I met three really memorable people when in Tegucigalpa.
Two, I will group together because their purpose was similar. Magi and Dimas. Magi worked at the business center in the Intercontinental. She always greeted me with a "hello Ms. Basler how are you today?" which I didn't like. She was younger than me but much too cool to be addressing me so properly. So when I approached her and told her I was wondering if she could help me with a translator, she said unfortunately they don't do that service through the hotel. But before I even offered to pay her money, she said that she would be willing to come with me after work. So, she did - for all three real estate appointments. She talked about life in Honduras, I told her about living in Boston and growing up in NH. She was a university student - young, but obviously doing really well having a full-time job in the Intercontinental in the business center, and she was bi-lingual in a part of the world where very few people can also speak english. I also spent almost 3 full days with her making phone calls - well having her make the phone calls for me. I loved listening to her speak spanish. I grew a new admiration for the language and how beautiful it sounds. It made me proud to be able to speak it - (well, some of it...) I thought it was funny when she was talking about condominiums; she said condoms instead. I should have corrected her but I never did. Also, Magi and I both learned a little bit about marriage in each others' cultures. In Latin culture, when you marry, you add your husbands name at the end of your own. Well, it would read like... Lauren Basler of "futurehusband". She never new that it American culture, most of the time the women drop their last names.
My cab driver Dimas was also pretty amazing. I used his services one day a day or so after arriving in Tegucigalpa, and I liked him not only because he was nice, but also because he spoke spanish very clearly so I could understand him very well. Anytime I went into a store, like my friend in Luanda, he would come in to the store with me. I went into a grocery store and started writing down prices one day, and almost immediately a guard came up to me to say it's prohibited. So my driver automatically chimed in with... "she is getting married here and she is from the US but her husband is from here and she needs to know how much the wedding will cost". Luckily, the guy couldn't read english in which case he couldn't tell that toilet paper, laundry detergent and RAID were on my list of needed things for the wedding. Anyways, he brought me to the manager who crossed out all the prices I had already gotten and finally gave my list back to me after saying I couldn't write down the prices.
Well, what was I going to do. We ended up in another chain of the same store where I gave Dimas a portion of the list and I took a portion of the list, and we worked together to get it done. I was psyched.
A couple days before I was leaving Tegucigalpa I stopped in to Magi's office after having a tough time at the grocery store. There are a couple things I really don't like about my job. One, is trying to get real estate agents to talk with you even though you know they probably won't get anything out of our meeting. The second is needing to spend hours in a grocery store copying prices after they tell you that you are not allowed to do so. And, I was just out doing just this. After I told her my problems and that I thought people were growing suspicious, she said that she would help me. I was thrilled. So, we called Dimas and the three of us were off to the next grocery store. We each took a portion and worked together to get it all done in just a couple hours, and we didn't get caught! After finishing the grocery store, I was finished my work in Tegucigalpa with a little help from my friends. A powerful appreciative feeling overcame me and I felt so lucky to have met such great people. "My best friends in Honduras" I called them.
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