Thank you Gracias!

For those of you who don’t know, the city of Gracias is our closest getaway. It is our small slice of paradise outside of La Unión and within a bus trip’s reach. There is a bank, grocery store, and post office there among other fantastic places such as general merchandise stores, restaurants, hotels, and cafés. This past weekend it was time to pay Gracias a little visit. Unfortunately the only time the bus leaves is at 5 in the morning, but Lori, Kara, Harriet, Beth, and I thought that it was still entirely worth it to go.

Our primary reason for going was to pick up some packages that had been mailed to us. If anyone is ever interested in sending me something you have to send it to the following address:

Brooke Osekavage
Hotel Guancascos
Barrio San Sebastian
Gracias, Lempira
Honduras C.A.

(Yes, that is my not-so-subtle hint that I would love you to send anything and everything to me.) The packages and/or letters get to Gracias just fine, but then it gets a little tricky. In order to actually get a package, you have to go check the post office and then personally pick it up. It’s not like college where they let you know when you have a package waiting in the mailroom, and it’s not like home where the package is delivered right to your front door. Sometimes, if the package sits long enough in the post office, they will actually take it to the hotel where it sits again and waits for one of us to come claim it. Now the letters are a different story: the post office workers create a pile of mail that is specifically for the people of La Unión and whenever someone from our little town makes a trip to Gracias and its post office, they pick up the stack for La Unióners. Then they bring it back and deliver it; for us gringos, if they see a name on the envelope that they do not recognize or cannot pronounce, they assume it belongs to one of us so they find any one of us and give us the letter. Anyways, we knew there would be packages waiting for us in the post office so we went… but the post office was closed. Without a doubt this was the biggest disappointment of my weekend. We even went to check the hotel if by chance they had gotten any of our packages, and they hadn’t. We are still trying to figure out how to get our packages, but we were extremely saddened by our unfortunate luck this weekend.

In order to cheer ourselves up we knew we had to do some retail therapy, but first we needed money. The money situation in Honduras is rather peculiar. All the teachers have bank accounts set up with Banco Atlantida for our paychecks to get directly deposited into, but getting that money out to use is slightly tricky. Although we have ATM/debit cards, we have only been able to use them at grocery stores, hotels, and restaurants in bigger and more tourist-friendly cities. Other than that we just go to an ATM and take loads of money out. However, unlike at home where you might find 5 different ATMs within walking distance of each other, ATMs are scarce in this country and are never guaranteed to work. La Unión does not have an ATM and the only way we can get money out here is at the clinic where they have the capability of swiping our cards for a certain amount and then giving us that amount in cash. But you have to hope that a) the clinic is open when you go, and b) that they have enough cash to actual perform this withdrawal. So we heavily rely on big cities to get money. Unfortunately, sometimes the ATMs in said cities are out of money or broken so they are out of service. Apparently the only one in Gracias has not worked in months so we had to go to the actual bank. Now you may think I’m over-exaggerating or whining a bit much here, but you need to realize that the banks in Honduras are beyond frustrating and in-efficient so people avoid them at all costs.

Normally when you go you need to have your passport to withdraw money, but we currently do not have our passports. (This is where the complicated systems in our lives continue.) To make a long story short our passports are in Tegucigalpa because our temporary visas ran out but the immigration office does not have our paperwork ready to get us our residency cards. So we had to send our passports to Tegucigalpa to get our visas extended. Can you see how this might pose a problem at the bank? We all brought copies of our passports to see if the bank would accept those. I talked to a woman who initially said that the copies would not be sufficient, but once I explained our problem and she recognized the kind of sticky situation we were in, she quickly agreed to let us continue with our transactions. Bless her because we would have been in an even bigger pickle!

With crisp bills in our hands and saddened spirits that needed cheering up, we hit the stores. We first filled our empty bellies with fresh pastries from a bakery and ice cream. Then we found a school supplies store and drooled. There were so many different materials that we could never dream of finding in La Unión! I bought new mega-crayons for my students, fun-colored gel pens for me to use for grading instead of the dreaded red pen, and a Disney princess pencil bag. My most favorite purchase, from that store and of the whole day, was the sparkle foam pieces I got for each student. Think of those colored foam squares you can buy at the craft store, now imagine them smothered in glitter! Think of the possibilities and the art projects I can do with my kiddos! My classroom will be getting a majestic facelift with my new purchases.

We finished our morning of shopping at the grocery stores before we had to scoot back to the bus station to catch the last bus back to La Unión by 12:30. Everyone had their own personal list of items they wanted plus wish lists of foods from the others who didn’t come with us. I treated myself to yogurt, cheese (which successfully made it back with the yogurt, both without bursting or getting warm), granola, homemade jam, peanut butter, chocolate toffees, and alfredo sauce. After all our shopping we stuffed our backpacks and tied up our grocery bags, and got back on the bus. We knew our luck had turned around by the pleased smiles everyone had on their face AND the bus ride home was magnificent – we each got our own seat for the entire ride back and I never felt like I was going to be launched from my seat. Thank you Gracias for making our lives a little brighter this weekend!

Please pray for my family this week. I have been missing them a lot over the last couple of weeks and I can only imagine (and hope) that they are feeling the same. I do not like not being able to call them whenever I want or realizing that I still won’t see them for months. Bless their hearts for willingly sending me here to Honduras to complete God’s work and to fulfill my dreams. Their support has been the greatest gift throughout my decision to come here. Just pray that they are all doing well and that the time passes quickly until we see each other again. I know it’s not easy to go this long without seeing or spending time with their favorite daughter!