Hey, everybody! I'm finally back. I get two whole weeks at home and then I leave again for a summer seminar at an art college. I finally received my class assignments: Animation and Video/TV Basics: Modern Storytelling. I'm so excited! Especially for animation. I've been dying to learn how to do that. I'm considering it for a career. Or something in that general area anyway.

Anyways, sailing camp was great as usual. This year I was in the new non-racing group and even though that consisted of sailing around the lake doing nothing(or often times sailing but not going anywhere - crappy wind D< ) I really enjoyed it.

Honduras wasn't as bad as I was afraid it might be. We stayed at a ranch where we had running water and electricity. We weren't allowed to drink the tap water or rinse our toothbrushes in it but at least we could wash our hands and take showers. Except for the first work day when there was no power. It had been knocked out the day before because of a storm and their water pumps are electric. We ended up literally taking a shower in the rain. We shampooed and everything! It was coming down that hard! No joke.

So, for our mission work we mixed cement to make floors and porches for the people in the village and then we moved on to building walls out of mud. The mud bit was surprisingly fun and you wouldn't believe how well a building like that stays up. All their houses were made like that and there was a mud building like that on the ranch that was still in good shape even though they said it was over 100 years old.

Nobody got sick luckily until the last day when we were staying at a hotel on our way back to the airport. Mostly it was stomach stuff. The food at the ranch and the hotel was good but after the first couple of days your stomach decides it doesn't want to eat a new diet anymore. I'm glad we came home when we did because I don't think I could swallow another bean or corn tortilla. I don't even want to look at one right now. *shudders* Fortunately, my only problems were a lack of appetite and a little incident in the airport restrooms right before getting on the plane home...>.>

Anyways, I'm glad to be back to a place where I can actually talk to people. I don't speak much more Spanish than hi, thanks, and 1 through 10. I did learn the words for puppy, grandfather, bathroom, and butterfly while I was there though. It was really interesting to try watching TV at the hotel. I was surprised at how many American shows and movies I saw just dubbed or subbed in Spanish. Dubbed: iCarly, Hannah Montanna, Fairly Oddparents, Road Trip, Sleepy Hollow, 102 Dalmations, Ben 10 (they must really like him down there because I must have flipped past a dozen episodes in just one night and morning O_o) are just a few of the things I saw there.

Also, animal life in Honduras: dogs are like squirrels - they're EVERYWHERE; massive toads - about the same size as my head; plenty of cows, chickens, etc - we drove through a herd of cows on the way back to the ranch nearly every day; little bug-eyed frogs - I found one on the toilet paper roll when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night (at first I thought it was the biggest cockroach I'd ever seen); and finally lots and lots of chirping lizards - they kept waking me up in the middle of the night, I swear one was living somewhere above my bed, oh, and one fell into my friend's dinner plate on the first night. lol.

This has gotten really long. I'll shut up now.