Honduras Day 3: Waterlogged

The day began with a double dose of language barrier. We decided to attend the Catholic mass with

the kids from San Jose Orphanage. For those of us raised Baptist, it was quite unfamiliar...oh, and they spoke in Spanish as well! The church was filled with icons familiar to the Catholic religion. The service was a little over an hour long, and we could tell when the kids had hit their limit sitting still and quiet. At one point, Sister Edith had 4-year-old Jonathan by the ear trying to keep him quiet. Little Maria Jose, sitting next to him, grabbed his other ear, which only ticked him off more. I'm not sure who won the battle.

Next up was a field trip to the hot springs with the kids. Most of us decided to walk with the kids. After all, it was just a 30-minute hike...Honduran time...really it was more like 60 minutes uphill most of the way. (For the record, the cars went a different direction...at the end of the afternoon they needed us to walk up the steeper hills so the cars could make it...which means it was uphill both ways. Go figure.)

We were quite surprised by how nice it was. We expected a dammed river, but there were three pools of varying hotness. To get all of us in the gate cost around $25. About $1 per person. Too bad they rarely have the money to come because it was clearly quite a treat for the kids.

They had a ball, which means we had a ball. It was fun for us to watch them just be kids, to throw them in the pool like we would our own (when they were much younger...now they'd throw me in). They loved playing with us, splashing us, and getting us to jump in with them. After an hour and a half we were tuckered. They weren't. So we watched them swim a while longer.

Germaphobes probably should never visit these pools. The "pool rules" we have in the US are a little more lax here in Honduras. For example, the kids ate their lunch in the pool (so much for that 30-minute rule), they drank their orange juice in the pool, when Sister Edith's hands were sticky from cutting melon or oranges, she'd just wash them in the pool. No one cared. It just was what it was. A couple of times we thought we might need Tony  Snook because some teen boys (not in the orphanage) kept climbing higher and higher into the trees to jump into the waist high water (note: Tony is always saving someone's life).

On the way back we all (including the kids) were too tired to walk, so the kids took the "bus." The truck belongs to a friend of the orphanage who came with us for the afternoon. No...there were no car seats!

Tomorrow begins our work projects in the morning and continued lessons with the kids in the afternoon.