This weekend has been great. We took a bus from Tegucigalpa to Gracias. The ride was supposed to take seven hours, but halfway through the drvier decided he would risk taking the van on the rocky roads- this took about two hours off our travel time and we made it without the van breaking down, so it was definitely worth it! All us teachers (Jacki, Sarah, Rachel, Julia, Kirsty and me), our two directors Jake and Vicente, and the driver, his wife and 1 1/2 year old boy all rode in the van- it was just like family vacation for me! :) We played cards, admired the beautiful scenery, listened to some mix CDs some of the girls made for the trip, and of course shared our love life stories- what trip is complete without that?! :)
We got to Gracias at about 5 pm- all of us were so excited. It is such a beautiful town. The weather was absolutely perfect when we got here- sunny, blue skies with a wonderful breeze. We spent a little time getting all of our things into the hotel before heading out to see our school and homes. A note about hotels here; they are absolutely gorgeous- and cheap! (a room costs about $20) Our room/suite has a big common room with three rooms coming off of it and a balcony for sitting and eating. There's a lady that works at the hotel that came in as soon as we had moved in and brought us pitchers of water (water from the tap is not ok to drink here) and poured us all glasses of water. She also went around each of our rooms with us explaining things we need to know about the shower, curtains, etc. Everyone is so hospitable. We're actually waiting for her to bring us coffe and bread for breakfast this morning! (Yes, I'm up before I need to be! But I'll get to that in a minute...)

So after we had been situated in our rooms, we left for the school. It's about a 30 minute drive on rocky roads from the town to the school, so we'll probably just come down here on the weekends. The place we are living is actually called Villa Verde- it's like a 'suburb' of Gracias. :) Te school is breathtaking. I will have to put pictures up because I don't know if I can describe it. We also went to our houses and got to see them, although they're not quite ready. One of the houses has coffee trees growing in their yard, so we'll probaby need to learn how to roast our own coffee beens! I am going to be living in a house with Rachel, one of the teachers. Apparently an American used to live there but left all his stuff there- we went in and there were wheelbarrows, books, a violin, guitar and bongos, scuba diving gear... all kinds of things. The local Hondurans are a little nervous about us moving in and touching his stuff because apparently he is a 'crazy gringo(what they call all white people here)' but the school is taking care of it and hopefully Rachel and I keep only the gringo part of that name and the Hondurans don't feel the need to tack on the crazy. :) Our home is right on the edge of the national park and there's a river running right beneath our backyard. We're planning to clean it up on Monday and hopefully move in!

After looking at the houses we went and had supper at place in Gracias called Guancascos- we're told we'll be spending a lot of time there because it has wireless internet! It's also the place where all mail for gringos goes which I thought was kind of funny. We had a delicious meal and came home and crashed.

This morning I woke up at about 7 just freezing (we have air conditioning in our hotel room, which was great until this morning!) I was so cold, I decided to get up and dig through my suitcases (whcih I haven't really opened yet) and get my comforter. Out comes the comforter.... with soapy, sticky something all over it and a tag saying my luggage had been searched. I decided I didn't really want to deal with whatever had leaked in my suitcase at the moment so I decided to try and get back to sleep because we didn't have to be up until 9- if you know me very well, you know I definitely LOVE my sleep. However, I was still cold and since my problem wasn't solved by my slimy comforter, I decided to just get up and have a look. Apparently my shampoo lid had unscrewed iteself on its journey of the US and had gotten over all kinds of stuff in my suitcase. Thankfully it was mostly on things I can replace like folders and notebooks, but it was on a lot of my school supplies so that was kind of annoying. I got it mostly cleaned out and set some books out to dry. Oh also, I used one of my washcloths to get all the shampoo out and then went to wash it in the shower and the shower head broke off its hose. Awesome. I had to explain to the lady what had happened in my very broken Spanish, but she was very kind about it.

So now we've had breakfast, went on a tour of Gracias and looked at some of the shops, and I'm currently at Guancascos using the internet. We'll have lunch soon and we're going to church at 2 this afternoon. I'm a little tired but still enjoying things and am looking forward to moving in soon and to stop living out of suitcases!!!