just when i thought...

So i thought i was going to be bussing all the way back through to the states from san jose. i thought i was going to be in santa rosa de copan for a few days. i thought i was going to be in oaxaca for a week or so. i thought it was all figured out, haha not! i bussed from san jose, costa rica to managua, nicaragua on the 25th. definately the craziest christmas i have had in around 25 years or so. one story to describe the bus briefly: i killed a dozen (no joke) cockroaches from my seat alone. i arrived at the border in nicaragua around 4:00 pm. we all got out of the bus, showed our passports and sat down on the concrete while the border patrol stared at us all. just when i thought we were going to be allowed to go back on the bus, a grande officer came over to me and said some spanish (no idea what he said) to me, after a few "no habla espanol" comments from me, one of the little kids that was running around said "he wants your bag". now all of the bags had already been out of the bus and reloaded, so i had to get someone to unlock the bag compartment, dig my bag out and then head into this secluded room with dos grande nico's (2 big nicaraguans). he slowly took everything out of the bag, patted it all down and gave it his stamp of approval finally. while i was in there, a german guy named kristoff (sp?) came in to see if i was alright, but the guards shooed him away pretty quickly. now even though nothing bad happened, i was a little nervous, they really could have kept me and i would have no way of doing anything! i was the only one to have their bag checked, man i know it was very minor, but i felt what it was like to truly be a minority for a little while there. it has changed my view on how i will treat foreign people when i come across them in the states. we should be as helpful as we can to them, it can really make a difference! so once i was let out of the room, i went over to Kristoff and thanked him for checking up on me. he and another guy from yugoslavia were the only 2 that spoke english on the whole bus. the yugoslavian guy got off before managua, so kristoff was the last english speaker on the bus. as we got off the bus in managua, i caught up with kristoff and he asked if i wanted to split a hostel room. i gladly said yes, as he spoke spanish as well. we arrived at a $4 per person hostel that night. you can imagine the accommodations for that price. we got to talking about our lives and to make a long story short, one of his lines was "oh f*&&^, i am sharing a room with a f$%$ing pope from oregon" :) he consumed an entire bottle of rum before going to sleep and farted alcohol farts the entire night. we didnt have a clock in the room and i had to be on my next bus by 5 in the morning, so i pretty much laid there and occasionally went out into the lobby to check the time. 4am took quite a while to get there, but when it finally did, i awoke Kristoff from slumber and he let me know that the alcohol was still working. we parted ways as he tried to get a bus ticket at one bus line and i headed to mine. on the next bus to tegucigalpa, i realized that i was ready to get back to the states. i thought about it quite a bit, but i just couldnt see myself traveling across all of mexico without being able to speak the language. i could see some very sketch things happening. so instead of heading to tegucigalpa, i purchased an extended ticket to san salvador where the airport is bigger. i made it there around 6 that night and bought a ticket to LA that evening! as a lot of you know, when i get an idea in my head, i tend to run with it right away, and as i had the idea of getting back to the states and continuing my journeys there, thats what i was going to do. so i got into LA around 11:30 at night and kind of ironically the diahrea started to flow. as of writing this post i still cannot form a decent poop. you all wanted to know that, i know. i made it to yesterday afternoon by train. i met a very attractive girl......................who was living with her boyfriend. but it was still nice to have a conversation in english :) so here i am at Sandy and Leilia's house to spend new years with them, then i am off to Arizona for about a week to spend time with grandparents, then i head back to oregon to see family before heading back to bend on the weekend of january 14th. it feels good to be back in the states, i have learned a lot about myself so far and i dont want it to end. God is good, draw near to him and he will draw near to you, that verse means a lot to me now. I love you all.