Family Christmas

They arrived safely. On time. A little tired. And a little emotional when they saw me at the airport to greet them, not just a taxi. I spent most of Christmas day, patiently waiting – spacing out phone calls to family in Canada, watching Shrek 3 on TV and watching the clock. Mrs Boodie took me with her to her family’s Christmas dinner where I was adopted and well fed with all sorts of wonderful Christmas food from the traditional turkey to new Christmas foods for me like corn pie and roasted pig.

We stayed at the El dorado Inn, my first home away from home. Boxing Day was fairly low key with brunch at Mrs Boodie’s followed by a “20 minute” nap (3 hours later) and take out of delicious Church’s fried chicken. For the next few days, I took them to the beautiful historic sites of Georgetown, the places where I work and various stores, groceries and restaurants. They saw the seawall, Umana Yana (Amerindian benab), St George’s Cathedral (tallest wooden building in the world), National Park with manatees, Promenade Gardens/Botanical Gardens with various plants and trees, Castellani House which houses the national art gallery, and the 1763 Monument in memory of a slave who led a failed rebellion. I took them to the grocery stores where I shop and the fruit market to introduce them to such Guyanese treasures as sweet fig and apple bananas, mangoes and sapodilla. No trip would have been complete without experiencing a blackout when we were dropping the vehicle off and at the restaurant that we went to dinner for on Friday night. Delicious breakfast every morning and perfectly selected meals the rest of the day from Buddy’s Mei Tung for Chinese food, German’s for Creole (favourite lunch food) and Celena’s for the ocean breeze and fish – I am a good tour guide!

On Sunday we went to Kaiteur Falls. The family had seen the pictures, but I still don’t think they quite pictured its magnitude and its beauty. It was a bit cloudy, but that kept it cool for walking between the different viewing points. We got some great pictures – the best is the family on an overhang with the falls in the background. We didn’t quite mention to Mom that it was an overhang; she thought it was just a point out on the rock and she still held on for dear life. From Kaiteur, we went to the Baganara Island Resort. It was the perfect place for me to hang up my tour guide hat and do some serious liming. Even in the rain, the place was beautiful and the main house had hammocks hung and comfortable couches to relax. We took a trip by speedboat to Bartica, a mining town, and Parrot Island, an island where the parrots come to roost for the night. It was a low key Old Year’s celebration with only two other couples at the resort, but it featured delicious food, free rum punch and fireworks/steel wool at midnight to ring in the New Year.

My family learned of wonderful phrases like “liming” and “just now”, fell in love with cherry juice and expressed a never ending curiosity about piles of white sand found on the street. I’ve got permission to drive their vehicle anywhere I want after touring them around Georgetown which is a bonus, considering for a little while they weren't going to let me drive them around in Guyana. All in all, it was an unforgettable family holiday and has made the time until I am home again feel a bit closer.