The Bella of Bella Vista

I would like you to meet my new friend Bella. She is from Guatemala and is fully committed to learning the English language. In late March, she started coming to our house every afternoon for several hours to study with me. She also wanted to learn new recipes, especially pizza, so one night we kneaded wheat dough and made healthy pizza together, which her husband shared when he came to pick her up on his bike. They are both very young-18-years-old-and don’t have their papers to be here. Bella gets up at 4 o’clock every morning to make her husband breakfast, sometimes biking all the way out to the farm to take him lunch also.

Bella, which means beautiful, is her nickname. She is very light-skinned with bright, light eyes, and everyone here equates those traits with beauty. Her in-laws and friends in Bella Vista joke that I am the mother of her niece because she is white like me.

Bella and I have become good friends. It is wonderful to get to know someone in another culture who actually cares that you exist and wants to know more about you, where you are from, and where you have been, without prejudice or judgment. This kind of friendship is rare. Many women in Bella Vista have mentioned that they have few friends or none at all, partly due to the fact that people are from different countries and situations and have not necessarily lived in BV long. Bella has only lived here for 1 year.

Our friendship is a fun cultural exchange for us. She is teaching me Spanish almost as much as I am teaching her English. She is also helping me improve my methods of teaching Spanish speakers. Now I show my students not only how to spell each English vocabulary word correctly but how to write the pronunciation for a Spanish speaker as well so they can practice at home.

Bella and I have had fun making jewelry with beads my mother-in-law Joyce generously sent me, sharing pictures of family, and talking of our homes. We are each learning about the world of the other. She doesn’t know much about snow, mountains, or sports. When we were going over vocabulary for sports in a book, she said climbing and skiing sound terrifying! She told me all about Carnival in Guatemala. The circus came to Mango Creek last week, and you could enter for free if you donated a live dog to feed the lions! Really!

Bella taught me a saying, one of the hundred or so “piropos” or “flores” boyfriends tell girlfriends she has compiled:

No quiero perlas del mar ni perfume del oriente solo quiero tu amistad y cariño para siempre.

I don’t want pearls of the sea nor perfume from the Orient, only your friendship and affection forever.