Honduras, Day 1: Saturday

Taken from my journal:

Saturday the 20th.  We woke up at 4am and were down in the lobby of the hotel at 4:30.  The shuttles from the hotel to the airport go every half hour so we were going to take the 5 and 5:30 shuttles.  But for some reason we couldn't go at 5 so the shuttle guy took 11 of us to the airport at 4:30 and rushed back the get the rest of us.  It was only 8 of us who were left, me, 3 guys, 3 guy leaders and one of the leader's 11 year old son.  And we had 25 suitcases to bring to the airport plus our carry ons.  We loaded up the shuttle but one we got to the airport, we were really weighed down.  Each of the suitcases weighed 30-50 pounds.  We got a few of those luggage cart things and lugged everything through the airport to the check in place where we met the rest of our group.  We had to wait in line a long time (and hour maybe?) all the while pushing and dragging out heavy luggage forward when the line moved. Once we got our bags checked, we headed over to security and over to the waiting area for our plane.  We had some time so we wondered around and got some breakfast.  Then we boarded and left the country!  The flight was like 5 hours and seemed to take forever.  I was really excited.

When we landed we felt the heat immediately.  We got our bags and met the group from the MAMA project.  A family from our church, the Moyers, had been in Honduras for a week already and they were at the airport.  We loaded up a truck with all the suitcases and loaded ourselves into two big vans.

The MAMA house was about an hours drive from San Pedro Sula and we spent the time looking out the windows and taking pictures.  The first thing that hit me about Honduras (besides the heat) was the mountains.  I thought we had mountains here in Pennsylvania but our mountains are hills compared to theirs!

Once we got to the MAMA house, we unloaded and got settled into our rooms.  The girls had one big room on one side of the house and the boys had one on the other side.  In between was the kitchen and dining/living area.

Then we went to the nutrition centre which was a short walk down the road.  We saw a very malnourished little boy there.  He was 3 I think but he was so tiny and his arms were so skinny.


Some people played soccer and the rest of us talked (or, tired to talk) to the kids and played with them.  They liked to have their pictures taken and loved to the themselves afterward.

Then we went back to the MAMA house and had dinner.  I don't really remember what we did Saturday night.  I think we just talked about the day and hung out.