Morning Kisses

Every morning Chad and Emily (fellow Evangelical Church Missionaries) pick Molly up for school. Every mornining they arrive and honk to announce their arrival to Molly. Every day it is a bit of a race. As soon as the horn is blown the race begins. The race is simple, who will get to the truck first.

Pictured to the right is Molly's competition, the day guard-or as I will affectionately refer to as the kissing man. As is standard in Bolivia, people are greeted with a kiss. Every morning the kissing man approaches (he is very friendly and kind natured) to greet Molly as is Bolivian custom.

Molly has expressed an aversion to this form of greeting being a gringa (along with other factors). Thus every morning Emily and I have the pleasure of watching the race as it develops. The kissing man often has to traverse at least an entire block to arrive in time. Often times Emily cheers for Molly, but I must admit that it makes my day when the kissing man arrives first. I enjoy Molly's moments of awkward looks and attempts to avoid committing the faux pas of refusing Bolivian greeting. To Molly's credit, she has developed several strategic defenses for mornings when she just isn't on the ball enough to arrive on time. For example, she finds that if her arms are full she can gracefully avoid the Bolivian kiss. Well, I wish that you could all see an actual Bolivian greeting kiss by the kissing man, but unfortunately Molly refused to oblige us with a photo of the event this morning. Sorry, we'll see if we can't capture the priceless moment sometime for all you Molly fans.