Fiesta Típica

No time for words, just look,

 

The Normal Size

Family Photo! All the girls together!

Christmas Break

Christmas was incredible, and I wanted a blog post that did it justice, school has also been crazy since we’ve been back (a month already) which is why it has taken me so long to write...

Christmas…where to begin? I expect most people, myself included would suggest at the beginning…so here goes.

We dropped our Americans at San Pedro airport, and our subtle trio of two white girls and a Japanese man (Me, Kate and Yoshi) set off for Tela. It was weird saying goodbye to people who we see each and every single day, even though the goodbye was only for two and a half weeks…

A day in Tela consisted of Ran Beys - Honduras knock off Ray Bans - Kate ripping her shorts and having toborrow a pin from a random woman who we met in the taxi and fish! The heat in Tela was very welcome having spent the last week or so in relative cold up in the mountains, and the Garifuna village of Miami was an interesting and beautiful day trip.

 Our time in La Ceiba was purely out of necessity as it’s not a very nice place. We went from the bus, to the hostel, to a restaurant and back to bed. Our few hours there was plenty of time to realise we didn’t want to go back there again.

In the morning we caught out ferry to Utila…known as the vomit comet we were very happy to get off without suffering like many others on the ferry. We only spent 5 days on the beautiful, beautiful Caribbean island of Utila (not enough) but it was definitely our favourite few days of the whole vacation (yes I said vacation) They were spent diving, sunning it up and behaving like everyone else in the world our age…which was a welcome break from having to be the responsible teachers we are every other day of this year!  T-shirts were won, friendships were formed and lots of interesting people were found. It was nice to not be the token white people for a change, but on the other hand it was strange to see soo many white people in one place, and still – technically – be in Honduras. Seeing our Hondie family of volunteers was also wonderful!

 

Christmas day was marvellous, we had two dives and the - not so wonderful – exam, and completed our Open Water Diving course in time to celebrate with the rest of Underwater vision! If you go to Utila stay and dive at Underwater, That’s an order! 40 or so people brought either food or wine, dressed respectfully, - which meant guys had to wear a shirt - and spent Christmas together as one big multinational family. It was amazing! We were very sad to leave..but we had a bus booked from Ceiba to Antigua the next day, so unfortunately when we said ‘we’re leaving tomorrow’ we actually had too… (Watch the Utila Video on Youtube)

Guatemala is such a beautifully colourful country.. we divided our time between Lago Atitlan and Antigua and loved both equally… again meeting some amazingly interesting people, including one woman who did a  project Trust gap year back in 1986! Her husband told us about how she never shut up about the experience, and it was wonderful to hear someone other than Kate and I describe their year as the most rewarding experience of their lives…which is exactly how we feel already… A lot of money was spent but we were on holiday so who cares!!

On our way back we caught up with Erin and Ellen in Gracias which was lovely, relaxed and a perfect way to celebrate Ellen’s 18^th birthday! We went to the other hot springs in Gracias, the ones we had not visited before (there was a reason for this) These pools were full of Hondurans and only Hondurans.. we were stared at and gawked at, and this was a definite sign that we were back home!

(Us in Antigua, Guatemala: The Cross on the Hill)

I won’t bore you with anymore ins and outs of the trip..there were lots of buses and long journeys but we had an amazing time…not necessarily a relaxing one but we had fun!