Today in Honduras

Here is today's funny story from Central America. For the past week or so, we've been hearing these crazy reports on the radio and in the newspapers about a heat wave that's supposed to hit Honduras tomorrow and Friday complete with temps as high as 140 degrees. The government has declared a state of emergency and cancelled school and given everyone the day off on Friday. They power company is going to turn off power throughout the country in an attempt to conserve. Sounded pretty serious.

The rule of thumb in Honduras is to believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see. With that in mind, today we read in the La Prensa, one of the Honduran newspapers, that this projected heat wave is going to happen as a result of the sun passing extra close to earth on those two days, and in fact, it will be passing directly over San Pedro Sula on Friday. Of course, we all know that, while the earth does have a slightly eliptical orbit, it passes closest to the sun during the northern hemisphere's winter and in no way are temperatures affected. And yet, a whole country is shutting itself down on two completely random days in April because they believe the sun is going to make an extra close pass on those days. As crazy as this all sounds, having been here awhile, we're not even shocked by it. Different cultures have such completely different views of the world that something completely insane to us is quite common place and acceptable to someone else.

And, you just never know. We'll let you know if it hits 140 on Friday!