turkey day

For Thanksgiving, we got Thursday and Friday off , so we got a four-day weekend! The school runs on a United States schedule, so that's why we celebrated Thanksgiving at all. The school actually puts together an entire weekend of activities, so we were pretty excited about spending some time getting to know Tegus.

Wednesday night, we were going to finish (or in my case, start) packing for our trip, but the power went out. I think we sat around for quite awhile when Shelly suggested we should play Sardines in our house and take advantage of the pitch blackness. For those of you who have not played Sardines, it's basically a reverse Hide-and-Seek game. ONE person hides and then the entire group searches for the person. If you find the hider, you hide with them, and the next person to find the both of you hides also, and so on until the last person finds the entire group. Most of us were not that excited about the game, and I personally didn't think it would possible with a space as small as a one-story house, but we went for it anyway- and it was pretty hilarious. Us four girls played, and Maggie and Tyler joined us so it was quite the night. We were all surprised at how difficult it was to find people, and how giggly we were when we found them! :) The last hiding place was Tyler hiding on the wall surrounding the shower- pretty good one to end on. :)

The power finally came back on around 10 and we finished getting ready and went to bed. The next day, we were in town by 6 to leave on the bus for Tegus. The school let us use their bus and driver all weekend, so it was like having our own personal tour guide service! :) We got to the hotel at about 3 (the roads were pretty awful with construction, it really shouldn't have taken us 9 hours!) and settled in. The four of us girls decided to stick together and ended up in a rooftop room. It was really beautiful. We had our actual room, a little balcony overlooking the street, a walk out big porch room, and THEN stairs that went up to the roof with a gazebo and seats and a beautiful view of the city. It was pretty amazing. We relaxed for a little while before getting dressed up for our fancy Thanksgiving dinner. This is the only day of the whole year that I get/have any reason to wear cute high heels, so I was pretty happy about that! We went and ate at the house of one of the administrators of our school. Everyone that has an important position in our school district, so that was pretty cool to see all of them again. They had made us a traditional Thanksgiving meal- turkey, gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and relish trays. We also has some delicious apple cider and cheesecake.

Before I continue, I feel like I should specify who 'we' is since it's different than when I usually write. This weekend was planned for all the extranjeros - or all the people that live here, but aren't actually Honduran :). So that included from Gracias, Shelly, Catelin, Jennifer, Maggie, Tyler, Justin, Tabitha and I; from La Union, Amelia, Andrea, Jake, and two girls from Great Britain, Bryanny and Holly, and Vicente- who is Honduran, but was our 'tour guide' for the whole time. Thursday night, we chilled for awhile, but went to bed pretty quickly because we'd been up all day traveling.

On Friday morning, I was up at 6 and probably went to the bathroom 8-9 times by the time we left at 9.... Thanksgiving dinner was sooooo good but my body is not used to so much richness all at once! :/ So that was a fun way to start the day.... and it continued. :) We went to Valle de Angeles, which is a really nice pottery town about an hour away from Tegus. Before we left for our 'trip', I had to ask the bus driver to stop at a pharmacy so I could grab some Immodium before our trek :) (Is it called immodium in English too? Sometimes I just don't even know haha). We had lunch in Valle de Angeles and then walked around and shopped. I think the only thing I bought there was a hairpiece made out of coconut, but it was still nice to walk around and look at all the pottery and homemade jewelry. We went back to the city and visited Vida Abundante's clinic and I actually got some new glasses! So that was exciting. Later, we went to the mall, which was a little overwhelming, but I managed to still buy a Dunkin' Donut. :) Friday night, we went to a restaurant with a mini-golf course so some of us played golf and ate some good food. (I did not play mini-golf; I just ate :))

Saturday we got up early-ish again and went to another town called Ojojona. Ojojona is another pottery town, but it's pretty cool because you can almost always find people working in the shops on the pieces that they're going to put out on the shelves later. We bought some things there, and I found some delicious carrot bread that I ate, regardless of my previous stomach problems... bad choice. :) Those stomach problems just stayed with me all weekend ;) We got back to Tegus and went to some other little shops because some of the girls needed materials to decorate their rooms for Christmas. After that we all returned to the mall to shop some more and then saw Harry Potter in the theaters. I think I mentioned in another blog that I'd never seen any of the movies, so my roommates and I rented them on itunes and watched them all (except 6, which isn't on itunes for some reason)over the course of a couple weeks. I was basically caught up for number 7 and it was fun to go see a movie. We also ate a really good Italian restaurant. Saturday night, we ordered pizza and invited everyone up to our rooftop room and hung out and talked. Sunday, we left for home!

When we got home, we were all SUPER tired. I don't know if you remember from last year, but my idea of vacation is sometimes only sitting in the air conditioned room with the tv on.... I think we got one show of Friends in and that was all the tv we saw this weekend :) So the constant running around was a bit much for me, but we still had a good time, and it was nice to see the different areas around Tegucigalpa.

Monday, we got back into the swing of things with school. This Friday is our big Christmas program so everything is a little crazy, but I think it will go well!