Feliz Cumpleaños A Mí

Thank you for all of the wonderful birthday wishes!! I had a great day...

My roommates planned a brunch for me this morning. We had potatoes, eggs, sweet bread (from a bakery down the road run by nuns), and watermelon. Jackie went into town and bought me some really pretty flowers too, how sweet! All of the volunteers except for Mary came to celebrate, which was so nice. After brunch I just lounged around the house and planned my four day weekend (more on that later). Tonight Andrew, Jeff, Lacey, and Maki came over to have a dance party, play "Things" (one of my favorite games), and eat baleadas. When I saw "The Game of Things" sitting in Maki's house I was ecstatic, so of course I requested to play it for my birthday. I was cracking up for hours and actually snorted at one point. Brie-when I snorted my friend Michelle said "Aww, one of your friends wanted to hear you do that. You'll have to tell her I heard it". Haha! Andrew has made a cake for all of the birthday's so far. He is the best cook we have here so everyone looks forward to eating something he's made. He had told me about a week ago that he already knew what he was going to do fro my cake. Well the poor guy got really sick yesterday and just couldn't make me a cake. I thought I just wasn't going to get one, but then Jeff surprised me tonight with a cake he'd made. Andrew gave him a recipe and he put together an absolutely delicious cake...what a guy! It was a Victoria sandwich with whipped cream and pineapple. I'll post of few pictures below and you can see the rest on my Picasa page. I'll also post pictures of the craziness that was "Dia del Nino".

Tomorrow we are going to a town called Catacamas. Oscar, our computer teacher at school, owns a smoothie shop there. He has been asking us to come and visit for weeks now, so tomorrow is the day. He's going to pick us up from the bus station (it's about a 30-45 minute trip) and take us to see some caves. After we're done seeing the caves we're going to head to Oscar's house. His mom is preparing a lunch for us :). Then we're going swimming in nearby lake and out for smoothies. Should be a fun day!

Last night after "Dia del Nino" we rode home in the back of a pick up truck, which happens frequently in Honduras. Andrew has been keeping a blog since we've been here and I find his description of this mode of transportation to be hysterical, descriptive, and dead on! Enjoy:

"It seems about time to talk about Honduran driving habits in a bit more detail. In particular the abundance of pick up trucks, and the even more abundant habit of riding in the back of them. You see it everywhere, and while this might not seem so odd, try to envision exactly what this form of transportation entails. You are sitting on the edge of the bed (nobody seems to sit IN the bed of the truck, and as a result you feel honor bound to follow suit, or else risk seeming like some cowardly gringo pansy), and you fly along a dirt road which is more pot holes than pavement...and by pavement I mean compacted dirt. The driver attempts to compensate for the Swiss cheesiness of the road by swerving suddenly to try and avoid them; a maneuver which often takes you into the path of on coming traffic!
Now, you want to try and look ahead, to try and prepare for the imminent swerving, bumping, and near-death experiences rapidly hurtling towards you, but whenever you look up you are blinded by all the grit and dust kicked up by the passing vehicles which the driver of this death ride has managed to avoid.
So now you are blind, hanging on for dear life, and wondering if it would have been a better idea to simply walk the five miles back home?"

"I count myself in nothing else so happy, as in a soul remembering my good friends."--William Shakespeare