worse than black friday.

as of this moment, we've been under curfew here in tegucigalpa for roughly 52 hours. most of this time has been passed at the house of some other north american teachers, which proved to be a lesson in humility, because we didn't have so much that we needed. we had some very gracious hosts, though, and now we're finally back in our house!! ever since monday at about 4, we haven't been allowed to leave, by orders of the police.

until today!

this morning we got an email saying that the curfew that was supposed to go through the day today would be lifted from 10-5 so that people could go shopping and get food. our school sent a bus to pick us all up, and we headed to the grocery store to stock up on essentials. i went more for the outing than for actual things, as i have plenty.

it was absolute panic-mode in the city. many of us commented that it felt like the y2k scare. everyone was out on the road; a trip that would have taken about 10 minutes any other day took over an hour. cars were backed up for miles waiting to get into gas stations. when we got to the store, people were stocking up on food like you wouldn't believe. people pushed 2 carts completely overflowing through the aisles. and there were so many people! i don't know that i had ever seen so many people in one store before. the checkout line wrapped entirely around the store, and was moving nowhere. in roughly 1 hour, we had moved 4 feet forward thanks to some type of sketchy merging going on further up. after about 3 hours of waiting in line, myself and three others decided to just give up and go out for lunch across the street. it ended up being a very good move.

throughout tegucigalpa, there was news of looting in supermarkets, of robberies in electronic stores overnight, and more. the news showed grocery stores that had been completely gutted and people fighting over food on the shelves. yet i'm not sure why the panic is so intense. even though the crisis isn't resolved, today showed just how unstable this situation is.

well, we are back in our house, which feels great. about 6:30 tonight we got the word that school tomorrow would be canceled again, but then at 8:30 we got a follow up email saying that administration had changed its mind. awesome. so we're back on. but those two hours had been enough for me to get completely out of any school-type zone i would have been in. tomorrow will only be a half day for students (full for teachers), but hopefully it's enough to again start to get into the groove.