I'm approaching three weeks of living out of a suitcase and my Spanish has improved. This last Friday was my last Spanish class at the school in Copan. The two weeks there went by fast and was a lot of fun. My host family in Copan was really nice and welcoming. The house is actually down the street from where my family stayed when we where here. The town was pretty much the same as how it was then which was convenient for finding my way around the town.
Some of the highlights of my time in Copan were hiking, seeing the ruins, horse back riding, visiting the bird park, and playing soccer. On the Saturday after a week of classes, Keila and I went on a hike up in the nearby mountains. The school set us up with a guide who took us for a three hour trek across all kinds of landscapes. We went across bridges, through agriculture, over/under many barb wire fences, cut through pastures, up slopes, and made a stop at an indigenous village. The following day we went to the ancient Mayan ruins within walking distance of the town. These ruins are famous for being the most informative of the Mayan culture. The park itself is just the ceremonial areas a lot of the surrounding area has piles of ruins waiting to be excavated. The Mayan story is fascinating they built some really cool structures. The school also organized a horseback riding trip up into a different part of the mountains. This was my second time ever ridding a horse with the first time also being in Honduras. So it looks like a tradition starting. the bird park was really cool as well. They have many exotic birds and some that will mimic you. But the best part was the area where they pulled them out of the cages and let you hold them. The guy who was getting the birds out gave me a Scarlet Macaw to hold and before I knew it I had one on each arm and one on my shoulder. It made for a good picture.
I also got to play soccer once while I was in Copan. Several people knew that I liked to play soccer and they all said that they were going to let me know when a game was going to happen. I didn't hear of anything and then I told Enrique (Runs the language school) that I like to play and he said he and his friends were going to play today and to meet him at the school at 5:30. I walked down to the school and as I stepped in the door at 5:30, it started to pour. Unfortunately that was enough to cancel the soccer game and Enrique told me he'd let me know the next time. There ended up not being a next time but on Thursday evening I decided to go check out the field anyway. I found some kids playing a game already and went down to watch. After a while I was asked if I wanted to join in and I jumped at the chance. It was a lot of fun and they asked me to come back the next night. Unfortunately I was leaving to come back to San Pedro Sula before then but it would have been fun to play again.
Since then I've come back and met the MCC Honduras reps, Andres and Amy Zorrilla. And then came out to the finca which is a farm/retreat center, about an hour outside of San Pedro, run by MAMA. Keila, Megan (connecting persons MCCer), and I are hanging out here for a few days. There are many ripe oranges and grapefruits that I've been devouring. And today we went to a nearby lake and went sailing and swimming all afternoon. On Tuesday we'll go to Tegucigalpa for MCC Honduras team meetings.
