My Week In Honduras (and how I joined Honduras' most wanted...) PART 2

So this post or Part Dos (see how I inserted a little Spanish??) as I call it, is going to be more random than my first post. I will also explain the "most wanted" part of my title.
There are really four things that I want to convey to my loyal readers today. Apart from the spiritual aspect (see part 1) of the trip, these are the four things that I will most likely remember for the rest of my life:

1.) "Squashing the dreams of 30 kids with one swift kick"
Ok. A disclaimer before I begin: I felt TERRIBLE after the events of these first two stories...which happened on the SAME day at the SAME school. Please don't hate me.
On Wednesday, after we visited the Mayan school, we visited a Spanish-speaking public school. I started "playing" soccer with some of our students and about 30 Honduran kids. Now, you need to know a vital piece of information. We were not playing on a soccer field. We were playing on a concrete basketball court, which doubled as their soccer field, that was surrounded by a ten foot cement wall with barbed and razor wire on top. Now that the stage is set: enter disaster. Someone lobbed a ball to me and I thought I would show off what little soccer skills I actually have by trying a bicycle kick. As you can probably guess, this did not go off as well as I planned. The soccer ball hung in suspended animation as my mind raced ahead of thoughts of a glorious GOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLL (watch un-American soccer and you'll get that). Instead, I kicked it over the 10-foot wall of death. Immediately, all 30 kids looked at me with despair in their eyes and yelled "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!" A group of kids took off running towards the gate to retrieve the ONLY soccer ball the school owned. I followed closely behind while dodging rocks that were thrown at me for my sin. (Ok, I made that up). I finally reach the back gate and turn the corner only to find...a steep hill that leads into a ravine that probably went on for two miles. This just keeps getting better. So, now picture me, a 23 year old American who speaks 3 Spanish words trying to communicate with 10 Spanish kids as we search for the lone soccer ball in the midst of bushes and shrubbery at the entrance to the ravine. I tried communicating with the kids through sign language by pointing to my eyes and making a big circle with my hands...only to be met with a mixture of laughter at the stupid American and more murderous looks. After 20 minutes of looking for the soccer ball, I started to dig some money out of my wallet so that I could give it to the principal so that he could buy a new soccer ball. Right as I was doing that, I heard some joyful shouting in the bushes to my left. The kids pulled the ball out of the bushes and ran by me laughing and and saying things which I think were insulting towards me.
I was banned from playing soccer the rest of the day.

2.) "Honduras' Most Wanted"
2 hours later. Same school. Disaster numero dos.
Towards the end of the day, I was sitting on the sideline watching some others play soccer. For the record, I volunteered to sit out so that no more disasters would happen at my hand. That didn't help. I will change the name of the innocents to protect their identity. "Houston" was the goalie for the American team and he noticed a small Honduran boy carrying a very nice backpack. Now, in hindsight, we should have remembered that we were at a school and that all students carry backpacks. We did not process that information. We thought it was the bag of one of our high school students, so "B-Rant" and I basically cornered the kid to get "our" bag back. After "B-Rant" and I physically removed the bag from the kid a small riot broke out. (I may be exaggerating a little bit). "B-Rant" decided to run from the small group of kids that were surrounding him and yelling in Spanish. Not smart. "B-Rant" runs track for his school and he was barely staying ahead of these kids. He yells in a terrified voice, "Aaron!!! Where do I go?!?!?!" Sadly, "B-Rant" ran himself into a corner and was surrounded by the mob. It literally looked like a scene from a horror movie. The one white kid holding a backpack over his head while multiple Honduran kids clawed at him and tried to climb up his body to retrieve their stolen bag. One of our other students, who we will name "Opie Taylor", suggested that we look inside the bag to make sure it was ours before we barricaded ourselves in the bus. Smart kid. We opened it up to find Spanish textbooks and notebook paper. Needless to say, "B-Rant" and I felt AWFUL. We explained what we thought was happening and thankfully, I avoided a second stoning that I was deserving of. However, the school did take our mugshots and they posted our pictures on Honduras' Most Wanted. We are horrible Americans.

3.) "Heaven On Earth"
I found a Dunkin Donuts in Honduras. We stopped there. It was wonderful. See the pic at: http://twitpic.com/1eodrd

4.) "Weird and Useless Info"
I found out that if someone licks your elbow when you aren't looking...you can't feel it. Those were some weird bus rides...

Aaaahhhhh memories.