Semana Santa has begun

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It is officially Semana Santa! No school this week, YES! It's amazing what a relief that is to me considering I don't really do anything at school anyway. I think I'm going to get another vacation week in a few months for something called "student's week", whatever that is. They like vacations here! Woohoo!

One of the things I like about it being Semana Santa week is that everyone's so happy. At school on Friday the mood was palpably joyful, and Rosa has been giggly all weekend. It makes sense because they are all students who have been working really hard.

On Saturday Rosa and Giovanni and I went on a little road trip to La Paz, a little little town outside of this little town. We met up with some of Rosa's friends and somehow managed to cram eight people inside of one five-seater car, but that's completely normal here. (You should see my school "bus"! It's actually a van but at times there are twice as many people as seats). We drove around a bit, went to one of the girl's house who had lots of pets and literally dozens of birds, and we went to the park and ate ice cream and drank soda and acted silly. I didn't do much but watch and giggle at all of them because they were all so fun. Then Rosa and Giovanni and I went home and went to church.

On Sunday we went to church again, and then we went to Giovanni's huge house to swim in his pool. And then we got dressed and went on an adventure looking for Guajada cheese. Rosa has been telling me about Guajada cheese-- it's her favorite thing ever. She told me it's softer than The Honduran Cheese and it tastes better. So we drove to somebody's house and Giovanni asked them if they had Guajada, but they didn't, so we drove to Giovanni's grandparents house, and behold, they had a huge tub of it! We stood in the kitchen while the lady finished making it and then they gave us a baggie of it. We went back to Giovanni's and had a dinner of Guajada, beans, rice, and tortillas. Mmm! I didn't like the Guajada better than Honduran Cheese, but then again, I didn't love The Honduran Cheese when I first tried it and now I do, so I guess it's just one of those types of things you have to get used to.

Then Giovanni and Rosa started a movie, but I fell asleep before the opening credits, so I sorta missed out on that.

And today is monday! I just ate pancakes (which are here what we'd call crepes) and watched the last half of Finding Nemo and now I guess we'll probably spend the day doing mostly nothing. Tomorrow we're going on a camping trip with the church youth, so I'm excited for that!

My pictures have been pretty lame so I'm going to be trying to take more and better ones. I always feel like such a tourist pulling out my camera, but I essentially am a tourist so I don't know why this bothers me. I know I'll regret it later if I don't take enough!