So many homes

Not a bad place to come back to...every sunset and sunrise (yes, I am awake for all of those as well) is beautiful.




Christmas break seems like a long time ago, but since that’s where our last entry left off, I’ll travel back in time for a minute. Stepping off the plane in one degree Chicago weather was a little rough after being on a tropical island the day before, but my mom and sisters brought some old winter coats to meet us at the airport, and from there, we just got used to the climate change. It was so great to be home and see everyone in so many places. We spent the first 3 days in Wheaton with my family, did 3 Christmases there—one on Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, and Christmas night in Wisconsin.

Here's Christmas Eve...my sisters, Caitlin and Rachel, and my cousins, Chelsea and Olivia:




...and Mimi and Aaron:



...and my parents:



In Wisconsin, we got to enjoy the snow a little more, and even cleared off an ice rink on the lake to play a little hockey. We just spent a couple of days, and then we headed back to Wheaton. A note on Hela, our cat: she is enjoying her year-long vacation with her dog cousins, and has learned to play with the border collie. They wrestle around and chase each other, and when they are tired, the dog lies on her back and the cat sits on the dog’s face. Very weird. Hela has also gotten pretty fat because she eats dog food all day. She doesn’t look like she’s been missing us too badly.

Here's the little fatty on Christmas:




Everywhere we went, the food tasted amazing, but going from mostly fruits and veggies to American-style holiday food was a rude awakening for our digestive systems. I don’t think either of us felt hungry the whole time we were back home, but we still pigged out as per tradition and felt happy and comfortable and loved the whole two weeks we spent visiting.

Here's one of the richer indulgences of 2009: Oreo Cheesecake! (With my mom and brother, Brad):



I thought we might experience a little more reverse culture shock, but once we were back, everything just seemed normal, like we had never left. When we got back to Honduras, again, it just seemed as if we had never left. It was a relief to be back here and not have to get used to things all over again like we did in August when we first arrived.

After Wheaton and Wisconsin, we met Aaron’s brother and sister-in-law (well, basically), and drove down to Virginia to spend a few days with Aaron’s family. It was a Christmas miracle that all of our stuff fit in the tiny Yaris along with four of us and a dog, but it all worked out. It was still nothing compared to some of the bus experiences we’ve had! There was a serious lack of bags of crops and grains, and there were no kids sitting on top of the seats hanging out the windows.

Virginia was a little warmer than up North, so we got a little walking and biking in…biking on a paved road was amazing. It was really nice to spend time with all of Aaron’s family at once, because they are so spread out that it doesn’t happen often. We had a little photo shoot out back on the mountain...

Here are Daniel (Aaron's brother) and Meghan (his fiancee), with their rarely-sitting-still-much-less-yawning-of-boredom dog:



And here are Jeremy (Aaron's brother), Meghna (his wife), and Alaina (our niece):




All four brothers:




And everybody:



Our Christmas tour had one more stop: Beverly, MA. We stayed there 3 days, did some much-enjoyed grocery shopping, saw lots of friends, and re-visited our favorite restaurants. It was hard to leave and fly back here at the end of the trip, but I think the part we were most dreading was just the long travel adventure we had before getting back to our house. We’re going to be so happy to be back with friends and family next year, though…our trip was way too short!

We left Boston at 4 pm, stopped in Ft. Lauderdale, took a 9 something flight to San Pedro Sula in Honduras, arrived at 1 am, and waited in the airport for several hours waiting for morning to come. Luckily, there was a little area to sit down in next to a closed Wendy’s booth (we were afraid that the whole place would shut down and we’d have to figure out somewhere to spend a few hours). Our bus didn’t leave until 6, so we killed some time just talking to another foreign teacher coming back to Honduras from the States, and then Aaron tried to use an ATM. There were two machines right next to each other, and they looked about the same. Aaron typed in the amount he wanted to withdraw (about $100), and the machine just shut down. He checked the balance of our account using the other ATM, and it turns out that the first machine had subtracted the amount from our account without giving us any cash! He asked a policeman about it, and the guy just laughed at him and said something along the lines of, “oh, you used THAT machine?! Everyone knows that machine doesn’t work!” So…not so helpful. After we found a ride to the bus station, took our two buses back to Gracias, and did some grocery shopping, we stopped off at the bank for a little chat about our ATM situation. This turned out to just be the first of three visits in order to get our lost money back, but eventually, it worked out. At one point, though, our account got down to about $15. Close call!

When we finally got up the mountain and home again, we got to unpack and relax for a day before school started. Our house was fine over break, and besides a missing rusted wheelbarrow and a sweater eaten by some animal, all was well when we got back. It didn’t take long to get used to wearing t-shirts again, and spending most of our time outside. No seasonal affect disorder here…there have been a couple of other cold fronts, but the rainy season is now over, and it’s just going to keep warming up from here on out. It’s really good that we live up on the mountain now, because it gets really hot and dusty in town without rain, and up here it gets hot during the day, but always cools down at night. One night during the cold front last week, we seriously considered moving the stove into our bedroom and baking bread to heat things up before we went to sleep, but in the end, it wasn’t worth the risk of something in the oven coming loose during the move. It’s easy to pick out the tourists during the cold weather, though…they are usually wearing shorts and a t-shirt, while everyone who lives here is wearing sweaters and hats. We did meet one really interesting couple from Quebec last weekend. They looked to be in their late 50s or so, and they had driven all the way down from Quebec! They had their yellow lab with them, and they were just road tripping for a couple of months before ending up in El Salvador to visit their son, who is doing some volunteer work/surfing down there for a year. They have an ecotourism business in Mexico and they do a lot of kayaking there, so who knows, we might meet them again sometime.

Our neighbors did a lot of work on their comedor (little restaurant in their house) while we were gone, and they stopped us and invited us in for some coffee and sweetbread one afternoon. We’re slowly getting to know them better—one of their kids is in my class, and she’s been walking to school with us every day. All the kids like coming up to our house to giggle and chat and play little games like “who can balance a stick on their head and walk across the road fastest” or “where is Abby’s stomach/nose/eyes/ears?” I don’t always rush out eagerly when I hear that “Oh Mrs. Seeeeeebens/Mrs. Melaaaaaaanie” coming through the gate outside, but they’re really sweet kids, and it’s fun to play with them…kids are so easy to please and so carefree. A couple of weekends ago, and probably tonight as well, we went to the neighborhood church. There are only about 10 or 15 people that go there, and it’s just a little one-room cinder-block building. It’s decorated inside with a sheet and letters cut out and glued on it, and there are a few simple benches and a table up front. One guy plays the keyboard, and they sing a lot of pretty long praise songs where everyone just sings and claps. While they sing and during the sermons/readings, which are also done by family members, the little kids just kinda run around and play with the odd broom or cup lying around, leave their bottles or toys on the table holding the keyboard up front, and just find ways to entertain themselves without anyone trying to make them sit down. We couldn’t understand all of the preaching, but from what I gathered, the message wasn’t fire and brimstone, but just more about acting out faith every day and not just at church. The atmosphere was so laid-back and simple, and my favorite moment was when the power went out for a minute or so during one of the songs. The keyboard didn’t work, but everyone just kept singing in the dark, and then eventually it and the lights came back on before the song was over. We’re probably going again today, not necessarily because we get a lot out of it in a religious sense, but just because it’s a good way to spend time with our neighbors and be able to share some experience with them. I wish we could go with them to pick coffee sometime or help them work in the field every once in a while, but we’re pretty booked every weekday with school.

We have a new neighbor now as well—another Gringo from the U.S. He’s just graduated from a Master’s program in Spanish, and he’s here staying at his friend’s house for a few months just to practice Spanish and figure out what he wants to do next. He doesn’t have electricity, screens on the windows, or any of the luxuries we have (like internet and a hot shower), so he’s roughing it a lot more than we are. He has more time to get to know the other neighbors, and he goes to town more often than we do. Mostly, though, I think he just reads a LOT of books. He’s had some helpful tips on our garden, though, so we’ve given that another shot. This time, the weather should be better, and we added a lot of manure from the road to the soil, so that should help fertilize. If all goes well, we should see some sprouts in a few days.

It was nice to see our kids at school again after break. Things in my class have been going really well, but I’m attributing at least part of that to the absence of my most high-maintenance student whose family is taking a vacation in Guatemala right now. He’s a nice kid, but he drains so much of my energy all day long, and it’s been nice to be able to put that energy into my other students and successfully carry out more creative lessons. The second quarter ends next week, so then we’ll officially be halfway through the year. The school just started 2 new classes, a younger one and an older one, for almost 40 new students. I’m not sure what that puts our total enrollment up to, but it’s a significant chunk of new kids. They are just learning English this Spring, and the plan is to have them integrated into the regular classes next fall. This means that there is no space for storage, library, or planning anymore, though. We just sit outside on the ground somewhere during free periods, and the teachers that have lots of free time (the music and art teachers) just kind of walk around and try to look somewhat busy by talking to the administrators or the cleaning ladies or texting on their phones. The new kids don’t have their uniforms yet, though, and one day last week I saw a girl wearing a white tank top over a t-shirt. The tank top said: “Buy me a shot…I’m tying the knot” in iron-on letters. I’m pretty sure she got that secondhand somewhere, and I’m also pretty sure that neither she nor any of the administrators knew what that meant.

At school, the administration has started doing teacher evaluations. This consists of pulling out two “random” students from class, checking their notebooks, and looking through their work-text books to see how much has been completed. Then, if you are a woman, they meet with you to tell you to use the books more or that you are doing a good job, or if you are a man, they just avoid confronting you and say nothing. Not the most effective evaluation, in my opinion, but I guess it’s just another one of those things that comes down to cultural differences in the workplace.

Aaron’s kids have been working on a garden in back of the school lately. They are really excited about it, and are getting pretty competitive about which garden bed will be best. Aaron asked them to bring in old clothes to work in, and some of them are pretty funny, too…for example, one girl just brought a pink dress to wear over her clothes. It’s funny to look out back of the school and see a bunch of kids doing manual labor, but they love it and it’s a great chance to get out of the classroom.

Here's Leonela in her pink work dress:



Jenny in the orange shirt and all the kids doing their manual labor/wandering:



David and Marquito hard at it:




My class took another river trip last week to catch tadpoles as part of our amphibians and reptiles unit. Again, there were some noteworthy outfits on display, like the girl who wore a ballerina leotard as a swimsuit, or the boy who just wore his boxers.

Jasson and Fausto, two of my favorites:




Kimberly catching tadpoles in her ballet outfit:




Maria Jose (Mary Joseph...actually a common name) in her swimsuit with the other kids:




Deyssi and Lorean, cold:




Fausto again, mid-action:




It’d be nice to think of more field trips to do, but it’s hard due to lack of transportation. I want to try to get my kids outside more in the second half of the year, though…they’re finally at the point where they can handle it and not just go completely nuts once we leave the classroom. One big exception to this statement: a couple of weeks ago, some students from the Abundant Life school in Tegucigalpa came to our school, half to do a mission presentation, and half to play soccer. We didn’t find out about this until a few minutes before the soccer game, but we were supposed to bring all of our students up to the field to watch. It had been raining a lot, so it was muddy and slippery, and most of the kids just made mudballs, slid down the hills on boards, climbed trees, collected seeds and flower petals, or found some way to entertain themselves besides watching the game. They were a bunch of monkeys, but it was a lot of fun to just let them go wild and sit back and take pictures and laugh.

A couple of kids "watching the soccer game":



And here's an average day in the lunch line:



This weekend, we did our usual town day, and then some friends came up and we grilled chicken and veggies on the fire and they stayed overnight on our spare mattress. We got sheets for them and everything, so now we’re all set for our visitors to come! Our first ones are my friend Amy from college and her cousin. They’ll be here in 2 weeks! After that, Aaron’s parents are coming for a week, some friends from Landmark are coming, my parents might come, a couple more friends are coming for a vet mission trip, and maybe a friend of mine from home will come, too! We can’t wait to have everybody and show them around our life here!

There isn’t a lot else to report, but life is good, and we’re happy to be missing out on winter! It’s hard not to think about next year, and we do think about it a lot, but we’re trying to just enjoy our time here and take advantage of everything we have.

December in Honduras

Its kind of strange to post to the blog now. I’m writing as we’re on a plane back to the States for Christmas, and there are lots of different thoughts swirling around but we’re both really excited to be going back to see everyone, we’re actually excited for cold weather and by the time January comes around I’ll think we’ll be plenty excited to get back to balmy Honduras.

Melanie left off with some discussion of the devotion of school resources to the Christmas program and I will fill you in on how that adventure turned out. As Melanie was saying before, the two weeks before school ended we didn’t really have many classes and when we actually did have class there were 40 kids practicing a dance outside of our classroom. We weren't exactly open minded when we heard about it. We both had kind of a negative opinion of the program going into the 2 weeks of practice, it was just very different from the type of Christmas programs we both remembered participating in. The bulk of the program (The 12 Voices of Christmas) was monologues of the Christmas story, interspersed with praise and worship songs that the kids danced to. One of the main issues we had with the play was how little the students got to participate. Each grade or two had one song that they danced to and then for the rest of the show they just had to sit in the audience while students from Tegucigalpa lip-synched the monologues. So for the two weeks leading up to the performance each grade practiced their dance somewhere between 40-50 times. The way we practiced was to watch a DVD of the school in the Tegucigalpa doing the program and just copy it, so there was little creative input from us. It was hard to see what was going on in the DVD because of all the changing camera angles, but after 20 or so times we pretty much got the hang of it. The other twenty times were spent with kids in my grade reminding me I missed some move or teaching them at what angles they should hold their fake trumpets.
Here is one of the snacks of the kids at practice for the Christmas program, potted meat and a frosted flakes "granola bar":

Everyday it seemed like their was some casualty whether it be someone’s maraca getting broken, someone getting elbowed in the face when they went the wrong way in the dance, or some tears breaking forth because they didn’t win the audition for air guitar solo.
Four of my students in "the band" for our dance. The guitar solo was the envy of the entire elementary school:
It was also kind of crazy because the performance was at a church in town and so the three days before the performance we had to go to the church and practice. The entire school went and watched while each grade did their dance once on the stage and the rest of the time was crowd control. We had a dress rehearsal the day of the performance with the students from Tegucigalpa and this was directed by the drama director at their school. I personally was not a huge fan of the drama director. He showed up in really short shorts and running shirt (think gym teachers from the 80’s) and proceeded to give a little speech to our kids. The main gist of the speech was telling our students that even though they were from Gracias they could be just as good as the students from Tegucigalpa. I don’t think he meant it this way and I don’t think many of the students perceived it this way but to me it was very patronizing. I have experienced a lot of bias against people who live in rural areas and it seems like it is a pretty universal thing. The drama teacher did not think of our students as equals, he thought that if they tried really hard they could be at the same level of his students. That was just a little thorn in the side but he did a couple of other things that made me question the way he deals with people. Before my class went up on stage to dance I was going around to each of them telling them good luck and have fun and he came over to shoosh me. Later on during the performance I started to clap along with one of the other songs and he signaled to me from across the room very demonstratively to stop clapping. Now I’m not one for dressing up or a dress code but while all the other teachers were dressed up in their school uniforms, he showed up in a wind suit to the most important school event of the year. That all is a little cynical and slightly negative and I don’t want to give the idea that the program was this torturous thing that was a flop, because it actually went extremely well.
The 4th grade before the show:

We only got to practice the play one time with everyone, so I was a little nervous how it would go with so little practice and preparation. In Honduras there are lots of times when I think, sheesh there is no way that can work, its slipshod, no preparation, but then it turns out that it works great. In the States we have all the expectations and laws for how things have to be done but in Honduras as long as it works then its ok. So in line with that, the Christmas program went great.
Some of Melanie's kids before the show:
The kids all had a lot of fun, the parents were really happy seeing their kids perform and the kids did a great job. This also hit home another point for me. In the four months that we’ve been here I haven’t been open-minded about a lot of things. School is very different than schools I’ve been to or worked at before and too often if something is done in a different way I assume that it won’t work or respond to it in a negative way, and that is something that I really want to change.

There was also some great news the last day when we were practicing for the Christmas program. The administrators from Tegucigalpa were in Gracias to check out the program and they decided that we wouldn’t have class the next week, that the program would be the last day of school for the year. We weren’t flying back until the 22nd so that gave us more than a week to travel. Eunice (the school superintendent) also worked it out so that we could have a free place to stay in La Ceiba, the third biggest city in Honduras and a hoppin beach town. Melanie and I cobbled together some plans very quickly and arranged it so that we could take Spanish classes during that week. We had a lot to do before we left on Sunday especially considering that we were planning on having a Christmas party at our house on Saturday to use up our food. So Saturday we had to pack, clean, and get ready for the party and get our house ready to be closed for a few weeks. The party was also the maiden voyage of our “grill”. The grill was some sticks with nails spaced evenly and one of those camping grill baskets that you can move up and down on the nails over our fire pit. We had some burgers and dogs and some tandoori chicken skewers that Melanie made and the grill did quite well, although I think it will be better served for smaller scale operations. We had a huge table of desserts, more than we’d had the entire time we’d been in Honduras. There were cinnamon rolls, brownies, key lime pie, sugar cookies, cheesecake, and eggnog. We had another big stroke of luck at the party; Someone who came to the party was actually heading to San Pedro Sula the next day and offered to give us a ride, and he even came and picked us up at our house! We didn’t even know how we were going to make it down the mountain with all of our stuff and we were saved the 5 hour bus ride as well. This made it seem a lot more like vacation. When you have to be crammed on 3 buses constantly watching your stuff it isn’t exactly relaxing.

We caught a bus from San Pedro to La Ceiba where our host met us at the bus terminal. It was really nice of our administrator to find a place for us to stay and it was really nice of the people to host us (they were very friendly and hospitable), but it was also a little awkward because they moved their daughters out of their bedrooms so that we and the other couple could sleep in them. Their house was really nice, with a really funky swimming pool, but it was far out of town so we either had to ask them for rides or take taxis everywhere. The pool looked like something from a mini-golf course with really intricate concrete work and decoration; it even had a grotto that you could swim into with seats to relax in.

We started Spanish classes on Monday morning, both of us with a different personal tutor. I think it was really good for both us in different ways. We spent four hours each morning of the week studying and speaking with our tutor. I think it will make a huge difference in my Spanish when we come back. I’ve picked up a lot of Spanish words during our time here, but having never studied Spanish formally, I don’t really know any grammar. Even though we had to start back at square one grammar wise I think I’ll be able to synthesize grammar and vocabulary pretty quickly. Melanie seemed to get a lot out of her classes as well, but for her it was more a review of advanced subjunctive forms and an opportunity to spend a lot of time talking to someone whose job it is to correct you. Hopefully when we come back to Honduras we will both have more tools for our Spanish and a little more confidence to go with it.

La Ceiba itself was not a town that we would probably spend a lot of time in again, but since we were there for a week we got to enjoy lots of things that we’ve been missing up on the mountain. Within the first two days there, we had already gone to Pizza Hut twice, which is more times than both of us had been in the last ten years. The first time we went to Pizza Hut for the food but the second time was for the super high speed (for us) wireless internet. Restaurants like Pizza Hut, Burger King, and Wendys are really different here. The buildings are extremely big and modern looking and since the food is a little more expensive than it is in the states, it is really expensive here and only upper middle class and upper class people can afford to eat there. The whole week we were in La Ceiba we had to eat out so we had ample opportunities to sample the fast food fare the city had to offer, and those Whoppers and Frostys sure tasted pretty good after a few months of not having any beef or ice cream. Another feature that appealed to us was the fact that it had two movie theaters. It wasn’t like they had amazing movies or anything (we actually sat through all of Stepbrothers) but since we haven’t even watched TV just sitting there with the flashing images in front of us made us feel right at home and it also helped that it only cost a dollar.

Everyday after Spanish class we would either explore La Ceiba (finished that in one day), or other towns and areas around La Ceiba. There wasn’t too much to see in Ceiba itself, with the beaches being contaminated and night clubs not really being our thing, but the thing about Ceiba is that there are beautiful places just a couple of miles away. From Ceiba itself you can see Pico Bonito National Park which is several gravity defyingly steep peaks completely covered with jungle. Even though the peaks are only five miles from the entrance to the park, it takes at least a week to reach them, and those days apparently are spent hacking through the jungle and fending off mosquitoes and vipers. Whenever a group does decide to climb the mountain everyone follows it in the paper and on TV because either something bad happens or they make it out triumphantly.
We didn’t brave the snakes and climb the mountain but we did get to explore lots of other good places. One afternoon after class it was especially hot and we wanted to go to a beach where we could actually swim, so we caught a bus and headed ten miles down the coast to Sambo Creek. The beach at Sambo wasn’t pristine by any means but compared to Ceiba it was paradise island. We walked down the beach to a place where we could change and realized that we both had forgotten our swimsuits. Normally this would have been resolved by skinny dipping but because of recent flooding the water had so much debris in it, skinny dipping didn’t seem like a great option. The solution we came up with was to sit on the beach and relax which served our situation quite well.

We heard about a good swimming hole the next day that was freshwater and set out to find out about it. We rode the bus a couple miles down the road again and got off a little ways down the river from the swimming hole. There was a road/ path next to the river and we followed it for 20-30 minutes until we could hear the waterfall. All along the way there were houses with small farms situated along the river with huge trees shading the houses and water, very peaceful and picturesque. After walking for a little while the path headed uphill and we got a nice view of the land between us and the sea, full of banana plants and nice places to live.
Eventually we heard the loud water and plunged down through thick plants to the waterfall. The waterfall was probably 20 ft high and 20ft wide with a deep blue tennis court sized pool at the bottom, in other words exactly what we had been looking for.
The waterfall on the Rio Maria:
As soon as we got there some local kids showed up and started playing around on the waterfall. I’ve seen people jump off of waterfalls and stuff but these kids were sliding down the waterfall, which to me seemed really scary and like instant death (who knows what kinds of rocks are under the fall) but each time they emerged unscathed. We spent a couple of hours there swimming, jumping off lower rocks, lying on rocks, and just enjoying the cool air courtesy of the river. We didn’t really want to go back to Ceiba but we figured we probably should before it got dark. We spent another afternoon just figuring out bus service for getting to the airport and then on Friday we headed back to the Rio Maria waterfall for another dose of cool water relaxation. We finished up classes for the week and although we liked it a lot and got a lot out of it, I can’t imagine doing Spanish classes for a month. A week was a nice boost for us and hopefully we’ll be a little more motivated to practice.

One of the sailboats they use in the Cayos, with a sail made of trashbags

The crown jewel of our adventure in Ceiba though was our weekend trip to the Cayos Cochinos, a protected marine reserve of keys about 15 miles off the coast of Ceiba. There are two big keys which are used for marine research and most of the smaller keys are private and either are someone’s vacation home or uninhabited.
Some volcanic rock off one of the keys
We went out with a local tour operator and learned a little about the islands before doing some snorkeling. I didn’t know before we went but off the coast of Honduras is the second largest barrier reef in the world after Australia. We got on our gear and headed under to check it out and it was stunning, stretching for as far as you could see were probably ten different kinds of coral, some 20 feet high with 5 or 6 different kinds of fish swimming in and out. We snorkeled for an hour or so swimming in and out of the coral before getting back on the boats and heading to the one island in the keys that is inhabited called Chachahuate. Its pretty small, maybe a little bigger than a football field and somewhere between 50-75 people live on the island.

A view of the entire island of Chachahuate

Another perspective of the island
There is one restaurant on the island and we had the best fish I’ve had in years with really good red beans and rice. The rest of the tour group went back to Ceiba but we wanted to do something on our own so we decided to stay on the island in a little hostel/cabin thing they have. All of the people on the island are Garifuna which means they are a long way descended from shipwrecked slaves in the 1800s. Living on a tiny island with 75 people might seem like some kind of tortured reality show but after spending a day there we saw what they had going. We spent the rest of the afternoon snorkeling at a part of the reef just off the island and then when it got dark we just sat around and talked to the people who live there. There is sometimes electricity for a couple hours a day but most of the time it seems like people spend a lot more time relaxing and talking rather than watching TV and surfing the internet.
Here are two kids who had apparently gotten in the water and rolled around in the sand:
Everyone just seemed to enjoy living, talking to all their neighbors, going fishing for the day’s food, just going for a quick dip in the clear water whenever you feel like it. We were just sitting on the beach and half of the kids from the island went bodysurfing and a few of their moms came with them. I know this is probably idealistic and short sighted but it seemed like it was summer vacation all the time. We talked politics and soccer with the people for a couple of hours then called it a night but not after watching a rap battle and forced grinding/dancing content among the younger kids.
Some of the lobster traps they made to catch the clawless lobsters:
We woke up the next day, drank some coffee, did some more snorkeling and spent more time relaxing and just enjoying the island. The tour group for that day picked us up and we did a little more snorkeling before coming back to Chachahuate. We left with that tour group to go back and after a little seasick ride we made it back to Ceiba where we got some food and started to pack to come back. We went out to a restaurant to eat and made sure that they had the Panthers game on and unfortunately we got to see them lose along with a British and Canadian guy we’d met through the language school. We went back and finished packing in our kind of slummy hotel room, and tried to fall asleep despite being really excited about going back, two very loud mating geckos (it sounded like there were birds in our room), laying in an uncomfortable bed and being really hot. The next morning we woke up early to catch a bus and head back to the States and that’s where we are now. This is getting posted after the fact but the travels back went really smoothly and pretty soon you’ll get to read Melanie’s post about all the good times we had back in the States.