Friday night was a lot of fun. A few nights before I had lost my first Euchre game in a very long time. Not only that, one of the opponents was a rookie. So, with that said, Rachel (my partner from that night we lost) and I demanded a rematch against Julia and Kirsty. The first game Rachel and I ran the score up to 9-0. Even though we lost 4 straight points we won 10-4. We then wonj the next game as well, and decided to do a best out of 5. Well we lost the third game and had to stop half way though the fourth because it was getting late and phone calls home still needed to be made. But either way, it was a lot of fun and a lot of weekend Euchre might be in order in the future.
Saturday was even more awesome—it was finally the day my Mac was coming to Gracias. Now, for those of you who didn’t know, I had brought my older brother’s mini-Dell down here because it would be less expensive to replace if something were to happen to it (compared to my Macbook). Well, after being down here for a couple of weeks, realizing how safe it is where I am at in the mountains and at school, and the pure frustration of once again being on a PC, I started looking for ways to get my Mac down here. Well, my mom knew a dentist, Dr. Wickstra, who was coming down to Gracias this weekend and was going to be here all week. Evidently he and a few other area doctors in West Michigan run a clinic in Gracias, which I had no idea about. Well, my plan was to walk down to Gracias early Saturday morning to not only get my Mac from Dr. Wickstra, who was staying at Hotel Guancascos, but to also run to the bank and do some other errands in town. So, Mr. Bran, Kirsty and myself started down a little after 9 am and made it to the school when we saw three gringos walking towards us. Well it happened to be Dr. Wickstra and two others who had driven up the mountain and wanted to check out the school and also see if they could track me down. Now, this was pretty funny already, walking down the mountain and running into the gentlemen who was nice enough to bring my Mac from the states and deliver it, but it was even funnier when I realized I knew the other two people he was with, Dr. Tom Arenshorst and Mrs. Robert Sterken (Dr. Sterken himself was on his way to San Perdo to pick up another bus load of volunteers), both who are members out at Wuskowhan where I worked for 8 summers through high school and college. Small world? I think so.
Well, the three of them had an SUV that they had driven up to the school and after giving them a quick tour of the school grounds they brought us down the mountain to their clinic and gave us a tour. It was unbelievable. Although the medical equipment they had was not top of the line in the United States, it was better then anything that could be found for miles around in Gracias. They were telling us about some of the work they do down here; from eye surgeries (cataracts) to dentistry work to hand surgeries, all types of things. And what is even more amazing is that they only charge 25 Lempiras for any of the surgeries. The exchange rate puts that at $1.32. It was just really cool to hear what they were doing and that they had been doing work like this in Gracias for over 15 years. One of the other doctors is even building a home across from the clinic so he can come down for a month at a time. It was awesome.
Even cooler is that they said if any of us wanted to come down and help out this week we could, they said they always need more translators and even though I am not to that point yet, several of the girls are and were interested in going down. The doctors and other volunteers also have a week of events planned, including a little get together on Tuesday night and a trip to the hot springs on Thursday. They invited all of us to go, so we are going to join them for those this week as well.
After the tour of the clinic they told me where I could find my laptop at Hotel Guancascos and we went on our way towards town. After running to the bank (and subsequently finding 500 Lemps tucked away in my backpack) we went to the hotel, grabbed my Mac, and went back up the mountain. When we got back we grabbed lunch and then a handful of us went down to Frony’s house (the Dutch woman who owns Guancascos, one of the girls houses, and who originally started the school I am teaching at), which is only a 5 minute walk, and went swimming in her pool for a little bit. Then later that night we all gathered in Mr. Bran’s room and watched a mediocre (and that might be generous) soccer match between the United States and Honduras that was taking place in California. Honduras won 3-1, and it was ugly.
Today I got up and went down to school for a couple of hours to finish some planning and decorating. I took some pictures of my classroom and will get them up soon. After this I went back home, grabbed lunch, and me and two of the girls walked down to the river, which is a short 5-minute hike from behind the girls house. I will eventually get some pictures up of this as well. It was a gorgeous afternoon so we all found our own rock and did our own thing, which for me was read. But I soon got bored and decided to do some rock hopping up stream, with a specific goal in mind: find a place where I can cool myself off. After about 7-8 minutes of going upstream I found a perfect place where there was a small waterfall in a shallow (ankle deep) part of the river. The water was moving fast so I figured it was a perfect place to cool off. Even though the water was cold I took my shoes and socks off, along with my t-shirt, and got myself wet. It felt awesome. I then made my way back down and just hung out until the sun disappeared behind the mountains and the bugs started to bite (even though it was only 4 in the afternoon). I then went back and took a nice hot shower.
To end my perfect weekend in Honduras I was able to watch the NFC Championship game on Fox Sports. How about them Saints?
Anyway, sorry for the long update, I probably should have broken that up into two different days. But oh well. Anyway, I am off to bed, it is my first day of teaching tomorrow! I am looking forward to it. I’ll update you all again soon!
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