Vacation from a vacation

Everyone knows what I mean there in the title, right? After just about any kind of vacation, sometimes you get the feeling that you need a few days of rest at home afterwards, to recover from your vacation. For some reason, this is even applicable after vacations where your main activities are laying out at the beach or reading on the deck. Well, that’s how I pretty much feel today. Three of my last four days have been spent traveling and otherwise not much else at all. On Friday and Sunday, I went to San Marcos, a small city nearby, for various reasons. I was successful in watching an HIV/AIDS charla, having some nice meals, paying my internet, getting keys made (again), using the 3G internet, visiting one of my sisters, and meeting some new people. They were mostly good days, save for travel issues one morning, with a lazy Saturday sandwiched in between.

Yesterday, I went to Santa Rosa de Copan, a medium-sized tourist-friendly city about an hour and a half away from my door, for pretty much the entire day. I wasn’t going for any particular reason, other than members of my family were going so I would have a free ride and spent at least part of the day with people who knew their way around. It ended up working out perfectly, and I really like that part of my family. The parents are great (the mom is technically my sister and the dad is the pastor I practice my Spanish and his English with) and the kids are cute, too (their four year old son has developmental delays and their 12 year old daughter is sweet). We left early and after dropping several people off and making a few stops (to fix a tire, to buy pineapples), we arrived in the city and they dropped me off at the central park.

Pretty much any town bigger than mine has a central park that’s a pretty happening place. Santa Rosa’s was no exception. After stopping at the ATM (I was down to what would be my last dollar), I basically just wandered around the city alone for four hours. Walking around/getting lost and un-lost are my favorite ways to learn a new place, and Santa Rosa was perfect for this. The streets weren’t in a perfect grid, but they were close enough. I had the central park and the main road to use as landmarks (though I didn’t understand exactly how the main road curved until getting home and looking at a map). There were even a few street signs, which is almost unheard of in Honduras. But I made my way to two grocery stores, a few other random places, and had lunch at a cafeteria-like place, with iced coffee from the fake Starbucks as dessert. When I was thinking about taking a bus home instead of waiting for my family, since I was sweaty and ready to go, I called up my sister and they were just getting back to the city. It was perfect timing. They found me in the street and picked me up.

Instead of going home though, we spent another several hours in the city and its outskirts together, which was fun but exhausting. We stopped to visit and see the apartment of two of my other sisters who go to college in the city. We went to the market, twice. We went to yet another, bigger grocery store. We visited where the other bus terminal was and then they got something in their car fixed. I went off on my own and ended up with more groceries and some thrift-store clothing. I was thisclose to finding cute rain boots, but the great place I found had nothing between a kids’ size three and a women’s size 9. Try as I might, I couldn’t make either work. But I did get another pair of pajama pants, finally, and lots of food that I’m excited to eat and maybe even bake with. I would’ve bought some DVDs (I really want to finally see the latest Shrek and Toy Story movies), but I don’t really have anywhere to watch them here, so I’m waiting. When we finally pulled away from Santa Rosa for the final time, it was getting dark. We got home at seven, I had a quick dinner, and then just rested until bedtime an hour later.

Today was that lovely vacation from a vacation that I was talking about. The only thing on my schedule was a health center meeting, which, as usual, was cancelled at the last minute. I had a good run (my first good one in five days) and it was actually a sunny, fairly warm day afterwards. That means laundry, of course. I washed some clothes and they were dry several hours later, which hardly ever happens up here in the cold, damp mountains. I also stopped by the school briefly to talk to Profe and then went to the library to check in with the librarian. I found out both of the things I felt a little guilty about missing (youth group meeting on Friday, story hour yesterday), didn’t happen. This is good and bad for different reasons, but it was nice to know I didn’t have to feel bad about all my traveling (albeit all within two hours away and never overnight). Hopefully the rest of the week will go better with the planned events.

After checking in with all of the above, eating lunch (peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then a red delicious apple with more peanut butter, yum), and making a bunch of phone calls, I spent the rest of the day quietly working. I caught up on the internets, finished reading some work stuff, started reading/taking notes on other work stuff, and did some preliminary planning for some of my upcoming projects…plus, of course, updated my slightly neglected blog. It was the perfect kind of day where I felt relaxed and at ease but still productive. Actually, the next few days should feel like that, before getting back into another busy weekend and upcoming week! All I know is that my next visit to Santa Rosa should involve a hot shower and seeing friends from my training group at the very least. Can’t wait!