Dia de la Madre

Did you know that Mother's Day in Guatemala always falls on May 10th? That means this year it was on a Tuesday and instead of giving us only Tuesday off, they decided to give the mothers of our students a real treat by having their kids home from school for a four day weekend. Though I'm certain many mothers were pleased to have their little ones making them breakfast in bed and showering them in homemade "coupons" that they made in 3A, I'm not sure that anyone enjoyed the 4-day weekend as much as the teachers did.

Heading into the break, there were a number of opportunities for travel that were options for the long weekend. First choice was to go to El Salvador with Tom to the best surfing beach in Central America. I had a ton of fun there last time we went but after having a heart-to-heart with myself, I realized it would be better to go somewhere that I have yet to see. Another option was to go see my dear friend, Amy, who is currently teaching at an international school in Honduras. Though Guatemala and Honduras are neighbors on a map, the capital cities are actually about a 12 hour bus ride apart. So by the time I got there, we would hang out in her capital city, I would get to see her awesome teaching for only one day, then I would be on a bus back to Guate. The last option was to go to Belize with three other coworkers. It sounded like the perfect plan until we realized that Belize, though also connected to Guatemala, is a 13 hour trip. 

Being a Mayan Princess

So, Makenzie and I almost literally closed our eyes, pointed to a spot on the map, and set sail. We ended up in Copan, Honduras; a city a mere 12km from the boarder of Guatemala but worlds apart in culture. First, the town was just plain awesome. Totally safe to walk around (even at night), plenty of restaurants to try, and close to hundreds of things to do outdoors. We explored ancient Mayan Ruins, walked through a rescued bird sanctuary (I know, I know, I can hardly believe it myself!), explored the city by foot and tuk-tuk, and scaled a canyon via river and a number of other ridiculous things. We met some interesting folks along the way as well, including our anti-American (yet Honduran exploiting) tour guide, a couple from the Netherlands who had no idea it was unsafe for them to stand on a busy street corner with three bags of luggage at their feet (we ended up giving them a ride to their hostal; sweetest people ever!), and a hotel owner who told me my Spanish was good (sure knows how to flatter a girl, even if he was exaggerating).

During our waterfall tour, there were parts of the hike where we had to lasso a rope around a log and belay ourselves down a cravas, crawl through a 2.5 deep hole on your stomachs with rushing water and rocks all around us, and of course jump off numerous cliffs and get talked into performing a number of dives for the local kids playing in the water.

Mak D jumping off waterfalls and stuff

Hannah. So close to birds right now. Hannah.

Though the waterfall tour was super intense, it was not nearly as terrifying as the bird sanctuary. I tend to pride myself in not having many fears and willingly taking risks which is why the random fear of birds I have is so incredibly irrational. Though I believe it stemmed from both the Alfred Hitchcock movie, "The Birds" and the fact that my little brother use to torment me as a kid by letting his pet birds fly around the house when my mom was gone, it still doesn't excuse the fact that at age 23 I am still absolutely terrified when birds are flying anywhere within a 20ft radius of my body. With Makenzie's encouragement (and reminder that the birds were in cages (though I do NOT believe birds should ever be caged; they scare me but they are pretty dang cool they because can fly. Cage=no flight)), we were able to walk around and see a number of rescued birds from around the world with me only running in fear from the cages twice.

Where the sacrificial ball games were played... eek!

The Mayan Ruinas were some of the most interesting artifacts I have ever seen in all my travels. The immense size of the structures were enough to make us tired walking around them so thinking about how a civilization was able to hand-carve and build these structures was nothing short of mind-blowing. It was really surreal to think about how different life was for the people who lived in those communities, especially because so much of what we think we know is actually still pretty uncertain. Makenzie has been to another ruins site in Northern Guatemala that is apparently much larger than this one and has since motivated me to make a trek up there to compare the two.

In all, our Mother's Day weekend was spent exploring and discussing the amazingness of life. Though I was unable to call my own mother on the day we celebrate in the U.S., it was lucky that Mother's Day fell on Tuesday in Guatemala so I could call her when we got home. Cheers to all the moms out there.