A busy Sunday

I think I have made my first real Honduran friend.  Lettie is 18 and works (helps to cook and clean) at my host-mom's parents' house.  I spend a good amount of time over there and after she found out I like to run, she asked if I wanted to go walk with her last Sunday.  She walks every day but it is always during my work hours, and she  has classes in late afternoon so Sunday is really our only over-lapping free time.  We walked for a few hours, all up and down the mountain roads and through parts of "town" that I didn't even know were parts of town.  She is very sweet and motivated, and asked if I wanted to walk with her every Sunday.  So yesterday afternoon, we walked about an hour to the hot springs which are over on a different mountain.  We passed a few houses with children playing outside and they joined us.  The springs are on the side of a mountain, which is actually an ancient volcano.  It was really cool seeing such clear water flow down with steam rising up, and there were a few cement baths that someone built to catch the water in.  We walked through the woods along the river to the source of the water, and in the clear pools of water we could see it bubbling up from the ground.  It was a fun adventure, and the views along the walk were gorgeous.

On the walk

Me and Lettie

A bath from the hot springs

The hot water with steam rising up, very cool

We were both standing on a tiny rock and had to jump back over to solid land because everything that appears yellow is hot sponge.

A chunk of natural sponge.

The closer we got to the source, the hotter the water was.

The water bubbling up from the ground.

It was hard to catch the bubbles on camera, but you can see the ripples from the bubbles...

A view of my town from above 

The blue house right in the center is my house!

A beautiful path through the woods.

Later that night after dinner, my family told me we were going to the circus.  Apparently every year a different circus company comes to town.  It was very small, but they had a circus tent set up with a couple pieces of equipment and some animals.  There were only 4 people who did all the acts.  One young man was kind of the gymnast; he juggled fire and swung around on a trapeze.  The three men did a lot of acts dressed as clowns and basically talking/cracking jokes.  The one lady did a couple of dances that were pretty impressive since she recently had a baby, which I know because all Honduran mothers breast-feed their babies anytime, in front of anyone, in any place.  The skits were pretty funny, but it might be the smallest circus in the world.  It was still a new, fun experience!

Mundo Magico= Magical World

Me, Xiomara, and Lettie

Right before Omar took the picture, I peeked inside and saw the old, rusty condition of the equipment, and this is my expression of uncertainty.

Sitting on the bleachers, which are slabs of wood placed on other slabs of wood.

These are the circus animals.  Two ducks, and there was a parrot in a cage as well.