Day 2

Today was an amazing beginning to the trip. The beauty of this country has stunned us all. We woke up early for breakfast and met at the bus for a ride to the Jungle School. It is amazing how the city can disappear within a few miles and become complete rain forest. The school is along a large river, with banks filled with jungle and trees. It is crazy how you can go to a place that pictures will never do justice. The mountains in the back covered in mist, and the school nestled away in the jungle up a huge hill, with only tire stairs that get to it.

Once at the school our task for the day was to haul bags of sand up to the foundation of the third classroom. When you look at the school you can see how much they need a new classroom because the two they have are so small and fit 90 kids. So we set up a chain from the bottom to the top to haul the sand bags. At the bottom they filled them and passed it up. There was sooo much sand! And it never seemed to end. We got about half way through the pile for the day. But it is work that needs to be done and we passed the time singing and playing telephone. We also took lots of breaks. One thing we are all getting used to is Honduran time. Everything happenes about an hour after we say it will. For example, we were supposed to have water at the work sight, and 2 hours later it shows up. But in that time we got to go swimming in the river so it wasn't too bad. ;)

The weather has been amazing thus far, though i don't want to jinx it. It is humid but not extremely hot. But we got plenty sweaty and dirty working today. At 2:00 we left back to the hotel, showered, and then went to the Hogar de Amor, where 22 of the children live. This part of the day was possibly the highlight, because the kids are absolutely the cutest things you have ever seen. It doensn't matter to them if you speak fluent Spanish or can say only hola, but they ran up to the gate and started showing us all around. Nate and Rachel especially attracted their attention. They jumped on both of them like monkeys. Some of the girls came and asked us to be their 'madrinas' and my heart just about melted. As we left we had to assure them all that we would see them again Saturday.

Dinner was at the nicest outdoor restuarant right on the beach. After, we had an opportunity to walk on the beach and feel the Carribean, and the water must be at least 75 degrees. We took a walk down the beach to an extremely nice hotel where there was a dance floor and DJ, and danced with the Hondurans. One of the girls from the Hogar had come with us to dinner and she showed all of us up in our dancing skills. It was a lot of fun though.

There has been only a few incidents thus far. My hotel room had a fun night when Rachel sprayed pepper spray in our bathroom because she thought it wouldn't work any more. Half an hour later we could enter the room again without running eyes. Nate got a tick in his ankle from hiking through the jungle, and Britta had her sandals stolen, but we recovered from everything. All the girls are also accostoming ourselves to the constant hoots and whistles of the Honduran men, but it's been fine. We're all looking forward to a day at the island tomorrow!

Sorry for spelling errors (spell check is in spanish), but we shall update you again tomorrow!

Sincereley,

The Honduras Travelers