Bienvenidos a Honduras!

We made it! *sigh of relief* Now Claire, Sarah, Chelsea, (our new American o is also studying here)and I are sitting at the school blogging (and non-blogging in Claire's case :)). I just had my first mango and it was awesome! Anyway, I know I'm going to leave out some but I'll try to put in the important/interesting pieces of our trip. I'll post pictures tomorrow because I left my cord at my host family's house.

Yesterday started with a 3AM wake up to get to the St. Louis airport where there was a huge line! Fortunately, our luggage made it on the plane and we got to our gate and had one minute to spare before they started boarding. Our Miami flight was a wee bit bumpy but it could have been way worse! It took less than 10 minutes to get through customs and we found Miguel (our driver) very quickly. We had a sweet looking bus/van thing with AC named Juanita. I sat in the front because I get motion sick and I am glad I did because the road to Copan Ruinas was curvy with lots of "tomolos" or speedbumps. They were so big in some parts of the road that it stopped our bus! Miguel spoke great English and told us a lot about the country on our 3 hour drive. Coke and Pepsi are equally marketed down here in case anyone cared to know! I made sure to ask him how to say queasy in Spanish so I could explain how I was feeling to my host family and they didn't think I was crazy.

Once we got to the school we immediately went to our host family's houses. Claire and I have separate rooms in the same house and Sarah is in a house right by the school. We each have a ceiling fan, a key to lock our door, a bathroom, shower with hot water, purified water (much like a culligan dispensor), and a dresser. It's very clean but we encountered a few pesky bugs that don't bite or sting. I went to ask what time it was so I could set my clock that didn't work and realized it was only 7:30! It was dark and we were exhausted so we ate dinner and went to bed. I'll leave out the details of being sick but I have a silly picture to post later.

A little about my family....My "mom" is a wonderful Honduran lady named Lorena and she has lived in Honduras her whole life. She has an 18 year old daughter named Suli who left for the capital city for the University today. She was sad but the school goes for 3 months and then they have a month off. Suli lives with her cousins in the capital city because the dorms are too dangerous to live in. Her two older sons live above us and we don't know much about them. They drive motortaxis in town. I'll post a pic later of one. Her husband sells large trucks or something and is a very nice man.

Today we are exploring the town of Copan Ruinas before we start school tomorrow!

Hasta Luego!