Semana Santa

As most of you know, this past Sunday was Easter Sunday. What most of you probably don't know is that you could have had vacation all week long if you lived in Honduras. Semana Santa, or Holy Week, is the week leading up to Easter Sunday and there are all sorts of events, mainly processions, that take place. As U.S. government property, we had to work Monday-Wednesday, but then we had a nice long weekend.

Thursday kicked off with a soccer game. We split the teams evenly between gringos and hondurans. Although, the Hondurans should have counted for two since they have twice the stamina and twice the soccer skill than the rest of us. I managed to score one of the goals for my team. After the goalie and defender had been taken out in the prior two attempts, I was free to nudge the ball over the goal line (along with the final defender). The second half my team wanted to switch up goalies... you know me, I've never been goalie in my life, but I've seen it on TV and it doesn't look that hard. So I went for it! I was also thinking, let's get this Honduran out scoring some more goals and keeping the ball on the other half of the field - easy work. I was able to challenge a few attempts at goal and save our team from losing the victory. Apparently they thought I was kind of good, even though I made the one mistake a goalie can make and picked up drop-pass. (Note: you can only grab the ball when it's not being passed to you). I got a little scraped up, but I think I heard some guys calling me "Portero" (goalie) in the street the other day.

Thursday night started the Silent Procession, signifying the time that Jesus went away to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane before being brought before the Roman court. After this procession passed the main street at about 12:00am, the night began. If you've ever heard of Semana Santa, then surely you've heard of the alfombras. The translation is 'carpet' but alfombras sounds more appealing. And trust me, you need appealing sounding words to stay up all night long tediously pouring colored sawdust into cardboard stencils so that it can be trampled down by the massive procession the following day. Yes, that's right. This beauty did not even live to see its 24-hour birthday. Hopefully you can see some of the process in the collage above. We're in a pretty small town, so our resources are limited, but there were about 15 - 20 people when we started and we spent the whole night just making this one section. Bigger towns around Central America have massive, elaborate, ornate alfombras that stretch for blocks and sometimes different neighborhoods take over different sections and spent all night creating their masterpieces. Well, I didn't actually stay up all night. I bailed at about 5am. It's amazing how rapidly sleep moves up the priority list when you try to pull an all-nighter. I saw the face of Jesus, saw Him smiling, He knew I wanted to go to bed. I heard Him say "It is good," so I went.

The next day I slept in until lunchtime. It was a pretty lazy day of napping and hanging around, and also enjoying the pool on my neighbor's roof. Best idea ever! They even put up a tent so it was in the shade. It was much cleaner than the river where everyone had been hanging out every other day that week. I stuck with the lazy theme and called it a night pretty early. That left me well-rested for Saturday.

Saturday was the day for the big dance (ACU read: choreography) fiesta. It started at 10pm and went until 3am. There had been a couple other kick-off dances like this before, but this was one of the "bigger" ones, so I heard. Turns out they weren't lying, there were a lot of people there, all in their teens and twenties. I kept telling everyone I can't dance, or that I don't like to, or that I wasn't sure about paying the $2 at the door, etc. But in the end, us humans are pretty adaptable. I actually ended up having a really good time, made better by the fact that I had met several people by this point and felt like I actually had some friends around. So I took the opportunity to get some dance lessons in Bachata, Cumbia, Merengue, and of course Reggaeton, which isn't really associated with any particular dance. So it ended up being a great night and I even danced a little bit (ok, kind of a lot). I even made my host family stay until 3am, before finally giving into their desire to go home. In conclusion, let's just say a good time was had by all, and white guy can move a li'l bit. And I'm actually really looking forward to the next fiesta!

I have just over a week left here before we head back to our original training site. I'm gonna be really sad to leave after having met so many people and really integrating with my family, who serves some really scrumptious dishes. After another week back at base camp, we'll all go our separate ways to our new homes. Official swear-in date is Friday, May 13 (also my parents' anniversary).


Enjoy the pictures and I hope you all had a lovely Easter.