Sunday and Monday, Oct 11 and 12

Sunday
Today was another great lazy day; we didn’t do anything of great significance. Just making meals together, chatting, reading, and cleaning. We did all suit up and go to hang out in Froni’s pool again with the neighbor kids. She had cleaned it since the last time we had been there so it wasn’t as dirty as before. We didn’t stay long though because the afternoon rain came just as we were heading back, grabbing our laundry from the neighbors along the way. It’s crazy how fast a storm can come here; earlier in the day it had been blue sky and full sun. I had called home earlier in the day and I’m really starting to appreciate my October weather versus theirs; it was in the 40s and 50s at home and here I would guess its still 70s and 80s…fine with me! We talked about watching a movie, but that kinda fell through and everyone was tired and ready for bed.

Monday
Our vacation day! It’s been really nice to have a long weekend in Gracias and be able to do whatever we want. We had those forced days of vacation during the curfew, but those weren’t vacation days; we couldn’t go into town and enjoy those days besides being able to sleep in and not working. Today we decided to go to town again for a little while. Jacki, Kirsty and I were going to try to walk to town again and Sarah, LB and Mr. Bran took a mototaxi. We were going to try to see if the post office was open again to get our packages. As we were starting out a guy was hiking out of Celaque back to town, so we stopped to chat with him about what he did up there, who he was, where he was from, etc. His name was James; he’s a lawyer from England who got 6 months vacation and has been traveling all around Central America. He had spent the night in Celaque, hiked to the summit and was heading back to town for the night before heading to Guatemala. I wish my life could be that easy to be able to travel places. I just get concerned about money because no matter how cheap you do things, it still takes some money to do stuff in other countries. Believe me if I could be a professional traveler, I would; it would be amazing to go to all these places, not only in Central America, but South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia….everywhere pretty much.
Anyways, so we hiked to town with James and shared stories of travel and life in Gracias and Central America. There were some people coming down from Celaque with vehicles, one of them being a truck, so we hitched a ride in the back for the rest of the trip down to town. Kirsty and I checked the post office again, but they were closed; we half expected it because I think today was a national holiday anyways, but it was still disappointing. We went to get fresh popsicles after that because it was a hot day, and then headed to Guancascos for a bit. After Guancascos, we decided to try somewhere different for lunch so Kirsty, Jacki and I went to this place we had seen that supposedly had pizza. Well it did have pizza, but not exactly what we were looking for. We each had a piece of this pizza, which had no sauce and the bread had almost a hint of sweetness to it. It was ok, but we were still hungry so we paid and went to another restaurant up the street called Bella Celaque. It was this quaint, airy restaurant and we loved it. The food was tipica food so we had fried chicken, some French fries, rice, pico de gallo, cheese, salad and tortillas along with fresh squeezed orange juice. We were SO full after we ate, but got coffee for dessert. All of that food totaled $3 USD…amazing.
It was great to just relax at the restaurant, not feel hurried to get back up the mountain because it was getting dark, but just sit and enjoy the atmosphere and the town. We grabbed a few things from the supermarket before we headed up in a mototaxi back home. The rest of the night we graded papers, read, and had a light dinner of leftovers and fresh fruit and veggies. Back to work tomorrow!