Guatemala Weekend

At the last minute we decided we would pack up and go on a weekend getaway to Guatemala. We live about 20 minutes from the border so it is easier to go into Guatemala than to go to other Honduran cities. We went to a city called Esquipulas which is about 2 1/2 hours away by public bus. We had to take 3 different buses to get there but the timing worked out perfectly and we arrived around 5pm on Friday. Esquipulas is famous for the Basilica. This giant church turned 250 this year and is quite a stunning piece of architecture. As you can see from the picture it has a dominating presence in the valley. The thing we really liked about this town is that it has a lot of visitors but hardly any foreign tourists. This made things cheaper for us. We were surprised how it came alive with thousands of Guatemalans making a pilgrimage to see the famous black Christ statue. We spent the weekend touring the church, attending mass several times and going to a park/zoo. It was a perfect place to tour for the weekend, for Valentine's day, and it felt so good to get out of Copan.
Here is a view of the Basilica from a hill looking into Esquipulas. It looks enormous even from far away.
Here is David in front of the Basilica. This park was full during the weekend of people standing in line to see the black Christ statue. The line on Sunday zig zagged back and forth through the park walkways. It took us 45 minutes to get through the line when it was already at the church. We can only imagine how long people waited in the line when it started at the back of the park.
Here it is. This is the statue that brings people from all over to see it.
This is in another section of the church where people lit candles.
One of our favorite pictures from the zoo. We think they try to save money by doubling up on cages. Some of our favorite animals included alligators, lions, ocelots, deer, ostriches, crazy monkeys, anteaters and a variety of birds.
The zoo is in a park that has many picnic areas, hammocks everywhere and sports areas. It also advertises a cave which really is just a mine shaft. We really enjoyed our morning here and spent some time relaxing in the sunshine.

Cold weather

We've had some interesting weather lately. Everyone here is shocked that it is cold in February. Apparently this is the coldest winter they have had in a long time. But the funny thing about cold here is that it is only about 50 degrees. Everyone gets their gloves, scarves and hats out and walks around as if it were below freezing. With the cold this week came the rain. We woke up Monday morning to really hard rain at 4am. Rain is good but it makes everything muddy. The dust has collected over the the last month or so and now the streets have about a 1/2 inch of dust covering them. Then the rain came and turned that dust to slippery mud that we carefully walk through to get anywhere.

We found out yesterday morning that we were going to go home from school at 11am. There had been no water at the school for 2 days. You can imagine the problem this presents when you have about 300 students who use the bathrooms. It made me laugh to think of what parents would think in the states if their students were sent home because the school had no water. This is a common occurrence here in Honduras.

Weekends here are pretty relaxing. David's new Saturday routine is to wake up at 6am and go hiking in the hills surrounding Copan. Each week he has goals to find a way to get over certain peaks. I on the otherhand enjoy my extra few hours of sleep and David comes home from his hikes a few hours later to find that I haven't moved a muscle. Last week he saw an amazing rainbow. However he says that this picture does not do it justice.
Over our Christmas break we were lucky enough to have our house painted. Before it was a beige color that was very dirty and looked as if it hadn't been painted in years. We came home from Costa Rica to find our house painted green. We love it and were glad that we didn't have to be there to watch them paint our high ceilings. We'll get a better picture up soon.
Well that is a random update on us.