valerielong - el fin de santa lucia

May 4th
I'm not quite sure I'm ready to write this blog. The title somehow seems too sacred in a weird sense to just waste on any thrown together piece. After all, I've been planning to write this for 6 months now, ever since a stranger wrote those words on my customs form. (yeah- about that...). I say those words, or hear them said every time we instruct a taxi as to how to get us home- usually with bags full of groceries to carry up the steps leading to El Puente. El fin de Santa Lucia a la izquierda despues de la casa azul. An address so specific that I bet even mail might be able to find its way here.

Maybe.

In a place where even the guidebooks say you have a pretty good chance of finding anyone in town if you know their neighbor's name and how far it is from the nearest church,

Almost a week later, I'm still not sure how to finish that thought. All I know is that the hidden, impersonal thoughts of an airport computer system will be revealed tomorrow. At least the part that has the printer spit out a ticket with my name on it.

It'll have a seat # on it. The computer will spit out 6 other tickets that share the same flight #, time, date. Theirs will have a seat number on it- a seat that is open to any of us. We're all ending up in the same place- for less than a week.

And then next Saturday, I'll be sleeping in a bed that is but no longer feels like mine. After renewing my license and reinstating the insurance, I'll be driving familiar but strangely distant streets- alone.

Without a taxi driver that knows the quickest way to every street, landmark, and paneria in town, there leaves open the possibility of getting lost. If I'm not following the kid in the red shirt and blue bike, how will I know whether to continue straight or take a sharp left.

As I walk down to the end of Santa Lucia for the last time tonight and yell out adios to each family just hanging out on the front porch, I know that I'll quickly relearn how to live in a place where walking at all is not as common as it should be and most neighbors stay nameless. And yet at the same time I hope I don't forget what it feels like to turn the corner after running down to the lake and rest on El Puente's steps. I love this place, but I'm ready to take the lessons it's implanted in my heart and mind and come home.

I'll see many of ya soon.

Comments

Comment created and will be displayed once approved.

el fin de santa lucia

Related Blogs

demasiado

lo siento

¿eso, este, ese, esto?

Related Races (2)

Kyrgyzstan | Alumni | January 2027

Latin America | Semesters | January 2027

eres nueva

AI Generated Content

Get the most talked about stories directly in your inbox