This all happened about a week ago, but I think it's been the day most worthy of a blog post since I started working in the hostel.
Every morning when I arrive at work (around 7:30, I'll explain my transportation situation some other day) I help the night shift receptionist count the cash register and make sure breakfast is ready to go. Usually a little before 9, either the lady owner of the hostel (Karin) or the sort of manager-of-everything guy (Jorge) arrives to serve breakfast to the guests. Between 9 and 11 we are in the kitchen making food, and I occasionally run back to the reception to do a check-out or help someone. On the morning of this story, I was in the kitchen and Evelyn, who doesn't actually work here but is friends with the owners and does a lot of her work (in tourism) out of our office, was hanging out in the reception and taking care of little things while I was busy.
Shortly after 9 I happened to be in the reception while Evelyn was taking a call. An older man came in looking like he had a question. I offered to help him but he looked at Evelyn and indicated he would wait until she was free. I made my way back to the kitchen as the two of them were going off to solve whatever his problem was. Probably about half an hour later I came back to the reception to find Evelyn rummaging around in the desk area. "You haven't seen a pair of glasses, have you?" she asked. Actually, I had, and I handed them to her. If the old man had asked the gringa, he would have been given his lost glasses much more quickly.
Breakfast passed quickly, as it always does (my entire shift usually flys by), and again I was at my desk trying to make myself busy. Another older man (probably in his early 60s) came in and sat down on the couch in front of me to use the wifi. Now that I had an audience, I redoubled my efforts to appear to be working. Suddenly, he looked up from his computer. "Can I tell you a dumb story?" he asked me, in English because he was American (from Bellingham, actually, and we talked about that, too.) I offered to listen, both because I was interested and because entertaining the guests is my job and talking to him would fulfill my need to be doing something.
He started off on his story. "I married my first wife when we were very young," he told me. She was 16 and he was 21. They met in Japan where her family were missionaries and he was visiting. He brought her back to the United States and supported her while she went to college in the Dakotas or Chicago or something. The phone rang. "Pardon me," I interrupted. I attended the phone and then indicated for him to continue his story. "Oh," he was recalled to the past. "In her junior year of college she went to study abroad in Ecuador," he told me. When she came back from her studies, she informed him that she had fallen in love with a native in South America. 'Well, okay,' he told her, with some bitterness, but in the end he let her go.
At this point another man entered the reception and sat down on the couch. "Do you have somewhere I can plug this in?" he asked me. He was Australian and didn't have a plug converter. I fished around in the desk area for a converter and we worked out his charger situation. He again sat on the couch to wait. "Did that guy find his glasses?" he asked. "Yes, they were here in the reception," I told him. "He woke me up at the crack of dawn looking for them," he said (mind you, by my count it had been about 9 am). "Well, he thought maybe they'd fallen out of his bed," I tried to explain, we have mostly bunk beds. "Yes, but he thought they'd fallen up?" the man countered. The old guy was sleeping in the bed below him.
"I'd like to stay another night," continued the Australian. "Okay, sure. What's your name?" I asked so I could change his reservation. "I'm Paul," he said. After a pause he continued, "But I may be called Martin in the computer." I found him and changed the reservation. "Why are you called Martin if your name is Paul?" I asked. The situation was actually the reverse.
"When I was born, my parents named me Martin Paul." You should be imagining this in a British/Australian accent. He was a Brit moved to Australia: Mahten Pawl. "They brought me to my grandfather and said 'Here is your grandson, we've called Martin Paul' but my grandfather said 'No, Martin is a pouf's name, we'll call him Paul'. So I've never really been called Martin." I smiled. He was silent for a moment. "And my last name isn't really Wheeler, either," he continued. ("It's not?") "My stepdad" (from whom I assume he takes his surname) "was Danish. His name was Ag, but he changed it to Wheeler to be more... modern." He also told me about how the lady who gave him his visa in Australia wrote his names backwards on the forms. "That's caused a lot of trouble."
The Australian accompanied us for a while before leaving again with his charged phone. I asked the American to continue his story. "So she left with the guy from Ecuador," and our protagonist continued with his life. "So anyway, one day I have this funny feeling. I have a feeling that something is wrong." He called his ex-wife's sister. "'It's so weird that you called,' she said to me. My ex-wife was in Ecuador. A week before their wedding her fiancé was driving home from his bachelor party with some friends. They were drunk, the road was icy, and the car went over the side of a cliff; all four of them died." So the ex-wife was stuck in Ecuador with no money and staying with a family (her would-be future in-laws) that was becoming increasingly resentful of her. "So I paid for her ticket back home. You know, we kept in touch and stuff, but we never got back together. She ended up marrying this other guy."
A guy from Spain came in some time during the story. He, too, needed to charge his phone and sat on the couch waiting. He, too, wanted to extend his reservation. Somehow, we got to talking about the United States and he mentioned he had gone there on exchange during high school. "During high school!" I commented, "That's young!" "Well yeah, I guess so," he said. "I stayed in a host family. I mean, like, 5 host families," he corrected himself. ("Five?") So he told his story. His first 'family', he told me, was just a single man. I frowned, not a good start. "He treated me like a slave. Every day I would get home from school and he would tell me 'Do this thing,' or 'Clean over there.'" So he requested a change. "The next family..." he trailed off. It turns out they were just bad all around. The mother and her boyfriend robbed a bank (or a minimarket or something). "Then it was just me and the two daughters." I think he said they were in high school, too. "Then the older daughter did the same thing." She and her boyfriend broke in somewhere or did something illegal. "And then it was just me and the younger daughter. She just cried all day." So he changed families again. "The next family was Mexican. They were really nice." But they spoke in Spanish and that just wouldn't do. He was supposed to be studying English. So he was moved again. This time to a family that lived outside of town. "It was too far," he explained. "The fifth family was Mormon," he said. "They were kind of weird, but..." he was tired of moving. So that was where he finished his stay.
By this time his phone was charged up and he excused himself. The American was still hanging out using his computer. "So you never got back together? Even after you paid for her return ticket?" I probed. "Well, no," he said. "She ended up getting together with this guy who was half-Peruvian." This third husband's mother had gone on exchange to Peru and come back pregnant, not knowing who the father was. "So they got married and they had two kids. And then one day he told her he was gay." The protagonist had fallen out of contact with his ex-wife before all this happened, but then happened to be in the area where he knew she lived. "I called up a mutual friend and got her contact info. She invited me out to coffee and was telling me all about the past few years. Then she said to me, 'You know what? I haven't had sex for X months. Do you want to go to a motel?'" But he was married and refused her offer. "I mean, it was with a little bit of spite on my part," he said. "She missed her chance," I offered. "Yeah. So anyway we keep in touch and stuff, but her husband is strangely jealous of me. He's gay, and there's nothing between the two of us, but he's still jealous."
The American had kids with his second wife, but somehow it didn't work out. "My third wife was really pretty," he went on. He showed me a picture and she really was gorgeous. She was Russian and there was a really big age difference between them. This marraige didn't last, either, but ended amicably. "In the end she wanted someone more mature," he said, partly as a joke. She ended up marrying an Italian. Now he lives on a farm in Mendoza that he bought for his daughter who is an agriculturalist. He says he really loves it. The three guys stayed in the hostel for a few more nights each, so I got to keep checking in with them. The Australian continued travelling, he didn't have definite plans. The Spaniard returned to Spain and the American went home to Mendoza. I went home to Mantagua and came back to work the next morning.
