Abandoned

Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry.

That's that then. Over the next week I'll try to be a better blogger. And big shouts out to Walt and Oisín and Percy, who deserve grown up emails and not these silly messages on my blog. Right.

Simp spent 5 weeks in Honduras, and 4 hours ago I left him at the airport. This time, I hardly cried at all. I ran to the posh supermarket and bought the most expensive chocolate they had, then I came home and looked at old photographs of how happy I was when I lived in the same country as my boyfriend, before spending 150 Euro on clothes in the American Apparel online store. I really hope they fit me.

Up till 2 weeks ago I had 2 flatmates (you remember, from earlier blogs, right?), who also worked with me, and were definitely my closest friends here. They've left. My other closest friend, a Canadian girl who works for the UN, has taken 2 months' unpaid leave, while another very good friend finishes his contract with a Swedish NGO in August. My German colleague
with whom I share an office has gone to Germany for 6 weeks' holidays, while my boss is in Bolivia. If I didn't get out of bed for the next month, only the utilities companies would notice. And the lady who comes to clean our house.

(The paragraph above says a lot about my lifestyle here: all my friends are foreign, I have a cleaning lady; these are not situations I had anticipated or wanted. They're a lot less significant than I expected before getting here though. I'm an ex pat. No point pretending I'm not, at the end of the day.)

I'm very sad simp's gone, notwithstanding the fact that I didn't cry a lot when he left. That was contextual. In Tegucigalpa airport, you form a queue winding around the gift shops and towards the McDonald's to get to the passport check before boarding; all of this in the publicly accessible section, as opposed to behind the barriers where only flyers are permitted. So I could accompany simp all through the snaking queue, speculating about the Americans in their Christian Volunteer t-shirts who were his co-passengers, and passing remarks about the Honduran gringos taking leave of their families. All of a sudden, we're at the front of the queue, a man with a gun is checking simp's passport, and I can go no further. Or rather, simp proceeds on one side of a rope barrier, while I'm exiled to the other side.
Now, at this point I'm happy to leave the sentimentalism aside, and take myself and my dignity to the shop with the expensive chocolate, but there's a Honduran woman behind simp in the queue, and she's terribly moved by this young couple parting.
"Go on, give her a kiss" she tells simp; "I won't mind".
That's ok. I really don't like crying in public. He shyly pecks my cheek over the flimsy rope and returns to the queue. I brush away a few tears.
"Oh give her another one! Hug her!"
He does. Now I'm crying. The woman is delighted.
Hondurans LOVE public displays of affection. Which brings me back to my flatmates, who just abandoned me. All our colleagues spent the week of their departure trying to provoke tears on our part. "Will you cry?" they'd ask me greedily before the girls' going away party. No, I'd say, I imagine I'll be too drunk. This is not the correct answer. But it was the case.

Anyway, the friends I have left in Tegus (sniff) have assured me they'll look out for me in this big rattly house where I'm all alone. Meanwhile, simp left behind MY NEW LAPTOP, which is an INCREDIBLE machine, and thanks to a sprint to the telecoms office two days ago, our internet hasn't been cut off yet. What's more, I have this amazing new programme that allows me to play backgammon with simp in real time, and is integrated with the webcam, so WE CAN LOOK AT EACH OTHER WHILE PLAYING.

And that is the most exciting prospect ahead for the next few weeks I'm afraid. Don't worry about me though. My sister's coming in August and we're going on a trip up the Mosquito Coast. At the end of it all, I'm nothing but a spoiled brat.