Hiking in Copan

The Stela Group
Originally uploaded by zassink

I recently realized that with less than a month left in Copan I really need to take advantage of the time that I have here on the weekends without school. Last weekend some teachers were hiking up to a waterfall and invited me along. We first went to the waterfall, then to the ancient Mayan stela "nearby." I heard it was nearby, it was another hour or so of strenuous hiking. Never-the-less...we made it! Then we read the sign and one part jumped out at us quickly, "nearby caves." So we made a plan (as we were all out of water almost), come back next week with lots of water and food to find the caves.
This morning we left the central park at 7am in search of the caves and a far away peak to conquer. We quickly got passed the stela on a short cut we had discovered and then plotted on towards where we thought the caves might be....the side of a big cliff. We ran into one person that pointed us up the hill so up we went. After scrambling up the loose rocks and dirt to the top we were still no closer to the caves. We asked some more farmers we ran into and they pointed us in a direction even further away from Copan. We'd now been hiking almost 3 hours and had climbed more than 1400 feet of elevation! We were tired but saw the village of Cabañas on the far side (which has bus service to Copan). It was never our intention to hike there, but we started talking about it in a semi-serious manner. After running into a third person that "pointed us" in the direction of the caves we set out confidently. Soon we were staring at the side of a cliff where obviously a cave should be but there was no cave in sight. We searched all over and eventually realized the caves were a mystery to us. We kept walking on our way to Cabañas and looking for the caves but never ended up finding them. In total it was a five hour hike covering over 6 miles climbing from 2000 ft up to 3400 ft then back down to 2200ft. We were disappointed to not conquer the caves, but we did conquer a big rock hill and many barbed wire fences that we hopped over. All in all...this was a successful day.:)

The Earth Shake

I woke up at 2:24am on Wednesday night/Thursday morning and noticed that my bathroom door was swinging funny. Having lived in LA for 10 years (although it was a long time ago) I remember a lot about earthquakes. I quickly realized that I was in an earthquake so I rolled out of bed and then....I just sat there on my hands and knees thinking, “I’m in Honduras. If this is a strong earthquake there are no building codes here and I’m sure I’m in deep trouble. If this isn’t strong, then why am I jumping out of my bed?” About the time that it took for this to go through my head the quake had settled a little then gotten a second wind and was now winding down when I decided to sit on the floor a bit longer cause it was hot that night and the tile was nice and cool.:) The power lines outside my window were going crazy the whole time and I was thinking, “I’m glad my house isn’t made of rubber.” By far the worst part of the whole experience were my neighbors. They all went outside and starting yelling and shouting. “The ground was shaking!” “I was thrown out of my bed!” “I went this way! Then I went that way! What was that?!” And there they sat for another 30 minutes or so just talking in loud voices as if the earthquake happened while nobody was sleeping. The next day they were all asking me if I had been too scared to come outside? Had I freaked out about the quake? Had I felt one before? I just kinda laughed and told them...”I’ve felt a couple...”

Through Painted Deserts

I remember my brother, Jonathan, read the book Blue Like Jazz a couple years back and had an immediate author crush on Donald Miller. Can you blame him? I equally had a major crush on him after reading that book. My brother went on to read Through Painted Deserts, also by Donald Miller. At the time he read it he would tell me constantly, “This book is amazing! It is so fitting to my life. I wish our parents could read this to know what I’m going through, etc.” At the time I chalked it up to transitional stress as he was a recent tenant of California...perhaps it’s my outlook of my less than six weeks I have of being a resident of Copan....but I started reading the book this afternoon on my free time while subbing in second grade and fell in love all over again. It’s like finding a cd of a long lost musician while cleaning out a closet and deciding to give it a listen. The whole premise is about leaving what we know, going somewhere and changing. I hope that my changing in life is not complete but as I come to a close of this “two year evolution” in my life I am struck by this passage of the book:
“I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons...Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons...I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently. Only the good stories have characters different at the end than they were at the beginning. And the closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn’t all happening at once...Everything we were is no more, and what we will become, will become what was.” – Donald Miller

My Grandpa

There’s an amazing story that I’ve held onto for the past 4 years since I’ve studied in Spain that I have read and reread a million times. I come back to it whenever I’m going through a transition in my life with the departure of a friend or when I up and move to a different country.:) My teachers in Spain gave me the story and therefore the story has been in Spanish. However, on my recent journey back to the States for my grandpa’s funeral I decided to translate the story into English and share it with all of you. Through the many agonies (as a recent friend put it) my grandpa truly had a beautiful heart...
Once upon a time there was a young man that went around the world saying that he had the most beautiful heart in the world. He went from town to town betting with the people that his heart was the most beautiful of all, and he demonstrated it. In fact, his heart was precious, young, and strong. But one day the young man found himself with an old man that insisted that his heart was much more beautiful than the young mans’. The young man laughed, thinking to himself that the old man was crazy but to give him the pleasure of competing agreed to bet with the old man. The two men took out their hearts in order to compare them. The heart of the old man was full of patches, holes, and scars. The young man asked, “How can you possibly say that your heart is more beautiful than mine? Look at it. It’s ugly, full of scars and holes. Mine is strong, perfect, and young.” The old man responded: “Every hole that you see is a piece of my heart that I have given to somebody. And each patch and scar is a piece that somebody has given to me. My heart is full of the marks of everyone who has passed through my life and meant anything significant to me. I have shared my heart with them and them with me.” The young man realized in this moment that the old man was right. He conceded to the old man the right to say he had the most beautiful heart in the world and he asked him to exchange a piece of his heart, so young and perfect. In this manner the young man began to make his heart more beautiful.

Proverbios/Proverbs

I’ve been collecting some proverbs that I’ve enjoyed over the past however much time and thought that I should put them together for a little post here…

-El que hoy se cae, se levanta mañana.
-He who today falls down, rises up tomorrow.

-En boca cerrada no entran moscas.
-Flies don’t enter into a closed mouth.

-Es más rico el rico cuando empobrece que el pobre cuando enriquece.
-The rich man who becomes poor is richer than the poor man who becomes rich.

-Darle una pelota a un niño es suficiente para sellar relaciones internacionales.
-Giving a ball to a kid is enough to seal international relations.

-Díme con quien andas y te digo quien eres.
-Tell me who you hang out with and I’ll tell you who you are.

-La muerte se esconde en lo más cotidiano. Nunca hay ceremonias y discursos en el momento de la muerte.
-Death is hidden in the most daily things. There are never ceremonies and speeches in the moment of death.

- Más ondo el río, hace menos ruido.
-The deeper the river, the less noise it makes.

Woody-Whoppers

I have had the joy of yet another batch of visitors here in Copan recently. This time my Spanish prof from college (Viki) and my communications prof (Clella) are both down here with a group of students from George Fox University. I haven’t really been hanging out with the group at all but I see them around town, talk to them a little, and I’ve gotten to hang out a bit with both professors. The other night we went to dinner at a local restaurant (Via Via) and got to talking about the local moto-taxis. Those that have come down here have seen them, they’re also called tuk-tuks or something like that. The whole group went up to La Pintada (a local village) the other day and my professors went up in a moto-taxi. As Clella is telling the story she says, “We went up there in one of those woody-whoppers.” I just kind of stared at her...”what?” I knew what she was talking about but I’d never heard it called a woody-whopper. I just started laughing as I recalled all the times in class that she made up words and talked about “wanging it out there” when talking about a new subject. Her rationale was something along the lines of, “I don’t really know where it came from. Just somewhere down in the depths, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything called that before.” Oh communications professors. What are we ever going to do with them?
In other news, I’m heading back to the US this weekend for a couple days. Those that haven’t heard from me yet, my grandpa passed away about 3 weeks ago. I’m going back to the funeral service which won’t be until Tuesday the 12th of this month. So if you feel so interested as to call my state-side phone Sunday through Tuesday I’ll be there.:) Oh wow....rain storm just started. I’ve heard thunder and seen lightening for the past half hour or so. I was starting to think that it wasn’t going to actually rain....but wow....it’s really raining like crazy...and with this rambling we’re now done....have a good rest of your day/night!