Thomas’ trip to El Hogar School for orphaned and abandoned children in Tegucigalpa, Honduras was full of adventure and fun.   It started with a four hour van ride from the airport in northern Honduras (Tegucigalpa airport was still closed due to a plane crash and the country had no equipment to remove the plane from the runway), allowing him to see more of a country he called the most beautiful place he had ever seen.  His week was filled with assisting the workers on another dorm, lots of soccer and silliness with the grade school boys at the school, an opportunity to see a youth soccer match (the school has a new team that played), a local talent show where students competed with other schools, a trip to the agricultural school which yielded many photos of chickens and cows, and lots of beans, rice and tortillas as the mainstay of three meals a day.  His evenings were an opportunity to get to know the youth from Winchester’s Epiphany Episcopal Church, the group he tagged on to in order to fulfill his wish to go to Central America.  They enjoyed long conversations and late nights under the stars.  While his trip was wonderful, the realities of the gangs, violence and extreme poverty were everywhere.  Armed guards are outside even the ice cream shop in town, gunshots are a common sound in the air and a home visit showed him a house the size of his bedroom, he said.   All that included, he is already talking about next year’s trip!