Is it normal for a guinea pig to jump and fly through the air for someone?

I think that guinea pigs make wonderful pets, and I had one when I was a little girl, too. Mine didn't ever jump into my arms, but he did start a happy squeaking and squealing whenever he saw me. I always thought that he was just begging for food, so I didn't realize until reading this story that my Inky was actually being so happy just because he liked me.
My folks had a little neighborhood grocery, so we used the leftover banana boxes for his home. Inky could have easily jumped out and escaped, but he never did. he seemed to know that he was supposed to live in there unless i was taking him out and carrying him around. Sometimes, I took him outside in the summer, and let him wander around on the lawn and eat grass, and he seemed to really enjoy doing that.
When the banana box would need changing, we set the new one beside the old one, and Inky would hop back and forth from one box into the other one, until he was finally settled into the new box. Then mom would put the old box, with all the shredded up newspaper bedding, out on her compost pile to help it become good soil for her garden.