a little speech, everyone sang me a Spanish goodbye song, I gave a little speech (which was a little hard on the fly and in Spanish!), they passed out the sweet bread and sugarlicious soda, and a good time was had by all. It was definitely a thoughtful send-off, and it made me excited for round two on Saturday!