News from the Rich Coast: Semana Santa

I'm finally starting to get caught up on everything after getting back from Semana Santa. Two weeks ago was Semana Santa, which is kind of like spring break, except almost every single person in Central America (including adults) gets off the same week. Since I had the whole week off from school, I thought it would be fun to do some traveling, so I decided to go visit Honduras with Theresa, another one of the English teachers, and her brother Joe. Theresa used to tutor a missionary family in Honduras, so we were able to stay with the family for the week. We decided to take a charter bus, in order to make the 18 hour trip more enjoyable. On the way to Honduras, I sat next to a man from El Salvador who told me a lot about the different landmarks that we went by along the way. He told me that Nicaragua is looking to find different forms of energy, so they have put up a bunch of windmills to harness wind energy. I think they got the idea from the windmills out in western Kansas.

Apparently Semana Santa is supposed to be the hottest week of the year in Honduras, so the weather was quite hot: in the mid-90's all week; it was a little bit hard to go from nice cool 70 degree Costa Rica weather to 90 degree weather, but it was still a very fun trip. We were staying in a town named Comayagua which is about 2 hours northwest of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. The family we were staying with is a missionary family through the United Reformed Church. They are working with a church of about 40 members, and while I was there I got to spend time with a lot of the different members of the church. A couple of the young people in the church showed us around Comayagua, and I also got to play a lot of soccer with the young people. Most everything in Honduras was less expensive than Costa Rica, so I stocked up on a bunch of stuff before I went home. The food there was really good too. Some of my favorites were gringas (tortilla, chicken, cheese, and a sauce similar to ranch; they are called gringas because they have all white ingredients, just like Americans are called gringos), baleatas (tortilla with chicken, eggs, and vegetables served for breakfast and lunch) and paletas (frozen milk with different flavors served on a popsicle stick). We also went to a nice fish restaurant with a couple from the church. It was located right by a lake, where the fish were caught and fried up in front of you.

Comayagua is known for making carpets out of colored sawdust every Good Friday. Different churches and organizations stay up all night Thursday making these carpets, in order to prepare for the huge Catholic procession that takes place on Friday. It was interesting to see all of the different patterns and designs that were made, all from sawdust. People walk around all morning watering the carpets so the sawdust won’t blow away. There were probably about 50 different carpets spread out throughout the whole town, and there were people who came from all over Latin America and the US to see these carpets. Then later on that morning a huge Catholic procession paraded over the carpets, while everyone else stood by and watched. Here are some of the pictures that I took in Honduras.