Dressed in a casual, salmon colored quilted jacket and gray pants, she greeted her visitors graciously in the waiting room and ushered them into the meeting room herself. She cleared a few things away and straightened the terra cotta throw on the comfy blue couch, patted the cushion and invited us to sit wherever we like. The walls of the sunny, wood paneled room were lined with black and white portrait photos of First Ladies of Guatemala since 1945. Hers would soon be hung in its place.

As she was growing up in Sweden, winters seemed “so long, so dark and so cold” to Ambassador Maria Leissner. “Finally, the sun came back and the snow disappeared. The first thing to come up was the tussilago, the first spring flower, the first sign that there is life on this Earth, like the hope of future.”

Eddy Ruíz Umaña’s employers at a Guatemala City hotel wish they could clone him. He cannot clerk there 24 hours a day, much as everyone — especially guests — would like. Sometimes he works nights, sometimes days, sometimes graveyards. That is the hardest part of his job; after several years, his biological clock needs an occasional rewind.

Monika Gruber-Lang, the new Austrian ambassador to Central America, remembers the Viennese cabaret artist and comedian Helmut Qualtinger as her favorite. To her, the late entertainer’s success lay in his portrayal of what she calls the “Ugly Austrian.”

She is arguably one of the most knowledgeable experts on Antigua. She is a veritable icon to those of us who have watched her work, wearing any of her many hats. She is an incredible font of information to the awestruck tourists she guides through the town. She is a hardworking, tenacious advocate. She is Elizabeth Bell.

When Heisuke Shinomiya, Japan’s new ambassador to Guatemala, was growing up in a town of about 150 people some 600 miles southwest of Tokyo, his parents instilled in him a vision of the outside world and its vast opportunities.

Glenn Anders, current director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Guatemala, got into his line of work “quite by chance.”

Guatemala better brace for a bonanza in tourism, at least if the current leadership of Instituto Guatemalteco de Turismo (INGUAT) has anything to say about it. Director Alejandro Sinibaldi is convinced: “We have a vision and a clear plan of work.”

The French Embassy, with a presence in El Salvador for more than 130 years, has forged a close relationship and a spirit of cooperation with the Salvadoran community.