a quickie

Much to grade tonight and phone calls to await, but I thought I'd try to catch up briefly. Mike and Maggie (and Maggie's friend Lizzie) left today for home. They were supposed to leave yesterday but, after a tearful farewell and much bereavement on my part, they showed back up a few hours later...at the spa where my mom was staying and where I had gone to recuperate from my sadness...having been bumped from their flight. So we all spent the night in plush accommodations and they went back to the airport at 5 this morning. I think they are arriving home just now, and I sure hope the promise of 1st class all the way made the being bumped worthwhile. I will soon know.

I sent Mike off with my terrible flu, but he is, unsurprisingly, tougher than I and seemed to be managing quite well. No matter what happens, I imagine he will not face a series of injections of antibiotics anytime soon. Having my family leave was far more heartrending than I'd imagined; I felt the same way I did when I was in second grade and had to take a bus to a new school (when busing arrived in Kalamazoo, Michigan). I cried hysterically the whole way, my friend Joanna trying to comfort me and looking absolutely baffled at the depth of my sorrow. All I could think yesterday was: I should be leaving too. I need to go home.

By today I felt a little better, luckily, and anyway it's just two more weeks. I don't mean to make it sound as if I don't like being here because that's not it at all. I just have a strong conviction that I've been away long enough.

Oh, but there's so much to talk about--the parade of thousands of horses we saw in Alajuela this weekend as part of the Juan Santa Maria festival (he's a story in himself, the guy who saved Costa Rica from William Walker, an American who wanted to make all of C.A. part of the US and a slave state); Maggie walking in her sleep in Cahuita; Spanish (progressive, I remembered, is estoy + root +iendo or ando: Estoy estudiando. Estoy viviendo in Costa Rica por neuve semanas). Etc.

But maybe tomorrow I'll tell all those stories. In the meantime, here's wishing safe travels to my weary family. Since you guys left, "the bed's too big, the frying pan's too wide" to quote Joni Mitchell.

and thanks for the great letters Sarah and Terri. They mean so much to me.
more soon, promise