Honduras

Liz (Lee's aunt/I pretend she is my mom) called it right when she said Honduras was the longest shortest week ever! 

We left late evening Easter Sunday. Our plane left at 11:45 Az time, we traveled to Atlanta where we had a 3 hour layover (so from 3-6am our time!)

 Lee's computer crashed the day before we left with half his paper for school written, so he spent the layover writing a paper in the Atlanta airport. Then at 6am we got on the plane to travel down to Honduras. After 2 hours of waiting in the plane to replace a windshield wiper blade we were finally off and more than exausted! I might have gotten sick the whole second flight and the whole 6 hour bus ride after we arrived in Hounduras. I am not even going to tell you my throwing up tally :) 

But once we got there we were excited for the days to come!

After a FULL day of travel, we headed to bed early because our first day of shooting started at 3:30am. 

I've never been out of the country besides Rocky Point or Canada, so it was such an amazing experience getting to know the city and people. (Not sure if a town spread out over the jungle with 7,000 people is considered a city, but whatever)

1/3 of the cast came from cities an hour away so they came on a bus and and stayed in a motel in town. Someone said that this opportunity would probably be the only time they would stay in a  motel in their life, so they were excited. Each person I met/ kinda got to know (only 2 years of spanish in 8th and 9th grade so I spoke pretty crappy but got along ok) I LOVED! The people were so humble and fun and converted to the gospel.

 As we drove to their town we passed a brand new church building... it had 6 parking spots in the parking lot because everyone walks, no one has cars even if they live far away. Now how do I feel about complaining about driving down the street to attend 8am chruch? Hey I have a car! 

The town did have TONS of little of taxis to drive tourists around. 

They were called toot toots and the drivers were crazy! We spent most of our freetime in the afternoon hanging out on the backporch with everybody there. We began shooting each morning at sunrise so prep began an hour or two before that. By the time we were done and came back to the motel for breakfast at 8:30 we were all ready to kick back in a hammock and sleep. 

So many more random things I want to remember.....

the 1st morning we started with a destruction scene. We dirtied up the cast with some theatrical dirt and it was everywhere. I took a picture of my discusting feet. So so so so dirty... and puffy.

 Not sure if it was just the traveling or the fact that I was 5 months pregnant, but I had some serious kankles. 

Speaking of large bellies... there were 5 of us pregnant on the trip :) weird. One of the cast (who couldn't remember how old she was) is a midwife and she went around and felt each of our bellies. With in seconds she told us how far along we were and what we were having. And she was right! Crazy! Someone took a picture of all of us and she has her hand on my stomach, but I didn't get it on my camera... so I'll have to get that picture still.

My mother in law (who is amazing) was in charge of all the costuming for the whole production. 

There were 70 members in the full cast and 3 different sets of costumes. I helped and did my little part, but she was a machine and everything looked amazing! Here's us costuming ladies who came on the trip, together with Mark.

 Well everyone helped with everything, but besides me these ladies were the head honchos and worked their booties off! I guess its good to rub shoulders with awesomeness.... maybe some will rub off onto me! 

There were mcaws the flew all around in the park where the ruins are and we did most of our shooting.

 They were so loud!

Lee helped Jake with the lighting and by the end of the week I don't think there was a single line from Nacho Libro that hadn't been quoted. Oh them.

Our favorite place to eat was a restaurant that had a full blown bellows that blew to keep the charcoal grill going. The food was so tasty and the waitresses carried everything on their heads. 

 They said after 15 days of training they usually didn't break any more dishes :) 

The last location/ scene was baptisms and was at a hot springs and pure jungle. I might have fallen in love with one of the little boys (Tara and I dressed all the little kids each day, so I got to know them pretty well) I sized up this little squirt pretty quick when he was begging me for candy at 4am... with a bottle or orange pop in his hand. Guess they don't worry too much about dental there :) 

His name is Moroni and his naughty little sidekick is Nephi. They were the cutest little boys ever and we were buddies. He would hit me up at each shoot for whatever treats I had in my bag. And I might have bought stuff not necessarily for me to eat, but just because I knew they would want some.

K, this is an extremely long post, so I would be amazed if anyone read through the whole thing... but, its my journal. Hopefully a few of the pictures were interesting! 

LOVED everyone that came to the shoot (like the crew), banana pop(not!), speaking better spanish than I thought I would have, taking a sleeping pill on the way back so I didn't have to re-live the traveling, getting Steve a traffic ticket because I wasn't wearing my seatbelt and we were gringos:), 

 passing a semi with a schoolbus in the other lane and serously almost dying like 6 times(good thing my unisom chilled me out so I was laughing at the scariness of the situation), Lee paying a rediculous price for his yellow slip of paper to get out of the country(too bad he threw it away that morning) and finally being able to drink a tall glass of water with ice in it. Ahhhh it hit the spot.

Like Liz said... the longest shorest week ever... and priceless. (And that's not even including the spiritual side of the trip)