Ocotepeque weekend

After such adventures the past two weekends, Kelly and I decided to keep it chill (and cheap!) this weekend and stay at home. But we still ended up leaving the country and having a great time! Friday night we stayed in with the Peace Corps guys, watched movies and learned how to play euchre (is that how you spell it?). My team won :)

On Saturday we all (Kelly, Matt, Sim and I) had planned to get up early and go for a hike across the border in El Salvador, but the getting up early part didn´t really happen, and by the time we rolled out of here around 1pm it was drizzling and nasty. We tried to perservere but after a few minutes in the rain we decided that rainy hikes are not all they´re cracked up to be, so instead we walked down the road a bit to a hotel, a resort really, called Entrepinos. We went up to the fully-stocked bar, sat on leather barstools and ordered hamburgers, nachos and Heineken. We then moved to the couch, which wasn´t made of leather as much as actual cowhide, which left little white cow hairs on my clothes! But yes, this former vegetarian ate her cowburger with pleasure!! We checked out the rest of the hotel, which has a conference center, tennis courts, and two pools, and fortunately, an indoor game room. We played a bit of foosball, and then since we were short a paddle devised a new form of ping pong using only our hands. The competition was pretty intense and we played for several hours! Then it was time to head home in the cold rain, and we ate Easy Mac microwavable macaroni and cheese and packets of delicious Swiss Miss hot chocolate that some former volunteer had left in our house and watched movies again.

On Sunday, Kelly and I had been invited to go with Carol´s family to a friend´s house in the mountains. We were a little skeptical, especially since it was cloudy in the morning, but felt a bit trapped so went begrudgingly at 9am. But this place was gorgeous (see pictures below!), up a dirt road into the mountains was a little paradise! The pool was freezing cold, but warmed up in the afternoon with the sun, and the view over the mountains and the clouds was just beautiful. It was fun playing with the kids in the pool, and then we relaxed in hammocks and read the day away. AND, we spent most of the day speaking nothing but Spanish, a challenge but a nice change from just trying a sentence at a time and then reverting back to English. We left around 6pm, after a dinner of freshly caught fish which grossed me out a little. Back in Ocotepeque, Kelly and I continued our Sunday night tradition and bought 12 lempira (75 cent) licuados from our favorite restaurant - milkshakes strawberries, sugar and milk. Yum!

All in all, a great weekend, and a nice distraction from the stressful awaiting of the Peace Corps decision, which will come on Wednesday!! Think good thoughts for me! I´ll post here on Wednesday no matter what, so as not to keep my public waiting ;)