How to make September disappear...

What a crazy month. With September having barely begun, we received some surprising news on the morning of Monday, September 7th. Due to the widespread swine flu pandemic, and the number of Pinares students out with flu symptoms, the school made the decision to close for two weeks in order to sanitize the school and give students a chance to get better. That Monday, when my principal called me out of class to let me know that we would not have class starting the next day until the 21st, I was shocked! By the end of that same school day, several teachers had already bought plane tickets to go home to the states, and some had planned international chicken bus adventures set to leave the very next day. I contemplated going home, but with rumors spreading that the school would need to take away most of our future long weekends away in order to make up these missed instructional days, I wanted to take advantage of this time to see the country! I also knew my family was wanting to make a trip down, so I jumped on this opportunity. I convinced my dad to fly down and Mallory, my sister, was even able to miss a week of class in order to come with him!

For the first week of the vacation, I hung around Teguc for a few days and caught up on classroom things and took a little trip to a park nearby called El Picacho, where there is a huge Jesus statue and views of the entire city.

On Thursday, a group of us headed to La Ceiba, a beach on the Caribbean. Ben and Joy, a brave teacher-couple who have been here for a year, rented a van and Ben did all the driving.

That was such a treat because it gave us so much freedom to go where we pleased! We stayed one night in a super nice resort on the beach, free to all of us because it was loaned to us by a students' parents who own it. From there, a smaller group of us continued down the beach to a much less touristy and much more rustic beach called Trujillo, where the water was crystal clear right off the beach and there were massive star fish all over! In Trujillo we went on a snorkel trip and visited an old Fort (built by the Spanish, like the one in St. Augustine!)

After two nights in our fun, but very simple hostel-ish hotel in Trujillo, we went back to La Ceiba and spent another night in the resort. On Monday I went white water rafting!! The river is incredibly beautiful and snuggled right into a national forest (more like a jungle). Even better than the rafting was the jumping off huge rocks into the white water, and swimming and hiking along the river.

That afternoon my family flew right into La Ceiba!! After a dinner with the big group of teachers, we split off and headed for our hotel, Villa Helens right on the beach. The next day we went to the most beautiful tropical location I've ever seen in my life, called Cayos Cochinos, a little cluster of tiny islands amid turquoise water and the second largest barrier reef in the world! I've never seen a reef like it. It was most definitely the best snorkeling I've ever done! After snorkeling, the boat took us to a tiny Garifuna (afro-caribe) island where we ate a fried whole-fish lunch.

We intended to stay another day in Ceiba and do a Canopy Tour before taking an afternoon bus to Copan, but after learning that the bus schedules were not what I thought, we had to forgo the canopy tour and leave on a 10:00 bus. It was a long day of travel, with a two-hour layover in between our two, 3-hour bus rides, but we finally made it to Copan. Copan was described to me as an island within Honduras. It has been built up as a touristy spot because of the incredible Mayan ruins nearby, but there is nothing else around it. For me, Copan was such a welcome relief from being in a city or stranded in a beach hotel. It reminded me of the traditional Mexican colonial towns I liked to visit, where everything branches out, grid-like, from the central park. In Copan we made friends with our Tuk-Tuk (moto-taxi) driver and he ended up taking us to all the sights we wanted to hit. We saw the ruins, did a Canopy tour, visited a shade-grown coffee plantation, and went to Macaw Mountain bird park. When it got dark (which happens pretty early) we wandered around the town and shopped and ate and just people-watched.
Our hotel in Copan, Don Udos, was adorable and comfortable and made me want to stay forever. In fact, we did end up extending our stay until Saturday, the day before Mallory and Dad flew out of Teguc, because we liked it so much!

But all good things must come to an end, and we

headed back to Teguc early Saturday morning, where I got to show my family my house and school and a bit of the city. I feel so fortunate that I got this incredibly unexpected vacation and visit and was able to see so much of the country already! Honduras is really an amazing place to visit, and it is quite unfortunate the effect that the political situation is having on tourism. So, come visit me and together we can do our part to get Honduras back on its feet again! :)

Abril...

Springtime!
I'm sorry about the time between posts. Here are some things that I've done lately.

Balnearios
Well, at the beginning of my spring break I traveled a few hours outside of the city to a place they call the balnearios. Which is this natural spring-fed pool you can pay to enter. It was really cool because we drove through endless dry, baren desert... finally we pulled through this cute little pueblo (the kind with little old men sitting outside doing nothing buy watching the cars go by). Emerging on the other side, we were at the balnearios. We climbed down a few stairs and were immediately in the middle of this gorgeous ravine cut out of the rocks by this water! Totally unexpected based on what you have just driven through.


























My Best Friend's Wedding
I went home for most of my spring break because Mackenzie got married!!! I can't stop telling people how wonderful the whole process was! The preparations, the rehearsal, the wedding, the reception-everything-was perfect!!
After having been away for so much of the pre-wedding process, I didn't really feel like I deserved my Maid of Honor title.
But, I'm just so glad I got to be a part of it. I doubt if I'll ever again see anything like the Booth wedding.



Felicidades Mackenzie and Martin!!!!




















April....
So, since returning to Mexico, I've jumped right back into the swing of things.
School has been a little crazy, with the Mexican school board telling us that we would be administering their big standardized test two days last week, but they ended up never showing up. Those tests are tentatively scheduled for next week, but who knows. Can you imagine the school board just NOT bringing the tests on the week (or the days) they told the school the children would be taking these important exams. Wow. I'm not in Kansas anymore...

I went to the Zoo yesterday! It was my first time and, aside from normal things about zoos that have never really please me, and aside from the rude people who threw sticks, chicken, Cheeto's, and other miscellaneous items into animal pens with no staff anywhere near... aside from all of that, it was a lovely zoo and a really great day! The highlight was having a giraffe eat from our hands on the safari!
Next up: Mallory is coming to visit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Third Time's a Charm

I had been to the beach town of Manzanillo twice last year. I really didn't need to go again. However, when the opportunity presented itself to rent a private house on the beach - splitting the cost to make it affordable - I had to jump on it. Especially since it came after a particularly hard week and a year that, to date, hadn't given a day off yet.
I owe a big thank -you to Charla for spending most of Friday (our surprise day off of school) on the phone with a travel agent in Texas, and for getting us a price that ended up being $200 cheaper than the listed low-season price.
Can you believe that we could only round up 4 people to go? Well.. I guess that making the decision the day we wanted to leave didn't help our cause. At 6:00 p.m. we had the OK to come to the house that night. So Charla, Megan, Becca and I left at 6:40 to get to the bus stop at 7.
It was pretty spontaneous. But totally worth it . Check out the pictures below.

Waiting for the bus on the side of the street.

The front of the house.



One of the bedrooms. I am in love with the paintings in this house!

Grilling up some veggies!

A breakfast with a view!

This is our private pool/bar/grill in the back of the house, ON the beach.

The sunset view from the house.

Becca, Me, and Charla in our pool.

You can't help but praise the Creator at times like this!


The dining room... with more awesome art!


The inside view from the back doors




A pretty flower in a photo that I didn't rotate (sorry)!

Family, Friends, Birthdays, and a Brother from Belgium

Florida's tax free week and “Back to School” sales have brought me out of my summer repose and back into the reality that is work and real life. I returned to Mexico last night to begin my second year of teaching.
Despite this being the shortest summer I can remember (about 5 1/2 weeks), it felt longer because I didn't have much planned. In fact, I think this is the first summer I've had without a trip to some place (although coming home was my trip, as Mallory pointed out). However, I did manage to have some mini vacations.
Some of the events of my summer included:
1. A visit from the Caligiuris—close family friends. Well, ok. Basically family.
2. A wedding.
3. A morning helping an organization talk to the Spanish speakers of Deland.
4. A couple of trips to see friends (Vero, Sebastian, St. Augustine, Jacksonville)
5. A mini vacation to Orlando with Mom, including Arabian Nights and Epcot.
6. Some knitting.
7. Back-to-school shopping (as a teacher this time, not a student)
8. Dress fitting for my upcoming appearance in Jess Albright’s wedding.
9. Turning 23 on August 8th.
10. The arrival of Nathan from Belgium, Mom’s foreign exchange student until January.

It is always a little hard to say goodbye and leave everyone back home, but this time I knew what I was returning to. I am excited about my new roommates this year—Jacque and Charla—who are joining me in my same house as last year. I have a new group of students for whom I will begin planning and preparing tomorrow.
I think I’m ready.
I DO really love summer. But I love all of this more.
Hasta Luego. ;)

Me, Mallory, and the birthday cake she made me.

Semana Santa

A week of my spring break has gone. One more to go. I'm surpirsed at how quickly it flew by, but I did manage to get out and do some fun things. Many of the girls have visitors from the states, so on Monday a few of us tagged along with Megan and her mom to see the downtown sights. We saw another awesome Orozco mural in the Governor's palace, shopped at the biggest jewelry store EVER, went to the huge market San Juan de Dios, and ate delicious Mexican food at La Chata. Some friends of Cinthia's picked some of us up downtown and we went to a soccer game! My first since I've been in Mexico! Guadalajara's team is called Las Chivas (I think a chiva is a goat..?) They played against an American team- D.C. United. The Chivas won. It was a good game-enhanced by all of the crazy things the fans yelled. It's good that I only understood a little.
On Wednesday I accompanied Megan and her mom, and Charla and her cousin to a pueblo called Mazamitla. It was a lot like Tapalpa, with a little less to do. But it was nice to get out of the city.
Some of us went with Jacque and her parents to a park called Bosque Colomos in another part of GDL. It is a nice, well kept park with a 5k paved trail through the forest. They also have Japanese and Mexican gardens. They weather here is great now because, although it was hot, it wasn't unbearable for being outside.

Today is Easter and even though Mexico gives two weeks of vacation for this holiday, apparently it's not a big deal. It wasn't even mentioned at church until the final prayer, and even then it was only a "thanks for easter" kind of thing. We were the only ones dressed it our spring best. And noone that we asked had any plans for the day.
Megan, Lindsay and I decided earlier to treat ourselves to a homecooked meal, since everyone else is either in the states or invited to other activities for the day. Our group has grown, so there will be 8 of us (teachers, family, and Mexicans) enjoying the meal. I should be going now to make the biscuits! Happy Easter!

P.S. To see pictures of the events mentioned above, look at the post before this one. It has a link to my photo-website.

Playa Guayabitos

Despite the cautions from many well-meaning friends here in Mexico, I headed to the beach this weekend to jump-start our 2 week Semana Santa (holy week). We were told that since all of Mexico gets the same spring vacations, the beaches are crazy and there are no rooms to be found. Well, 5 of us decided to take a chance. We left right after school on Friday when Lindsay, a friend of ours in med. school here, came to pick us up in her wonderful, not-a-bus, car. We packed 2 tents just in case there really would be no place to stay. However, they were unnecessary because we found a great room at the second hotel we tried!
This beach was different from the other two I have stayed in because it was very Mexican. It was touristy, but in a way that catered to the Mexicans and not the foreigners. The beach was crowded, but not impossible. The water was really nice and the waves were pretty mellow, but fun.
We joined up with a group of Mexicanos and played beach vollyball. It was, interestingly enough, my first time to ever play it! I had a lot of fun!
As usual on a vacation, I ate well-enjoying the amazing fresh fruit from the beach vendors, and the fresh fish for dinner! Delicious! I must say that, as a Florida girl, I have been missing the good, fresh fish that is not available in a big, inland city.
So, now I have two weeks of freedom. This week many of the girls have friends or family in town, so I may be tagging along as they show them the sights. Next week 5 of us will be going to Mexico City (a.k.a. Ciudad de Mexico, D.F., or simply "Mexico"). I need to read up on it because there is a TON to do there! I can't wait!

Happy Palm Sunday!

Thanks to Betsy, I have some beach pictures. Check out my photo album (link above) for more!