A weekend in Gracias

Yay! I survived the first week of working in Gracias. Actually, it wasn't all that difficult since we basically had the whole week to decorate and plan, and still have until Thursday when we meet our kiddos and their parents. I can't wait to start teaching, it's going to be such an awesome year!
After surviving such a strenuous week...we decided to have ourselves our own little happy hour at casa amarilla. We had a lovely chat and cocktails...just like back in the US ha ha ha. Saturday morning we decided to hike Celaque (the tallest mountain in Honduras) Words cannot even the 45 minute mototaxi ride up to Celaque. It was by far the bumpiest most ridiculous ride of my life. I have some video to share, but I fear that even the video will not do it justice. There were points where we actually had to get out of the taxi in order for him to make it over some hills and bumps. I can't forget to mention the moment in which our driver was stuck and we had to push him partially up the hill. We trekked as far as we could in our mototaxis until the they could no longer drive because it was too steep and bumpy. We then began walking up hill towards the visitor center, where you have to sign into a book, presumably in case you get lost and the jaguars eat you. The hike up the mountain can be explained by no other words than freaking intense. It is literally all up hill in switch back fashion for an hour and a half. You can only imagine our dismay to find that when we reached the top, drenched in sweat, the fog was so incredibly dense we could only hear the waterfall and not see it. We ate a quick lunch so as not to catch chill from our thoroughly drenched clothes. Then came the descent down the mountain where it promptly started raining to make our journey that much more difficult. We finally made it back to our mototaxis and the fantastic ride bike. I would like to note that upon taking off my shoes and socks, I found that my socks were stuck to nail polish on my toes..I can only assume from them being jammed while making our way down. We were all exhausted and napped away the raining afternoon.

Sunday usually tends to be my favorite and today started off much like any Sunday in the US. I did some cleaning and some laundry (which is actually quite a process here...you have to manually fill the washer with water: wash your clothes and then fill it again to rinse them: then you get to hang dry your clothes) then was startled by my roommate saying "Don't freak out but I think you need to see this" There were about 5 policia outside of our neighbors door with large guns aimed and I am assuming loaded. They began pounding on our neighbors and attempted to kick it down. Meanwhile our neighbors refuse to open their door, and the police continue pounding and pointing their weapons. You can only imagine what was going through these 4 gringas heads. I think we were all prepared to duck and cover in case things got a bit messy and I was hoping that I would not see my first dead body.Eventually our neighbor surrendered himself and he left in handcuffs...Ah what a day...