Life in Ruins.

The ruins of Copán, of course.

While having the student teachers here has been invaluable within the classroom, it's also giving us an excuse to travel and visit different parts of Honduras that we haven't made it to yet. Case in point? Our weekend trip to Copán. The city of Copán is about 6-7 hours away from Sigua, which is a manageable yet not incredibly practical weekend trips. The student teachers really wanted to see it (as well as some of the English teachers), so it was a opportunity for all of us to go.

Parrots in the wild. What. Now.

We left the school Friday afternoon and arrived in Copán sometime in the evening. I don't know about anyone else, but I went straight to bed. Being in Grade 1 and 2 wears me out, my average bedtime is about 8:30pm these days.

Hieroglyphic stairs.

An early start on Saturday morning to beat the heat that plagues all of Copán meant that we found ourselves at the ruins around 9 or 9:30am. Which still seems unreasonably early to me despite my 8:30pm bedtime. Just sayin'. Sarah and Ricky opted out because they'd already seen the ruins, and honestly, once you've seen them, they aren't going to change. So Hannah, Elizabeth, Brent, Stephen, Emily, Keith, Erika, and I spent the majority of the morning climbing all over rocks, taking ridiculous pictures, sweating to death, and getting yelled at.

But really though. We're going for a record. Elizabeth, Stephen, and I all got reprimanded on different occasions. I'm sorry, I didn't realize that I could stand on THIS rock, but THAT rock is off limits. A rock is a rock is a rock. In my mind anyways.

While I wouldn't compare these ruins to the ruins of Teotihuacán in Mexico City (as far as size and grandeur is concerned), there were actually a TON of different ruins. I felt like every time we climbed up and over one ruin, there was another one waiting for us on the other side.

Three pieces of advice for anyone heading over to las Ruinas de Copán anytime soon:

1: After giving your ticket to the ticket takers, go straight instead of right. You'll be more disappointed initially, but it pays off in the end.

2: Don't go when it's hot. It was cloudy and not even hot when we were there and I still had back sweat. Gross, but true.

3: Skip the tour guide. Like I said, a rock is a rock is a rock. All of this information is online. Anyone can Wikipedia these days. Save yourself the time and money, travel at your own pace. However leisurely you decide you want that to be.

The group began to part ways post-ruins. Some of us stayed around the city of Copán (which is adorable, I might add. I want to live there), some of us when on a coffee tour, and some of us went to the hot spring. I opted for the trip to the hot springs. Another good decision.

There were a series of different hot springs serving various purposes (mud bath, foot massage, scalding hot back and neck massage, etc) that you could travel between freely. I preferred the mud bath as well as the regular hot spring pools. Although I did feel like I was slowly cooking from the inside out.

While hanging out in the mud bath, we were joined by a lovely little family that had three young children. Stephen, Sarah, and I had mud caked all over our faces and the children looked at us like we were the most disgusting human beings on the planet. They soon warmed up to us and we had a wonderful chat. There's nothing that brings people closer together than rubbing mud on yourself together. We decided to move on to the next hot spring pool, so the three of us simultaneously stuck our heads underwater and blew bubbles while scrubbing the dirt off our faces. There is nothing more hysterical than the look on those children's faces when I took my head out from underwater. They were looking at us as if we were certifiably insane.

Dinner at a nice pizza restaurant followed up by "un cono de 26 de galleta" (a 26 lemp ice cream cone with Cookies and Cream ice cream) from KOBS rounded out our time in Copán. What a relaxing, adventurous, and outdoorsy weekend it was.

And then we stopped at the mall in San Pedro Sula where Sarah and I proceeded to go spent 450 lemps on candy. Its 20 lemps to 1 American dollar. Go ahead, do the math. I'm not ashamed.