Sunday August 16
Today I slept in, which felt great to get some good sleep after traveling and being emotionally drained. Jake took most of us on a tour of Gracias later in the morning. It was a little overwhelming trying to see and remember where everything is in the town even though it’s small. There’s a market which sells fresh food, supermarkets, little tiendas, pharmacies, banks, and bus stations among other things. It was good to see everything, but overwhelming with everyone out on a Saturday in town.
Later that afternoon we went to church up at the school, where our principal, Mr. Lara preached. It was very small, about 20-30 people including us! Very different from what I’m used to at home! I understood most of what Mr. Lara was saying in Spanish without a translator, but Vicente was still there so he translated on paper for the 4 of us who were fluent in Spanish. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and just relaxed before our crazy week of orientation for the school. We ate a Honduran food called pupusas, which is like a tortilla stuffed with cheese and then there’s sauce to put over it. They were so delicious.
Vicente and Dennis (our driver and admin at the school in Teguc) took us to the hot springs here in Gracias! We went to the “not as nice ones” according to everyone here, but it was still so awesome to go. They had all these different pools of different temperatures and it felt good to relax in hot water too. It did smell like rotten eggs a little bit and the bottom was kinda slimy, but overall it was fun to hang out and experience that. I rode back to the hotel in the back of the truck with some other people and it started raining! It was so cold, but a good story later and it cooled me down after the hot springs. We played Euchre at night and then turned in for bed.