So I'm laying in my bed in my house in Xela for the very last time. I can hardly believe it, it still seems so surreal to me. Tomorrow May 1st I will be taking a five hour long bus ride to Guatemala City where me and a couple of my classmates will be spending the night. Its much easier to do it this way because our flights leave midday on Saturday! I will be landing in the great state of MN a little bit before 10:00pm. I am sooo excited to come home!! But first I wanted to recap what has been going on this past...month haha. Enjoy....
April 1st:
I was sad that I was going to miss Sonia's birthday, because Jenna and I left for Spring Break really early that morning. However the night before I gave her her birthday present which was a nice scarf and I sang Happy Birthday to her. She loved the scarf and the nice birthday letter I wrote her. Afterwards I gave her a card and letter from my parents who gave her a money contribution. I have never seen someone as grateful or as humble as Sonia, she started to cry and give me (and my family) a million thanks. I felt happy that I had the opportunity to make her that happy and appreciative. According to our director we are living with middle class families, however I tend to disagree, especially because Sonia herself told me that she considers herself to be poor. Anywhoo on to spring break....
HolY WeeK: Mexico and Honduras (April 3-12)
The trip began with just Jenna and I. We took the 3:30am shuttle to Guatemala City. However Jenna thought that our flight left at 2:30pm but it really left at 4:30pm so we had time to go and pick up a package of mine that had gotten stuck in the capital and then we just chilled at the airport. We took our flights from Guate City to Mexico City and then from Mexico City to Puerta Vierta. In Mexico City we had to switch terminals and we totally got JIPPED because the men that we aked to help us took us to a private taxi company that ended up costing us twenty bucks! When really we could have taken a bus for like 5 pesos (less than a dollar). We arrived in PV around midnight. We started in PV because Jenna's family was staying in a resort type condo there. I was a little jealous that Jenna got to see her family but they are very nice people so I was thrilled to stay with them. When we got there Jenna gave her family their gifts and then we hit the hay.
We woke up the next morning at seven to go and do and ziplining and horsebacking tour. It was an awesome experience. 13 ziplines and then a scenic horseback ride which took a break at a waterfall and swimming hole.
Saturday we spent the day at the pool. The resort that Jenna's family and I stayed in was really nice. It had a 3 level pool! It was a beautiful sunny day so we played beach volleyball. But my favorite thing that day probably had to be boogie boarding. At the end of the day me Jenna and Aunt Joanie took a bus while the others took a car to meet us at the Holiday Inn. After we snuck in to the hotel we went out to dinner at Pipi's which had awesome guacamole and fishbowl margaritas!
Saturday the 5th was an entire day of traveling. Two flights: PV to Mexico City and then Mexico City to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Then we took a bus from San Pedro Sula to La Ceiba which is colser to the coast and our final destination of the Bay Islands. Here we met up with two of our other friends: Shannon and Brianna.
We all awoke early Monday morning to get to the fairy in time but we didn't make it. We were really bummed because there were only 2 fairies, one at 9:30 and the other at 4:30. So we had no choice but to buy tickets for the later fairy. Since we had time to kill, a really nice group of people brought us shopping. We finally caught our fairy...but the experience was a little....interesting. The waves were huge and thus it was a rough ride. Therefore many kids, adults everyone was throwing up. After finding our luggage in the heap we took a taxi to West Bay. We FINALLY arrived at 7:00pm. Fosters resort was our new home, it was literally ten steps away from the beach which had white sand and listerine blue water.
We got up early on Tuesday to go grocery shopping and find a scuba diving place. This was one of our original intentions of coming to Honduras. On the way back from getting our groceries we took a water taxi, and we got stuck in the rain! We went swimming in the ocean once the rain let up but we were disappointed that it wasn't sunny. That night we just chilled in our cabin and watched movies.
Wednesday we began our scuba diving certification course! It was a lot more work than I orginally had hoped but it was definitely vale la pena! After the 1st confined water dive with our instructor Sarah (where you pracitce basic skills like breathing through your regulator and everything in shallow water on your needs) I felt like I wanted to give up because it was hard and scary. BUT I stuck with it. That afternoon we watched scuba videos, and ate dinner at Foster's restaurant. In addition to practicing skills underwater, learning how to care and wear ALL of our equipment, and watching videos, we needed to do homework out of a book. That night we went to West End (the other end of the island of Roatan) to hang out and we found a nice group of boys to hang out with.
Thursday in the morning we went over our homework with Sarah and then did our first real dive! We took a boat a little ways out to a reef and I entered the water like they do in the movies by just falling backwards off of the boat, it was pretty awesome. We came back for lunch but then went back out to do our second dive. After my first dive I felt more comfortable. The process of scuba is very hard to describe and i'm losing energy fast, so I'll explain it more to anyone who wants to know! We crashed at night because we were so tired from our two dives. Friday was crazy. We did our last confined water session and then ate lunch and tanned. Then we went back to the dive shop and reviewed our homework and took the final exam. Then we did our last two dives back to back. Which was really hard to do. But all of the dives were absolutely beautiful with the reef, turtles, eels, schools of fish and so much more! It was literally like out of scene from Finding Nemo. At night we went to West End again to hang out with our new friends.
Saturday we caught the afteroon fairy back to La Ceiba and the ride back was a lot smoother than the ride there. Then once we got to La Ceiba we were going to bus a direct bus ticket from La Ceiba to Guatemala City but they sold out. So we proceeded to take a three hour taxi ride from our nice taxi guy who offered and we took it. We ended up spending the night in San Pedro Sula and then taking buses early that next morning. It was the longest day of traveling in my life. Three big buses, two taxis and a microbus later we finally arrived in Xela on Sunday night.
What an awesome trip it was.
Things that I will have yet to describe to you when I come home that occured in my last weeks here:
-Xelaju futbol game (soccer game)
-Dinner and Lunch at Victor's house
-My growing relationship with Mary
-Group dinner and bonding time
-My last days at Rapheal Landivar
-My final days at the orphangae
-Graduation of Celas Maya
-Laguna Chicabal
-Possible mas...!
Thanks everyone for continuing to read my blog. Sorry I kinda had to give up a little at the end but I need some sleep. I love you all and I can't WAIT to see you ALL SOON!!! Te amo. Over and out.
THE END
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