Ma'a Salama to Rosa Caliente

One of the difficult things about living here is telling friends goodbye.  It is a pretty tight knit group of friends here.  You normally see each other almost every day.  They help you solve your problems in figuring things out here.

Yesterday, we had a goodbye party for a very fun and friendly lady from Canada.  She is important to me because she was one of the first people that I met when I arrived and showed how you can make a strange and sometimes uncomfortable situation fun.  She was always happy and upbeat.  Everyday, she would say, "What are we doing today?".

My understanding is that she earned the nickname, Rosa Caliente, while playing Mexican train.  She liked the hot pink train and our Venezuelan friend said that in Spanish, that is rosa caliente.  "Rosa" said "That's me!  Rosa Caliente!".  So, I decided that it would be the theme of her going away party:  Rosa Caliente, everything in hot pink.  One of my suitcases coming back from the US was full of hot pink decorations: hot pink paper plates, forks, crepe paper, balloons, twirly decorations and a long pink feather boa.  Everyone jumped on the idea and contributed lots of fun things.  A friend contributed colorful hanging decorations.  Everyone wore hot pink.  Someone suggested we have Mexican food.  So, everyone did a great job of bringing Mexican food (plus a couple of Asian dishes).  Here are a few of the dishes:

One lady made a beautiful and delicious layered cake:

And because Rosa is the queen of the Vitamix, I asked her to make the Virgin (non-alcoholic) strawberry margaritas.

Rosa has a lot of funny sayings.  I asked everyone to send any sayings that they could remember so that I could compose a list of them.  One friend cut out hot pink poster strips and another one put the sayings on them.  And I put them up on my walls.  Here are a few of them:

This first one, she said while playing hand and foot canasta, as she was retrieving her foot canasta under her leg/butt.

The next one is Rosa's way of saying goodbye in Arabic, which is Ma'a salama.

The next one happened when we were in the car with her driver.  The drivers usually have their name on the dashboard.  In this case, it turns out that his name on the card was abbreviated.  Rosa, being a very sociable and friendly person, began chatting with the driver.  She said to him, "So, your name is Mohd?".  He looked at her in total confusion and a bit of disgust/horror and said "My name is Mohammed!".  It took him a little while to get over this.

Then, the next one happened when we were at the local farmers market.  One of the vendors asked her if she wanted to buy some bananas.  When she said no, he kept persisting.  I said, what is it with this guy wanting you (out of the four of us) to buy the bananas.  She said, "I am a banana magnet."

There were others posted on the walls.  We also posted pictures of her.

A friend not only made Rosa her crown of hot pink roses, but each of us a clip on rose for our hair or blouse and bought a call to prayer alarm clock, so that Rosa would not miss the call to prayer when she returns home.

Someone found a Barbie in a hot pink abaya.

Someone bought her a set of  Arabic man and woman salt and pepper shakers:

When I was in Houston, I had our Venezuelan friend record a video message for Rosa.  Her message really touched Rosa.  Also, I had found a hot pink picture frame, put a picture of her feeding a camel HobNob cookies, because the camel would not eat the carrots she bought.  Everyone signed the mat.

Here is a picture of several of us with Rosa. 

Until our next meeting somewhere in the world....