Rain and Ruins

Today was our first day back to school after a nice relaxing three day weekend. Actually it was the third (and last) three day weekend we have had this month! It has been raining a lot lately due to a tropical storm hitting somewhere on the east coast. We have noticed that we aren't as sticky in the afternoons since it is cooler and the rain seems to keep coming all day. It reminds us of what fall is like in Washington. However, with the rain comes a few consequences here. First, the water often goes out. The more rain, the higher the river, and the greater chance that the pipe that brings the water to town will fall down. This is not a surprise because we can see that pipe as we walk to school and it is exposed, and held up but what look like twigs stuck in the river. So as a consequence, we were again without water this week for three days. We made due with buckets collecting rainwater and even boiled some water on the stove for a nice warm bucket shower.

The second consequence of so much rain is the mud and erosion. Our street is full of mud and we can't manage to go anywhere without getting our shoes all dirty. The roads all over Honduras are apparently horrible and the rain causes the cliffs to erode and bring boulders and dirt onto the highways. As a result the cars and buses and trucks are having a hard time going anywhere. The other day we were going home and were walking along the main highway and there were trucks lined up for a long ways. This morning we went to school and many of our students were not there. About a third of the students live in town called Santa Rita which is about 15 minutes from Copan. Since the highway is so bad the buses couldn't get here. So at 8am we get a note in our classes that school is getting out at 9:00. I don't know who was more excited, the teachers or the kids. So we had a nice surprise and get to extend our break. There is talk that if they don't fix the road that we will have tomorrow off too. We'll see

Yesterday David, Bekky and I went to the Mayan ruins. It is a short walk from our house and we invited a family to come with us. They are a family that we met from church and they have two kids who go to Mayatan. Jaquelin is the mom and her sons Isaac and Frank. Jaquelin's mom came too and two nieces. They packed quite the picnic so once we got there we ate cake and Coca Cola before entering the part of the park with the ruins. We spent the afternoon walking around the ruins and even got to go into some of the tunnels they have excavated. It is so amazing to walk around and see what is left of an ancient civilization. It is almost hard to believe that they are real. Here we are looking down on the main plaza. We are standing on more ruins.

This is the first set of ruins that you see when you enter. We climbed around on them and played with the frisbee until the guards told us to get down.