chicks

So our neighbor kids come over almost every night to play with us and to get a decent meal in their bellies. Well they came over last night and brought some little friends along with them... baby chicks. Not just any chicks, dyed chicks. There was a purple, pink and yellow one (yes the yellow was dyed too). It was quite a sight. Apparently they used to dye chicks back in the day for Easter in the United States, but stopped because they realized it was bad for the chicks and hurting them. Oh but in Honduras, anything goes. These poor baby chicks were chirping non stop and shaking because they were so scared. Sergio kept saying they were cold and he thought that was why they were shaking. haha. It was awful. Come to find out, they started out with 4 chicks but the 2 year old, Estefany, apparently murdered one earlier in the day. Yes murdered. She squeezed it too tight and straight up killed it. Every time she would pick them up last night, she was holding them so tight or just holding them by their heads. It was painful to watch. Ada kept dropping hers all over the place. I would put money on it that they didn't make it through the night. Needless to say, we enjoyed playing with the poor little chicks and I'm sure we all probably caught some weird chicken disease now. Here are some pics of the chicks. Enjoy and please don't call PETA on us. thanks.

Semana Santa In Guatemala

Sorry I have not written on this thing in 10 years. After the science fair, I got busy with report cards and laziness. But now I'm back in action, don't fret mom. Last week we had off for about 10 days for Semana Santa, which means Holy Week in Espanol. They go all out down here in Central America for the whole week before Easter Sunday. This is why we got ourselves a nice little vacay. A group of 5 girls, including myself, took a little trip over to Guatemala for the break.

Let me just start off by saying that every time we leave Honduras, it makes me realize more and more how far behind Honduras really is as a developing country. As soon as you cross the border, you can really see how Honduras is the poorest of the poorest in Central America. It makes me sad because every other country is working towards bettering themselves while Honduras is sort of rotting away and not improving.

Needless to say, Guatemala is absolutely beautiful. We spent half the week at Lake Atitlan and the rest in Antigua. Lake Atitlan is sort of a hippy area that has pretty much been taken over by gringos. We stayed in a town called San Pedro on the lake. A lot of the restaurants and hostels are owned by Europeans, Americans or other white people. But if you walk 5 minutes up the hill to the middle of the town, you will find Indigenous Mayan people. Talk about awesome. The women are all dressed in their traditional clothing and it was so neat to see. The lake was full of AMAZING food. We kayaked to another town on the lake which turned out to be a bad idea because it was super windy that created crazy waves. My friend Colleen and I were in a 2 seater kayak and at one point I didn't think we would make it to shore. We got about half way across the lake and we couldn't go any further. Every time a boat would pass I would yell for help, kinda kidding but secretly hoping they would really stop. No one did. Thankfully we finally made it back ashore and my arm muscles are super strong now... or at least they should be. We also made a bad decision of hiking a dormant volcano at 3am to see the sunrise. We were told that waking up at 3am was totally worth the view when the sun was rising. So we gave in to peer pressure and tried it out. The dang hike was straight up and down. About 4 hours in the hike, the sun started to rise but we couldn't see it because we were still an hour away from the top stuck in the woods. I wanted to cry. I thought all my organs were going to fall out of my butt about 2 hours in. Hiking that volcano was one of the worse decisions of my life. Yes, it was worse than the horseback riding decision in El Salvador. I think I fell at least 15 times. My leg was all scratched up and bleeding. We finally made it to the top 5 hours later... sat there for about 30 minutes and came back down. Our legs were like gumby when we got to the bottom. We were all in bad moods, dirty from head to toe, hungry, and of course worn out like no other. I decided then and there that I was not made for mountain climbing. Other than the hike, I absolutely loved the lake and want to go back again some day.

After the lake, we traveled to Antigua where all the Holy Week festivities were happening. They have the biggest Semana Santa celebration in Central America. Every day they had processionals throughout the streets. Thousands of people were in the town that week for the celebrations. It was such a cool experience. They even had processionals at 4 in the morning one day. My favorite thing about it were the sawdust carpets in the streets called alfombras. They are designs made out of dyed sawdust. People would work on them all night long and then the processional parades would walk all over them and they would be remade differently each day. They were up and down the streets everywhere you went. So cool. The whole experience was definitely a great one and would advise anyone to experience Antigua during Holy Week.

The view from the top of the Volcano... might look pretty but so not worth it!

The view of San Pedro on the lake

An indigenous woman in the market.

Two young girls in the market selling fruit.

The lake.

Antigua..

An alfombra being worked on in the streets. Some of it is designed by hand and some of the parts they use big stencils.

Antigua was so colorful!

My favorite picture of the trip. The cobblestone streets looked so beautiful after a rain and all the kids were playing in the puddles.

Another alfombra.. they would sit or lay on wood to hover over their work.

During one of the processionals on Good Friday. They all wore black on this day for the mourning of Christ. They carried tons of these floats for each parade.. marching to a beat by a live marching band. It was amazing.