Gin Rummy Championships.

  Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Sunday, June 3, 2007

´Nilla enjoying mansion life.

June 3, 2007 brought yet another early morning for Geraldine.  Regardless of the fact that we were up until well after 2:00am, she woke up before 6:00am and went running in the hills of Villa Elena.  What a trooper.  Michael was a tad under the weather from the previous night festivities and lounged in bed until near 9:00am.  It was Sunday and there were no workers around the Casa Lajoya compound to disrupt his sleeping.  After slowly peeling himself from under the covers, Michael left Geraldine in bed to catch some more sleep after her run and headed down to the kitchen to knock off cleaning a massive pile of dishes that had accumulated from our dinner party.  During the week, a maid comes to the house and cleans up after us, however today, we were on our own.  We welcomed the need to clean up as we could not afford to get used to having a maid service because we could not fit another person in 'Nilla when we left and furthermore it was not in the budget. 
 
 
When Noemi and Geraldine made their way to the kitchen, the dishes were finished and Michael was just getting started on making omelettes.  Geraldine jumped on board to help and the kitchen was alive with a fury of cooking once again.  Omelettes were made to order and everyone happily picked their favourite ingredients.  A side skillet slowly fried up the left over barbeque potatoes from the night before.  With the dust finally settled, we each had a large yet wonderful plate of food to get our systems back on track for another day of typing journal entries and working on updating the website.  It was another sunny day at the mansion with a slight cool mountain breeze and we had planned to spend the afternoon by the pool down at the Country Club.  Yes, Villa Elena also boasts an 18 hole golf course complete with Country Club.  The clear morning skies filled with tumultuous black and grey rain clouds just as we finished packing our swim trunks and towel into a bag.  We sat around the house waiting for it to pass, but it did not.  Instead, Geraldine was able to take a much needed siesta, while Michael continued to update the website in between calling some more friends and family from the internet phone.   It sure was nice to have full internet access at Casa Lajoya.  The remainder of afternoon drifted by uneventfully. 
 
 
Noemi invited us to join her for church Sunday evening and we obliged.  Showered and all dressed up we headed back into the town of Tegucigalpa.  The church service was held in an old disco and the acoustics were amazing.  The service was in English and included a large amount of singing upbeat songs with the musical accompaniment of a full band.  The sermon was a bit convoluted to follow, however we gather that the Pastor was trying to equate every day trials and tribulations to test from God or temptations from the Devil.  It will likely be a two or three part service

Geraldine playing with Mercedes & Luna.

as the Pastor barely got finished with listing all the scripture readings he read to come up with his theory.  Geraldine much enjoying the sing along at the start and the end of the service and was bellowing out the songs she knew by memory.   The church service was only about one hour long and the time passed like a flash.  We were back in the truck and cruising around to find some food for dinner in no time.  Take out was suggested; however we much prefer to cook and so we headed to a grocery store to grab some food.  Everyone was tired and we picked up salad and fresh made fish cakes to make cooking at home a rather easy process.  Dinner was whipped up and consumed immediately when we arrived at Casa Lajoya and then we all sat down for a rematch of Gin Rummy 500.  This round went much smoother as the girls were now getting some of the strategy elements of the game.  Geraldine was declared the winner as she barely squeaked over the 500 point mark with Michael hot on her tail.  In reality, she won the game hands down, but it sounds better the other way.  We shut the night down at midnight and everyone sauntered off to bed.  We are not positive but we likely watched some television before bed as Michael could just not resist the temptation.
 
 
 
Neither one of us stirred out of bed early on the morning on June 4, 2007.  The workers showed up a little later and were not smashing and banging as they had done days prior.  Today there were applying concrete to the walls, which was rather a quiet process in comparison.  Noemi actually got up for her morning walk, be we were just too lazy.  We made it down to the kitchen around 9:00am and Michael worked on cleaning the van.  We decided to ship out the following morning and it was nice to pack up early.  We had removed all but one change of clothes from our mansion hideaway bedroom, which all needed to be neatly folded and strategically put back into our closet lockers in the van.  Michael swept and washed the floor before he finally making his way back inside.  Geraldine had prepared a wonderful meal for the two of them.  Carrying a massive tray of food, Geraldine led Michael upstairs to a small table set up overlooking the mountains and the valley below.   It was serene.  The breakfast tray including cereal, toast, fresh fruit and two large glasses of water.  What a healthy kick start.  It was nice to sit alone and talk over breakfast as we had not had much time to ourselves in the last little while. 
 
 
Today, the amount of workers and construction at the mansion was at an all time high.  The owner was coming to town in the morning and every available set of hands were on site and working feverishly.  The most noticeable improvement was that the lawns were all mowed and all the hedges were trimmed and cleaned up.  The outside of the place looked immaculate.
 
Michael set to cooking up a storm and prepared tons of food to travel with.  There were bowls filled with potato salad, pasta salad and cooked rice.  It was much easier to do our cooking in a large kitchen rather than the small confines of the van.  With travel food ready to go, Michael loaded up the refrigerator in the van we were now all set to hit the road.  The afternoon was spent working on journal entries and labelling photographs.  The internet had been not working property the entire day, which made it difficult to finish uploading all our recent work to the website.  Finally, the internet service was completely gone and we abandoned our efforts to finish uploading.  
 

Bamboo Lane.

We took an afternoon walk to the through Villa Elena as Michael had yet to see the gated community and all the massive shacks spread on the mountainside.  The walk from Casa Lajoya to the Country Club was entirely downhill and passed by countless other mansions and rock walled compounds.  At the bottom of the mountain was a long flat stretch of road where the houses backed on the golf course.

Michael dwarfed by Bamboo Lane.

  The weather at the bottom was more hot and humid and allowed for large bamboo trees to grow like weeds.  There was actually an entire street lined with massive bamboo shoots that is appropriately named 'Bamboo Lane'.  We peeked around the Country Club at the pool, restaurant and lounge areas.  As to be expected, it was immaculately groomed with tile walkways and massive flowering shrubbery for privacy.  It was tranquil, but not the lifestyle we are accustomed to.  The entire walk home was strenuous as the winding mountain road was filled with steep inclines.  It started to rain on the walk back up and there was nothing we could do but simply get wet as we pressed on for home. 
 
 
We had not left the house today for dinner groceries; however Noemi was able to root through her pantry and freezer to find a nice portion a fish that we served with rice and vegetables.  Geraldine was the master chef of the evening and the dinner was one of the best we have had yet.  After dinner, we cracked a bottle of wine and sat down for the third and final round of Gin Rummy 500.  Everyone was certain that the winner's hat would be passed around the circle and on to Noemi.  Unfortunately, Michael had an extremely lucky run and raced to a win leaving both Geraldine and Noemi with negative point totals.  Not exactly how we saw the game turning out, but that is life.  We knew that we would need to get up early to leave Casa Lajoya the following morning and it was our first early night to bed during the entire stay.

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