No te vayas

GOAL! I hear it from my couch, as I sit here on a Sunday afternoon, soaking in the sounds of the life that I will be leaving so soon. On the cancha de futbol behind my house someone has just scored a winning point.

Today marks two weeks of time remaining in Honduras. Two weeks from today, I will board a bus to Tegucigalpa and then another to San Pedro Sula, leaving behind all of the smells, sights and sounds that have come to be so much a part of my life. How can I do this? How can I go through with it? There is only one way to leave, I have realized, as I dodge the question "Cuando se va, Colleen?" or the repeated statements "No te vayas, Miss." The only way is to pick up and go, ripping my roots from this ground. As much as I try to soften the departure, thinking about the words that I will write, or the gifts that I will leave, I understand that it HAS be painful. It has to be painful for me and it has to be even more painful for the people that I will leave behind. Life is a series of goodbyes, I suppose. You welcome people into your life, allowing them to love you and change you and there is always a parting. For me, partings in the past have been somewhat predictable. Letters and emails are easy when two people speak the same language and have a reliable mail system. But here? I think about my unpracticed Spanish and the great challenge it is to deliver a letter to someone in this country. What will I find when I return, searching for the people who have taken me in as part of their family? Only time will tell.