HOLA!

I am safe and sound here in Gracias. After the longest day of my life of traveling and some bumps in the road (literally and figuratively) I am all settled in! My tiny room, with nasty pink walls, is all set up. None of the other girls who live in this house with me are back from their Christmas break yet… don't know when they will be back. But here is a run down of what went down my first day…

So i get to San Pedro airport at about 12pm, get my bags and everything. I find the family with my name on their sign that says "Miss Lory, Minerva school" so i figured that was me.. Its a man and his son Mauricio who will be in my class. The dad doesn't speak much english so Mauricio is my translator… its supposed to take 4 hours to drive here to Gracias…. it took us 6 hours. We stopped at a burger king and i said i wasn't hungry because i didn't know if it was safe to eat a hamburger from there… but apparently "no thanks" means "id love a burger!" because he bought me a burger so I ate it thinking the whole time "this is it, I'm going to be barfing all night". So then we take off for Gracias. People drive like maniacs here. I'm pretty sure there is no speed limit. At one point, we stopped at some parking lot/side of the road for the dad to take a nap. haha i asked Mauricio what we were doing and he said "he needs to sleep". unbelievable. luckily it was only a 15 minutes siesta then we started again. we finally made it here around 6pm. at this point a honduras girl named Anna Maria from the school staff meets us at the house (she looks about 12) and she gives me a very brief tour showing me the bathroom, the kitchen, and my room where they had put my bags. she doesn't speak any english and Mauricio is gone at this point. so I'm trying to ask this chick where the other girls are using my awesome spanish skills but its not working. she said something about "manana" which means "tomorrow" and pointing in the house so I was banking on the girls being back the next day, which did not happen. then she says "adios!" so I'm stranded at this big house with like 15 keys for every room. So i go lock myself in my room which isn't attached to the other rooms. you walk around the balcony to get to each room (ill take pictures later because its hard to explain) So I figured I better make my bed and start getting my bags unpacked. I get on my computer and we do have the internet but i don't have the password.. so at this point I'm thinking "jill and sonny are probably freaking out" and i wanted to let them know I had arrived. so i desperately turn my phone on even tho i knew it would cost an arm and a leg to call but of course i have zero service so it didn't matter anyway. then the power goes out a few minutes later so i just lay in my bed on the verge of tears feeling stranded. about 5 minutes later the power comes back on so i jump up and decide I'm going to find a phone or the internet. its already dark outside but there are lights around so i take my janitor keys, lock my door, then walk downstairs and there is a gate to get in the house so i stick the key in to unlock it and it gets stuck so I'm panicking and some teenager is walking by so i ask him to help. i said "auxilio" which i think means help, but i have no clue. so he comes over and finally gets it out. then i ask him for his internet and i don't think he understands me and said "no?" so he walked away laughing at me. so i go across the street to the neighbors house who runs a little convenient store out of their house and i see a little lady, she invites me in and she doesn't speak english so i try my spanish on her telling her i just moved in across the street and asked her if i could use her internet or phone. about 5 others come out of this house and are all trying to figure out what i need. Im showing them my numbers i was given of the school manager and they finally call her and she doesn't speak english so that was pointless. So I'm trying to ask them to use their internet to email my family and after about 15 minutes of our pointless conversation I start to cry and this little nice lady brings me a tissue and rubs my back. Then as I'm about to leave, a younger guy comes out of one of the 15 rooms and i swear I hear angels singing hallelujah and he's lit by a bright light behind him as he carries out his laptop over to me. at this point tears are streaming down my face like an idiot because I was the happiest girl in the whole world to see a computer. while I'm trying to get on gmail, which i couldn't do because it was asking me security questions since I'm in a foreign country and it wouldn't accept my answers. so i get this dude to log in his email for me to use and i email my mom. then he says "Skype?" and I say YES! so i try to login to Skype and it wouldn't let me for some odd reason. while I'm trying all this stuff on the computer, the lady says "blah blah blah american blah blah english" and is pointing at the door so i realize they found another american. so in walks this lady named Diane, my 2nd saving grace of the night. She is the other new teacher but she lives about 4 houses down from me and moved in 2 days earlier. and she speaks spanish so she is talking to the people in this house. so after i email my mom, i go down to Diane's apartment and hang for a little bit. so then i go home and go to bed.. wake up at 3 hearing all kinds of weird noises, think it was just the wind because it was rainy and windy but it still freaks me out. rooster woke me up at about 5am. so I organized my room and got everything set up. now i just need my housemates! oh and i never got sick from the burger king.

Welp thats it for meow.